Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). The Library of Congress has digitized the narratives and scanned 500 original photographs to create this online collection.
Included in the collection are images of actual bills of sale, a bell rack (used to prevent slaves from running away), and portraits of former slaves.
Posting some of these images around the classroom could bring the reality of slavery home in a way that mere words will never do.