We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Virginia

In the 1930s, the Federal Writers’ Project undertook a massive effort at gathering the oral testimony of former slaves. Those ex-slaves were in their declining years by the time of the Great Depression, but Elizabeth Sparks, Elige Davison, and others like them nonetheless provided a priceless record of life under the yoke: where slaves lived, how they were treated, what they ate, how they worked, how they adjusted to freedom.

Here, Belinda Hurmence presents the interviews of 21 former Vir…