viii
of plagiarism; and the supplementary material gathered in connec— tion with the narratives. In the course of the preparation of these volumes, the Writers! Unit compiled data for an essay on the narratives and partially completed an index and a glossary. Enough additional material is being xeceived from the state ~irit~ ers‘ Projects, as part of their surplus, to make a supplement, which, it is hoped, will contain several states not here repre— sented, such as Louisiana.

	All editing had previously been done in the states or the lashington office. Some of the pencilled comnents have been identified as those of lohn A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, who also i‘ead the manuscripts. In a few cases, two drafts or versions of the saine interview bave been. included for comparison of inter— esting variations or alterations.


II

	Set beside the work of foi~nal historians, social scientists, and novelists, slave autobiographies, and contemporary records of abolitionists and planters, these life histories, taken down as far as possible in the narrators‘ words, constitute an in— valuable body of unconscious evidence or indirect source ma— terial, which scholars and writers dealing with the South, es— pecially. social psychologists and cultural anthropologists, can— not afford to reckon without. For the first and the last time, a large number of surviving slaves (many of whom have since died) have been permitted to tell their own story, in their own