Between the 20′s and 30′s, when the interest for novels that described the dramas U.S. slaves went through increased, more than 2000 testimonies and 500 photos were collected, materials that gave us a glance into this world.

All this investigation work was reunited in Federal Writers’ Project of Work Progress Administration of the United States of America.

The collection contains testimonies from 17 U.S. states, collected between 1936 and 1938. Most of the people who testified were between 80 and 90 years old, some older than 100.

One of the former slaves, Sarah Gudgerm, said that she was more than 121 years old.

These photos allows us to see how the United States of America was back then, when slavery was legal.

“We were not allowed to go into the city, and they used to sell slaves, tobacco and whiskey. Ignorance was out main weakness. We knew that we could run, but what next ?” John W. Fields, 89 years old said.

Many of these testimonies are shocking, and they are a painful reminder about the shameful history of the United States of America.

Let’s remember this period by watching the photos below, courtesy of the United States Congress Library.