# Folklore's Champion: Ben Botkin

Among Benjamin Botkin's accomplishments, the gathering of slave narratives has received the greatest amount of attention, though not always with his name attached. As folklore editor of the Federal Writers Project, and later head of the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress, Botkin guided the fieldworkers who collected the narratives, amassed and edited the raw materials, and produced 17 bound volumes titled "Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves" (Washington, D.C., 1941). In this lecture, Roger Abrahams discussed this project, Botkin's place in it, its impacton subsequent scholarship, and how one can take these studies further to understand more fully the ways in which the slaves achieved liberation themselves, before and after Emancipation.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2007
- By: American Folklife Center
- Genres: Education, History
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021687978/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021687978?play=1)