Voyant Tools
For this section, I used a document from the Administrative Files for the Ex-Slave Narratives. This was something I wanted to add into the exhibit because it exemplifies the necessity of being unbiassed in conducting these interviews. Interviewers should not include their own opinion, but should let the interviewee answer the question if they want to and no tweaking of their answer is allowed. In using Voyant Tools, I was surprised to see the many forms of mispelled dialect such as "wuz" and "dey." Upon further inspection of the document itself, the administrative files say to stay away from the mispellings of the word based on pronunciation and instead to write the correct spelling of the word. After reading this, I was pleased to see that the the interviewers were conducting the interviews for the facts and life stories rather than placing judgement or trying to be derogatory towards the interviewees. This reveals that during the 1930's, Americans were trying to showcase voices that have been silenced for years and it exemplifies a real cultural revolution.