Archie Booker, a man born into slavery, tells an interviewer from the Virginia Writers Project about his life. Some of his major memories include witnessing the Battle of Yorktown (1862) and the community of free Black people who lived near the plantation where he was enslaved. This interview, along with other Virginia Writers Project interviews, offer a composite portrait of interviewees’ self-styled personal stories. Interviewers’ interests, lived experiences, and editing choices, as well as their social relations and expectations shaped their relationship and conversation with the interviewees. Although the interviews aren’t unmediated autobiographies, they are no less authentic and are just as fruitful a source for reconstructing historical experience.
