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Category: Portraits

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Born in Slavery: Portraits and Narratives of Formerly Enslaved People

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. One way to commemorate this anniversary might be to explore the online collection Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938. More than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of formerly enslaved people are available online. These narratives were collected in …