On October 20th, 1937, Josephine Anderson, a formerly enslaved Floridian, was visited by a white government interviewer as part of the Federal Writers’ Project. Anderson was too young at emancipation to recall her experiences as an enslaved person, however during the narrative Anderson recalls five instances where she had witnessed ghosts. While interviewers, like Jules Frost in this instance, were ‘engaged in writing down African American ghost stories’, former slaves ‘were conjuring up tales about power and racial identities’ as a method of recalling and commenting on the injustices of white behaviour. Anderson’s narrative therefore raises a serious methodological debate concerning the deep power imbalance which often complicated the relationship between white interviewers and black interviewees.

Interviewed by Jules Frost, Anderson’s narrative predominantly focuses on a ghost story recounted early one morning before dawn, when she was walking along the railroad tracks on her daily route to work. Anderson explains how “fore I knowed it, dere was a white man walkin long side o’ me. I jes thought it were somebody, but I wadn’t sho, so I turn off at de fust street to git way from dere”. Anderson then recalls encountering the same ‘white man’ the next morning and proceeds to comment on how “my feets make a noise on de cinders tween de rails, but he doan make a mite o’ noise”. In an attempt to discover if he was a human spirit, Anderson exclaimed, “looks here, Mister, I jes an old colored woman, an I knows my place, an I wisht you wouldn’t walk wid me counta what folks might say”, and the man left as bidden. She later declared him to be a ‘hant’, (the dialectal variant of the word ‘haunt’), a common feature of black American folk tradition collected by many FWP employees, such as Frost. While this could be solely perceived as the telling of ghost story to a visiting researcher, it could also be argued that the use of a ghost story in this instance may have instead been a metaphor to exemplify a hesitance to directly comment on race relations in Jim Crow Florida. Furthermore, to avoid surfacing racial tension which was still heavily present, especially in the unwelcome presence of a white interviewer in her own home.

In the Jim Crow South, the presence of any white interviewer made informants often rightfully nervous, and records reveal that often interviewers failed to disclose the reasons for their presence, therefore leaving formerly enslaved interviewees to reach their own conclusions regarding the intentions of their visit. Often, “African American folktales that featured otherworldly characters, such as ghosts and witches, frequently served as metaphors for the dangers posed to African Americans by whites”, conveying not only ideas of racial injustice, but highlighting the social codes which were still governing the interactions between white men and black women in the Jim Crow South. Anderson for instance states, “I jes a colored woman, an I knows my place”, drawing attention to the significance of the racial hierarchy still existing in South during this period and the almost impossibility for blacks and whites to discuss the system of slavery freely.

While the gathering of oral histories through the establishment of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), created the largest collection of ex-slave narratives regarding the institution of slavery in the United States, and have also proved invaluable in documenting the experiences of the last-living generation of the formerly enslaved, the narratives themselves were often heavily manipulated to convey a certain ideal. For example, Anderson’s particular narrative was selected for use in Florida’s public school system, thus “transcribed by her white interviewer in a manner intended to be written representation of the black vernacular, following guidelines issued by federal directors of the Ex-Slave Project”. Therefore, Anderson’s slave narrative was manipulated in order to convey a certain ideal in regards to the wider representation of black identity, supporting the notion of ex-slaves as “cooperative participants in a paternalistic system”, rather than to provide an insight into the actual speech patterns of ex-slave informants. This was most likely an example of the transcribers attempting to shape and teach the black vernacular and tales “in accordance with a nostalgic ‘remembrance’ for the antebellum past of southern tradition”. This narrative fundamentally provides a representation of what the government wanted the reader to believe or understand, and therefore it is argued that the WPA interviews, one of the greatest collections of slave narratives, is ultimately tainted by the racism of its collectors.

The focus on ghosts and folk tales throughout Anderson’s narrative may have been so great due to her lack of experience and/or memory of being enslaved. Not only had more than seventy years elapsed between emancipation and the time of the interview, but most informants had experienced slavery only as children or adolescents. Anderson begins by declaring, “I kaint tell nothin bout slavery times sept what I heared folks talk about. I was too young to remember much but I recleck seein my granma milk de cows an do do washin”. Despite this, it is evident that Anderson still conveys the racial segregation through her tales as described prior, even though interviewers were unfamiliar with black American oral traditions. Furthermore, although she declares knowledge of the experiences of other enslaved people, Anderson’s narrative remains fairly positive in regard to the institution of slavery itself, as she highlights the “light work” of both her grandmother and grandfather. This seems to be a common feature of WPA slave narratives, as it is probable that the interviewer’s race affected the informant’s response, as noted earlier. As the relative absence of black interviewers introduced a source of bias, it is uncertain whether the formerly enslaved reported their experience under slavery accurately and truthfully out of concern regarding the interviewer’s true intentions. Therefore, Anderson’s account superficially supports the narrative of slavery as a paternalistic system, and this was more than likely one of the reasons it was chosen for use in public schools. Surprisingly, there is no evidence of editing or alterations of this narrative, unlike many which evidence a manipulation of the narrative. For example, in states such as Texas and Mississippi were renowned for their alterations of ex-slave interviews in terms of text and dialect. It has been revealed that “before submitting their interviews to Washington, Texas, state editors revised the majority of their collection… One editor selected the interviews to be altered, and then a small team of interviewers rewrote them.” This perfectly exemplifies the manipulation of material in the government and highlights the caution that should be taken when assessing their historical value.

While Josephine Anderson’s narrative does not solely focus on the individual experience of life in enslavement, it provides a deep insight into the state of race relations in the 1930s. Josephine Anderson found ways to satisfy white interviewer, in a manner to “provide entertainment for potential readers”, while indirectly commenting on tales about power imbalance and racial identities in the South.