06/19/2025
For : On June 19, 1865, two months after the Confederacy surrendered, Union troops finally arrived in Texas, the westernmost Confederate state, and spread the word there that freedom was the law of the land.
About 70 years later, workers from the Federal Writers' Project arm of the Works Progress Administration started traveling around the U.S. collecting the stories of elderly Americans who still had firsthand accounts of being enslaved. Many of the people who were interviewed were also photographed. The Library has preserved these stories and images.
This photograph is of Sarah Gudger, who said she was 121 years old when she was interviewed in 1937. During her interview, she recalled the backbreaking labor she endured, enslaved families being torn apart and the sights and sounds of the war, but she also spoke of a few nice memories, of sneaking out during the night to visit her aunt and eat cornbread, the famed Leonid meteor storm of November 1833, and being told of her freedom.
Read Sarah's story and others: https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/?loclr=fbloc
Image: A portrait of an elderly Black woman, Sarah Gudger, who was reportedly 121 years old at the time the photo was taken to accompany the narrative she shared with the Federal Writers' Project. Her hair is short and white, her hands are in her lap with her fingers laced together and she is looking into the distance, to the left of the camera (her right). Her tattered shawl is safety-pinned together under her neck.
