"Set beside the work of formal historians, social scientists, and novelists, slave autobiographies, and contemporary records of abolitionists and planters, these life histories, taken down as far as possible in the narrators' words, constitute an invaluable body of unconscious evidence or indirect source material, which scholars and writers dealing with the South, especially social psychologists and cultural anthropologists, cannot afford to reckon without. For the first and the last time, a large number of surviving slaves (many of whom have since died) have been permitted to tell their own story, in their own way. In spite of obvious limitations—bias and fallibility of both informants and interviewers, the use of leading questions, unskilled techniques, and insufficient controls and checks—this saga must remain the most authentic and colorful source of our knowledge of the lives and thoughts of thousands of slaves, of their attitudes toward one another, toward their masters, mistresses, and overseers, toward poor whites, North and South, the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, religion, education, and virtually every phase of Negro life in the South.

"The narratives belong to folk history—history recovered from the memories and lips of participants or eye-witnesses, who mingle group with individual experience and both with observation, hearsay, and tradition. Whether the narrators relate what they actually saw and thought and felt, what they imagine, or what they have thought and felt about slavery since, now we know why they thought and felt as they did. To the white myth of slavery must be added the slaves' own folklore and folk-say of slavery. The patterns they reveal are folk and regional patterns—the patterns of field hand, house and body servant, and artisan; the patterns of kind and cruel master or mistress; the patterns of Southeast and Southwest, lowland and upland, tidewater and inland, smaller and larger plantations, and racial mixture (including Creole and Indian).

"The narratives belong also to folk literature. Rich not only in folk songs, folk tales, and folk speech but also in folk humor and poetry, crude or skilful in dialect, uneven in tone and treatment, they constantly reward one with earthy imagery, salty phrase, and sensitive detail. In their unconscious art, exhibited in many a fine and powerful short story, they are a contribution to the realistic writing of the Negro. Beneath all the surface contradictions and exaggerations, the fantasy and flattery, they possess an essential truth and humanity which surpasses as it supplements history and literature."

