These volumes of slave narratives are the product of the Federal Writers Project sponsored by the Library of Congress and the Work Project Administration. They consist of verbatim records of personal interviews with former slaves conducted during 1936-1938 "These life histories, taken down as far as possible in the narrators' words, constitute an invaluable body of unconscious evidence or indirect source material, . . . The narratives belong to folk history—history recovered from the memories and lips of participants or eye-witnesses,” This is volume one for the state of North Carolina. (Summary by Larry Wilson)