06/20/2026
For : On June 19, 1865, two months after the Confederacy surrendered and more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Union troops finally arrived in Texas, the westernmost Confederate state, and spread the word there that freedom was the law of the land.
About 70 years later, workers from the Federal Writers' Project arm of the Works Progress Administration started traveling around the U.S. collecting the stories of elderly Americans who still had firsthand accounts of being enslaved. Many of the people who were interviewed were also photographed. The Library has preserved these stories and images.
This photo is of Betty Simmons, who said she was more than 100 years old when she was interviewed in 1937 in Beaumont, Texas. She said she was married during slave times, and widowed, but was very happy that freedom came when it did because her enslavers were preparing to put her 3-year-old child to work in the fields.
Explore the narratives: https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/?loclr=fbloc
Image: Betty Simmons, Age about 100. Taken between 1936 and 1938. WPA Slave Narrative Project: Container, A932, vol. 16, part 4. Federal Writer's Project, United States Work Projects Administration (USWPA). Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
An old African American woman in a button down dress stands in front of a chair with her hands clasped, looking at the camera. The chair is outside, positioned in front of a house. A younger woman stands on the porch behind her.
