"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 Part 5 of the Arkansas Slave Narratives (and their city or county, if known) were:
Charlie McClendon (Pine Bluff), Lizzie McCloud (Pine Bluff), Avalena McConico (Brinkley), Ike McCoy (Biscoe), Richard H. McDaniel (Brinkley), Waters McIntosh (Little Rock), Cresa Mack (Pine Bluff), Warren McKinney (Hazen), Victoria McMullen (Little Rock), Nannie P. Madden (West Memphis), Perry Madden (Little Rock), Lewis Mann (Pine Bluff), Angeline Martin, Josie Martin (Madison), Bess Mathis (Hazen), Caroline Matthews (Pine Bluff), Malindy Maxwell (Madison), Nellie Maxwell (Biscoe), Ann May (Clarksville), Joe Mayes (Madison), Rev. Jesse Meeks (Pine Bluff), Jeff Metcalf (Brinkley), Hardy Miller (Pine Bluff), H.K. (Henry Kirk) Miller (Little Rock), Matilda Miller (Humphrey), Nathan Miller (Madison), Sam Miller (Morrilton), W.D. Miller (West Memphis), Mose Minser (El Dorado), Gip Minton (Des Arc), A.J. Mitchell (Pine Bluff), Gracie Mitchell (Pine Bluff), Hettie Mitchell (Brinkley), Mary Mitchell (Hazen), Moses Mitchell (Pine Bluff), Ben Moon (Pine Bluff), Emma Moore (Pine Bluff), Patsy Moore (Madison), Ada Moorehead (Pine Bluff), Mary Jane (Mattie) Mooreman (Hot Springs), Evelina Morgan (Little Rock), James Morgan (Little Rock), Olivia Morgan (Hazen), Tom Morgan (Madison), Charity Morris (Camden), Emma Morris (Forrest City), Claiborne Moss (Little Rock), Frozie Moss (Brinkley), Mose Moss (Russellville), S.O. Mullins (Clarendon), Alex Murdock (Edmondson), Bessie Myers (Brassfield), Mary Myhand (Clarksville), Griffin Myrax (Pine Bluff),
Tom Wylie Neal (Hazen), Sally Nealy (Neely) (Pine Bluff), Wylie Nealy (Biscoe), Emaline Neland (Marianna), Henry Nelson (Little Rock), Iran Nelson (Pine Bluff), James Henry Nelson (Pine Bluff), John Nelson (Holly Grove), Lettie Nelson (Helena), Mattie Nelson (Pine Bluff), Dan Newborn (Pine Bluff), Sallie Newsom (Brinkley), Pete Newton (Clarksville), Charlie Norris (Pine Bluff),
Emma Oats (Holly Grove), Helen Odom (Biscoe), Jane Oliver (Pine Bluff), Ivory Osborne (Pine Bluff), Jane Osbrook (Pine Bluff)
Annie Page (Pine Bluff), Fannie Parker (Pine Bluff), J.M. Parker (Little Rock), Judy Parker (Hot Springs), R.F. Parker (Pine Bluff), Annie Parks (Little Rock), Austin Pen Parnell (Little Rock), Ben Parr (Brinkley), Frank A. Patterson (Little Rock), John Patterson (Helena), Sarah Jane Patterson (North Little Rock), Solomon P. Pattillo (Little Rock), Carry Allen Patton (Forrest City), Harriett McFarlin Payne (Dewitt), John Payne (Brinkley), Larkin Payne (Brinkley), Cella Perkins (Marvell/Palestine), Marguerite (Maggie) Perkins (Pine Bluff), Rachel Perkins (Goodwin), Dinah Perry (Pine Bluff), Alfred Peters (Pine Bluff), Mary Estes Peters (Little Rock), John Peterson (Pine Bluff), Louise Pettis (Brinkley), Henry C. Pettus (Marianna), Dolly Phillips (Clarendon), Tony Piggy (Brinkley), Ella Pittman (Pine Bluff), Sarah Pittman (Little Rock), Mary Poe (Forrest City), W.L. Pollacks (Brinkley), John (Doc) Pope (Biscoe), William Porter (Pine Bluff), Bob Potter (Russellville), Louise Prayer (Pine Bluff)