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Works Progress Administration (WPA)

Originally, WPA was the acronym for the United States Work Progress Administration, 1935-1939. In 1939, the program was renamed Work Projects Administration.

WPA Early Settlers' Personal Histories of African Americans in Arkansas

Among the many relief efforts after the 1929 Depression, WPA Federal Writers' Project workers interviewed everyday people with the aim of publishing anthologies on different aspects of life in America. Two hundred and thirty-three persons were interviewed in Arkansas under this program. The originals of questionnaires used to record information during the interviews are preserved in the University Libraries' Special Collections. Transcriptions of questionnaires from interviews with seventeen African Americans interviewed in Arkansas under this project are represented here.

Background information is available in an article by Andrea Cantrell in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly 63 (Spring 2004).

Similar life history interviews from other states (though none from the Arkansas project) are available online in "American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers Project, 1939-1940," Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, and in These Are Our Lives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939) and Such as Us: Southern Voices of the Thirties by Tom E. Terrill and Jerrold Hirsch (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978).

The personal history interviews are both similar to, and different from, interviews conducted in the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives project. More information about the Ex-Slave Narratives for persons from Arkansas is available in Bearing Witness: Memories of Arkansas Slavery Narratives from the 1930s WPA Collections, edited by George E. Lankford (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003) and "Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938," Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division.

Transcriptions of the early settlers' personal histories of African Americans interviewed in Arkansas can be reached via the following links:

• Individual African-American personal history interviewees (in alphabetical order)
• Interviewees by Arkansas county of residence at time of interview (ca. 1941)
• Interviewees by place of birth
• Interviewees by place in which they were slaves, if applicable
• Interviewees by name of slaveholder, if applicable

Notes from Transcriber

Oral history transcripts require Adobe Reader. This can be downloaded free of charge.

Individual African-American personal history interviewees

• Blakeley, Adeline
• Childs, Recebba (Mrs. Jessie Childs)
• Edwards, Laura Jackson (Mrs. John Edwards)
• Johnson, Chess
• May, Ike
• McKinley, A.R.
• Mitchell, Ben
• Moore, Primus
• Newton, Pate
• Parker, Harry
• Reed, Lawston
• Royal, Emma (Mrs. John Royal)
• Smith, William
• Sutton, Malinda (Mrs. Eligah Sutton)
• Tellington, Frank
• Washington, George
• William, Author

Interviewees by Arkansas county of residence at time of interview (ca. 1941)

Interviewees by place of birth

Interviewees by place in which they were slaves, if applicable

Interviewees by name of slaveholder, if applicable

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