Claude W. Anderson of the Virginia Writers Project interviews Elizabeth Sparks on January 13, 1937, at Matthews Court house. A former slave, Sparks tells about beatings, slave marriages, church, and the Civil War. 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.
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