As Dorson stresses, slavery, the “peculiar institution,” “imparts a special character” to both American history and American folklore (Dorson 1983: 330). In fact, he argues that “Nowhere do American history and folklore intersect more closely than in the ‘peculiar institution’” (Dorson 1971: 71). Rawick suggests, however, that the WPA interviews with former slaves may be of more value to the local historian or folklorist than to the general historian of slavery. He claims that the interviews are of value not because they describe great historical events but because they “reveal the day-to-day life of people, their customs, their values, their ideas, hopes, aspirations, and fears. We can derive from them a picture of slave society and social structure and of the interaction between black and white” (Rawick 1972: I, xvii). In one of the supplemental volumes, he reiterates that the Indiana interviews “are not particularly significant for the general historian of slavery, although they may be of considerable interest to students of particular aspects of local Indiana history and for genealogical purposes” (Rawick 1977: lx).
For readers interested in a folk history of slavery from the point of view of those who suffered through it, however, the WPA narratives are essential reading, as Escott notes: “For all who want to understand slavery in North America, the WPA slave narratives are an indispensable source. Along with other types of slave narratives, they open a window on a side of slavery that was largely hidden from white observers” (Escott 1985b: 40). Levine, too, shows that although folk documents such as the WPA slave narratives may not provide the kind of chronology and precise details that intrigue professional historians, folklore can assist in re-creating a people’s thought and culture (Levine 1977: xii–xiii). In essence, the WPA interviews with former slaves are folklore, since they are recorded oral traditions, and I approach these narratives as a folklorist, a traditional humanist, and not as a scientific historian, a quantifier. As Escott argues, “both methodologies can and should be used in examining the WPA narratives” (Escott 1985b: 40). Indeed, as Botkin suggests above, the WPA slave narratives, considered folklore, “possess an essential truth and humanity” and surpass as they supplement both history and literature.