Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States (often referred to as the WPA Slave Narrative Collection) was a massive compilation of slave narratives undertaken by the Federal Writers' Project of theWorks Progress Administration from 1936 to 1938. [1] It was the simultaneous effort of state-level branches of FWP in seventeen states, working largely separately from each other. [2] The collections, as works of the US federal government, are in the public domain, and excerpts from them have been published by various publishers as printed books or on the internet.