Interviews & personal testimony | Digital Archive Catalog
This public catalog guide introduces the They Lived It. Hear Their Stories. collection in the Native Black Ancestry Digital Archive. Full archive browsing and available files are accessed through the member archive.
What this collection contains
Meet the people behind the pages. Read seven recorded life stories, with document previews and highlights that take you straight to the scan.
How to use the evidence
These are recorded recollections. Separate what an interviewee remembered from an interviewer's wording and later editorial summaries. Interview dates and dates of remembered events can differ.
Matilda Poe: childhood on a Chickasaw-owned plantation
Poe recalls childhood on Isaac Love’s plantation in Indian Territory, describing him as a full-blood Chickasaw man. She describes household life, a chair inherited from her mother, the suffering of children sold away from their mothers, and her family’s move to Texas after emancipation. The Chickasaw identification concerns Isaac Love.
Catalog citation: Federal Writers’ Project / WPA interview transcript, 1930s. Page references below count the pages in this downloadable PDF.
Ellen Cragin: Indian father and a mother’s escape
Cragin identifies her father as Indian and remembers being taunted about that identity. She recounts her mother Luvenia Polk resisting a beating and escaping toward Kansas on a cow. Her account also discusses secret Bible lessons and her later work sewing and quilting.
Catalog citation: Federal Writers’ Project / WPA interview transcript, 1930s. Page references below count the pages in this downloadable PDF.
Joanna Draper: freedom deliberately kept from her
Taken from her parents as a child, Draper says she remained bound to the Deeson household without being told she was free. When she fled, a stranger explained emancipation and told her the coin she thought was $50 was only fifty cents. She later describes farming in the Creek Nation and freedman connections in her family.
Catalog citation: Federal Writers’ Project / WPA interview transcript, 1930s. Page references below count the pages in this downloadable PDF.
Source information and access
Catalog summaries describe the materials and their research context. Consult each member record for its full citation, available scans, and any transcription or curator notes. If a creator, date, or repository is unidentified, treat that information as unresolved rather than inferred.
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