Chapter 7: The View from the Bottom Rail Summary and Analysis

Chapter 7 looks at the some of the challenges in examining the history of people who exist on the fringes or in the lower classes of society. For an example they turn to the Federal Writers Project of the 1930s that set out to interview former black slaves about their experiences.

By the 1930s, the number of former black slaves still living was decreasing. The writers project sent interviewers out to find living former slaves and document their recollections. Because of their position in society, slaves did not leave many written records of their own. What was written about them at the time of slavery was told from the point of view of the southern white society that had enslaved them, or the northern white society that was faced with...