Public domainPrimary sourceWritten from inside the tradition
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
U.S. Works Progress Administration, Federal Writers' Project · Library of Congress · 1941
Why this source matters
Over 2,300 first-person narratives, many describing dances, frolics, 'setting the floor' and the antecedents of the jook — a searchable, fully public-domain corpus of Black testimony about vernacular dance.