Those interviewed in Parts 3 & 4 of the Arkansas Slave Narratives (and their city or county, if known) were:
Charlie Gadson (Brinkley), Dr. D. B. Gaines (Little Rock), Mary Gaines (Brinkley), William Gant (Forrest City), Mike Genes Holly Frove), Jennie Wormly Gibson (Biscoe), James Gill (Marvell), Cora Gillam (Little Rock), J. N. Gillespie (Little Rock), Will Glass (Little Rock), Frank William Glenn (Des Arc), Ella Glespie (Brassfield), Joe Golden (Hot Springs), Jake Goodridge (Clarendon), John Goodson (Goodrum) (Des Arc), George Govan (Russellville), Julia Grace (Pine Bluff), Charles Graham (North Little Rock), James Graham (Little Rock), Marthala Grant (Pine Bluff), Wesley Graves (North Little Rock), Ambus Gray (Biscoe), Green Gray (Biscoe), Neely (Nely) Gray (Pine Bluff), Henry (Happy Day)Green (Barton), Frank Greene (Pine Bluff), George Greene (Little Rock), Andrew Gregory (Brinkley), Annie Griegg (Madison), William and Charlotte Guess (West Memphis), Lee Guidon (Clarendon),
Linley Hadley (Madison), Anna Hall (Brinkley), Ellie Hamilton (Clarendon), Josephine Hamilton (Hazen), Peter Hamilton (Pine Bluff), Lawrence Hampton (Forrest City), Hannah Hancock (Hazen), Julia E. Haney (Little Rock), Rachel Hankins (El Dorado), Mary Jane Hardridge (Pine Bluff), O. C. Hardy (El Dorado), Rosa Hardy (Biscoe), Eda Harper (Pine Bluff), Abram Harris (Marvell), Betty Harris (Brinkley), Mary Harris (Pine Bluff), Rachel Harris (Pine Bluff), Willam Harris (DeValls Bluff), William Harrison (Forrest City), Laura Hart (Pine Bluff), Hetty Haskell (Pine Bluff), Matilda Hatchett (North Little Rock), John G. Hawkens (Biscoe), Lizzie Hawkens (Biscoe), Becky Hawkins (Pine Bluff), G. W. Hawkins (Little Rock), Eliza Hays (Little Rock), Tom Haynes (Pine Bluff), Joe Haywood (Pine Bluff), Marie E. Hervey (Little Rock), Phillis Hicks (Edmondson), Will Hicks, Bert Higgins (Pine Bluff), Annie Hill (Little Rock), Clark Hill (Pine Bluff), Elmira Hill (Pine Bluff), Gillie Hill(Little Rock), Harriett Hill (Forrest City), Hattie Hill (Pine Bluff), Oliver Hill (Pine Bluff), Rebecca Brown Hill (Brinkley), Tanny Hill (Brinkley), Elizabeth Hines (Little Rock), Charles Hinton (Pine Bluff), Ben Hite (Pine Bluff), Betty Hodge (Hazen), Minnie Hollomon (Biscoe), H. B. (Dad or Pappy) Holloway (Little Rock), Pink Holly (Holly Grove), Dora Holmes (Little Rock), Elijah Henry Hopkins (Little Rock), Nettie Hopson (Helena), Molly Horn (Holly Grove), Cora L. Horton (Little Rock), Laura House (Russellville), Pinkey (Pinkie) Howard (El Dorado), Josephine Howell (Brinkley), Pauline (Pearl) Howell (Brinkley), Molly Hudgens (DeValls Bluff), Charlie Huff (Brinkley), Louvenia Huff (Brinkley), Anne Huggins (Hot Springs), Margret Hulm (Humphrey), John Hunter (Little Rock), William Hunter (Brinkley), Ida Blackshear Hutchinson (North Little Rock),
Cornelia Ishmon (Pine Bluff), Jack and Talitha Island (El Dorado), Mary Island (El Dorado), Henrietta Isom (Biscoe),
Clarice Jackson (Pine Bluff), Israel Jackson (Pine Bluff), Lula Jackson (Little Rock), Mary Jackson (Russellville), Taylor Jackson (Edmondson), Virginia Jackson (Helena), William Jackson (Pine Bluff), Lawson Jamar (Edmondson), Nellie James (Russellville), Robert James (Little Rock), Ellis Jefferson (Hazen), Moses Jeffries (Little Rock), Rev. Ellis Jefson (Hazen), Absolom Jenkins (Helena), Dora Jerman (Forrest City), Adaline Johnson (Biscoe), Alice Johnson (Little Rock), Allen Johnson (Little Rock), Annie Johnson (Little Rock), Ben Johnson (Clarendon), Betty Johnson (Little Rock), Cinda Johnson (Pine Bluff), Ella Johnson (Little Rock), Fanny Johnson (Palmetto), George Johnson (Little Rock), John Johnson (Clarendon), Letha Johnson (Pine Bluff), Lewis Johnson (Pine Bluff), Lizzie Johnson (Biscoe), Louis Johnson (Pine Bluff), Mag Johnson (Clarendon), Mandy Johnson (Pine Bluff), Marion Johnson (El Dorado), Martha Johnson (West Memphis), Millie (Old Bill) Johnson (El Dorado), Rosie Johnson (Holly Grove), Saint Johnson (Little Rock), Willie Johnson (Little Rock), Angeline Jones (Biscoe), Charlie Jones (Pine Bluff), Cynthia Jones (Pine Bluff), Edmund Jones (Pine Bluff), Eliza Jones (Pine Bluff), Evelyn Jones (Little Rock), John Jones (Brinkley), John Jones (Pine Bluff), Lidia (Lydia) Jones (Pine Bluff), Liza (Cookie) Jones (Pine Bluff), Lucy Jones (Marianna), Mary Jones (Little Rock), Mary Jones (Pine Bluff), Nannie Jones (Pine Bluff), Reuben Jones (Pine Bluff), Vergil Jones (Brinkley), Walter Jones (Brinkley), Oscar Felix Junell (Little Rock),
Sam Keaton (Brinkley), Tines Kendricks (Trenton), Frank Kennedy (Holly Grove), Adreanna W. Kerns (Little Rock), George Key (Forrest City), Lucy Key (Forrest City), Anna King (Pine Bluff), Mose King (Lexa), Susie King (Cane Hill), William Kirk (Pine Bluff), Betty Krump (Helena), Rev. Preston Kyles (Texarkana),
Susa Lagrone (Pine Bluff), Barney A. Laird (Brinkley), Arey Lamar (Pine Bluff), Solomon Lambert (Holly Grove), Frank Larkin (Pine Bluff), William Lattimore (Pine Bluff), Bessie Lawsom (Helena), Henry Lee (Palestine), Mandy Lee (Coal Hill), Mary Lee (Pine Bluff), Talitha Lewis (Pine Bluff), Abbie Lindsay (Little Rock), Rosa Lindsey (Pine Bluff), William Little (Atkins), Minerva Lofton (Russellville), Robert Lofton (Little Rock), John H. Logan (Hot Springs), Elvie Lomack (Pine Bluff), Henry Long (Hot Springs), Annie Love (Pine Bluff), Needham Love (Little Rock), Louis Lucas (Little Rock), Lizzie Luckado (Hazen), John Luckett (Pine Bluff), John Lynch (Brinkley), Josephine Scott Lynch (Brinkley)