I'm currently teaching a unit on the Civil War and slavery in my junior high class (it's an advanced program, and they can handle high school level material).
I'm a big fan of using original sources, and I'd like to use a few of the FWP narratives. However, I know that these are problematic in certain ways (specifically the way they were mostly conducted by white interviewers).
I'm frankly overwhelmed trying to sort through all the narratives. Are there any of the FWP narratives that your would recommend for this level (excerpting them is fine)?
Note: My students will also be reading excerpts of Frederick Douglas, Soujourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Solomon Northrop, and O. Equiano.
Thank you!
Sincerely, Grateful Middle School Teacher
I don't work with them in my own research, but the LOC has a good page on the collection, including teaching guides.
One of the best books I've read that uses WPA (FWP) narratives is Mia Bay's The White Image in the Black Mind, which explores the ways slaves thought about white people (which is very tricky to do). I think she only has one chapter on it, but it might be worth checking out to give you some ideas (if I remember correctly, she shows how slaves evaluated whites not according to race but rather temperament and personality, and how slaves often understood that whites viewed blacks as animals, which undermines the notion of slavery as a "paternalistic" institution a la Genovese).
Anyway sorry I can't be more help!