Scope and Contents

ALS's which trace the emigration of a small group of related families from Ralls County, Missouri to California. The bulk of the letters are from Robert C. Briggs and John M. Kelley to John C. Briggs of Missouri. The letters give an overview of life, economics, and politics in California previous to, during, and following the Civil War years giving insights into family progress, squabbles, and the unhappiness of their Negro slaves in California.

Scope and Contents

Photocopies of microfilmed copies of typewritten interviews. These items are interviews with former slaves living in Ohio in 1937. Some of them tell about their experiences with the Ku-Klux Klan.

Scope and Contents Over 375 slave narratives printed from microfilm. These interviews of former slaves and children of former slaves took place between 1936 and 1938. A typescript of Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. Narratives cover slavery in Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. Accounts describe treatment of slaves: whipping, auctioning and slaves being forced by masters to...

Scope and Contents

Handwritten letter in which the Vick family of Southhampton County, Virginia emancipated and set free Rose and Simon, two black slaves.