Southern University’s Library Tells More Stories of Former Slaves as it Expands Online Archives
From The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA):
The John B. Cade Library at Southern University recently expanded its online archive of slave stories, accounts told by former slaves who were interviewed in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The stories further a collection that had been compiled by the library’s namesake, who began collecting them even before serving as a dean at Southern from 1939-61.
Cade sent students to gather these personal accounts while the former slaves were still alive. The library digitized and posted more than 200 such narratives in 2014.
The additional stories, all testimonies of former slaves living in Louisiana, are part of a separate project by the Works Progress Administration, which operated during the Great Depression
Angela V. Proctor, the university’s head archivist and digital librarian, and two staff members have made the typewritten original stories accessible for researchers and the public.
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Direct to Southern University’s Digital Collections Portal
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About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.