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The People's Recorder

05 Deep in Turpentine

Season 1, Ep. 5

Episode Summary:


While working on the WPA Florida guidebook, the Federal Writers’ Project team – including Zora Neale Hurston and Stetson Kennedy – documented a wide range of life from prison camps to soup kitchens to hair salons, in recordings that reveal a living culture and enduring traditions.  


Hurston and Kennedy traveled the state, recording people’s stories and songs. That included a visit to a remote turpentine work site where they encountered a forced labor camp and the brutal conditions in a form of slavery that continued well into the 20th century. 


Project interviewers in Florida also searched for survivors of pre-Civil War slavery and gathered hundreds of interviews. Nationally, thousands of “ex-slave interviews” are treasures for understanding that lived experience. But the Project’s written interviews should be read with caution. Historians remind us that those manuscripts are complicated and often reinforced racial bias and stereotypes.  Historian Tameka Hobbs helps put this work in context and brings it alive.


Speakers:


Peggy Bulger, folklorist

Maryemma Graham, literary historian

Tameka Hobbs, historian

Stetson Kennedy, author and Project alum

James McBride, novelist

Ernest Toole, folk musician

Flo Turcotte, historian


Links and Resources:


"Turpentine Camp, Cross City" typescript essay by Zora Neale Hurston


"Viola Muse Digital Edition" Digital Archive of Muse's Writers' Project work


Zora Neale Hurston Collection at the University of Florida


Library of Congress webcast: 75th Anniversary of "These Are Our Lives" a collection of Writers' Project life histories


Drop on Down in Florida


Ernest Toole Spotify Artist Page


Further Reading:


WPA Guide to Florida

Go Gator and Muddy the Water by Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Pamela Bordelon

Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston

To Walk About in Freedom, by Carole Emberton

These Are Our Lives, life histories from the Federal Writers’ Project

Conchtown USA: Bahamian Fisherfolk in Riviera Beach, Florida, by Charles C. Foster


Credits:


Host: Chris Haley

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor and James Mirabello

Writer: David A. Taylor

Editor: Ethan Oser

Story Editor: Michael May

Additional Voices: Jared Buggage


Featuring music and archival material from: 


Joseph Vitarelli

Bradford Ellis

Pond5

Library of Congress


For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder


Produced with support from:


National Endowment for the Humanities

Florida Humanities

Stetson Kennedy Foundation

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