"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 6 & 7 of the Arkansas Slave Narratives (and their city or county, if known) were:
Doc Quinn (Texarkana), Henrietta Ralls (Pine Bluff), Diana Rankins (Brinkley), Senia Rassberry (Pine Bluff), Clay Reaves (Palestine), Jane Reece (Pine Bluff), Frank Reed (Pine Bluff), James Reeves (Little Rock), Shepherd Rhone (Pine Bluff), Dora Richard (Pine Bluff), Jim Ricks (Pine Bluff), Charlie Rigger (Palestine), Ida Rigley (Forrest City), Milton Ritchie (Brinkley), Alice Rivers (Pine Bluff), Rev. J. Roberts (Brinkley), George Robertson (Robinson?) (Brinkley), Augustus Robinson (Little Rock), Malindy Robinson (West Memphis), Tom Robinson (Hot Springs, Isom Rogers (Edmondson), Oscar James Rogers (Wheatley), Will Ann Rogers (Brinkley), William Henry Rooks (Brinkley), Amanda Ross (Little Rock), Cat Ross (Brassfield), Mattie Ross, Laura Rowland (Brinkley), Landy Rucker (Pine Bluff), Martha Ruffin (Little Rock), Thomas Ruffin (Little Rock), Casper Rumple (De Valls Bluff), Henry Russell (Russellville), Katie Rye (Clarksville)
Bob Samuels (Washington), Emma Sanderson (Hot Springs), Mary Scott (De Valls Bluff/Biscoe), Mollie Hardy Scott (De Valls Bluff), Sam Scott (Russellville), Cora Scroggins (Clarendon), Sarah Sexton (Pine Bluff), Roberta Shaver (West Memphis), Mary Shaw (Pie Bluff), Violet Shaw (West Memphis), Frederick Shelton (Texarkana), Laura Shelton (Little Rock), Mahalia Shores (Marianna), Rosa Simmons (Pine Bluff), Fannie Sims, Jerry Sims (Brinkley), Victoria Sims (Helena), Virginia Sims (Pine Bluff), Senya Singfield (Pine Bluff), Peggy Sloan (Little Rock), Arzella Smallwood (Hazen), Sarah Smiley (Humphrey), Andrew Smith (Forrest City), Caroline Smith (El Dorado), Caroline Smith (Russellville), Edmond Smith (El Dorado), Emma Hulett Smith (Hazen), Ervin E. Smith (Little Rock), Frances Smith (Pine Bluff), Henrietta Evelina Smith (Little Rock), Henry Smith (Pine Bluff), J.L. Smith (Little Rock), John H. Smith (Pine Bluff), Charlie and Maggie Snow (Brinkley), Robert Solomon (Des Arc), James Spikes (Pine Bluff), Kittie Stanford (Pine Bluff), Tom Stanhouse (Brinkley), Isom Starnes (Marianna), Hezekiah (Ky) Steel (Pine Bluff), Maggie Stenhouse (Brinkley), Charlotte E. Stephens (Little Rock), William J. Stevens (Brinkley), Minnie Johnson Stewart (Little Rock), Liza Stiggers (Forrest City), James Henry Stith (Little Rock), Caroline Stout (Union County), Felix Street (Little Rock)
Mary Tabon (Forrest City), Liza Moore Tanner (Helena), Fannie Tatum (Junction City), Anthony Taylor (Little Rock), Lula Taylor (Brinkley), Millie Taylor (Pine Bluff), Sarah Taylor (Madison), Warren Taylor (Little Rock), Sneed Teague (Brinkley), Mary Teel (Holly Grove), Wade Thermon (Des Arc), Dicey Thomas (Little Rock), Mandy Thomas (Pine Bluff), Omelia Thomas (Little Rock), Tanner Thomas (Pine Bluff), Wester Thomas (Marianna), Annie Thompson (Biscoe), Ellen Briggs Thompson (Little Rock), Hattie Thompson (Widener), Mamie Thompson (Brinkley), Mike Thompson (Widener), Laura Thornton (Little Rock), Emma (Bama?) Tidwell ((Curtis), Joe Tillman (Pine Bluff), J.T. Tims (Little Rock), Hannah Travis (Little Rock), Mark C. Trotter (Edmondson), James Tubbs, Mandy Tucker (Pine Bluff), Emma Turner (Pine Bluff), Henry Turner (Phillips County), Seabe Tuttle (Washington County),
Charlie Vaden (Hazen), Ellen Vaden (De Valls Bluff), Nettie Van Buren (Clarendon), Adelaide J. Vaughn (Little Rock),
Emmeline Wadille (Lonoke) Henry Waldon (North Little Rock), Clara Walker (Garland County), Henry Walker (Hazen), Jake Walker (Pine Bluff), Jake Walker (Wheatley), Willie Wallace (Pine Bluff), Evans Warrior (Pine Bluff), Anna Washington (Clarendon), Eliza Washington (Little Rock), Jennie Washington (De Valls Bluff), Parrish Washington (Pine Bluff), Caroline Watson (Pine Bluff), Mary Watson (Little Rock), Bart Wayne (Helena), Annie Mae Weathers (El Dorado), Cora Weathers (Little Rock), Ishe Webb (Little Rock), Alfred Wells, Douglas Wells (Pine Bluff), John Wells (Edmondson), Sarah Wells (Little Rock), Sarah Williams Wells (Biscoe), John Wesley (Helena), Robert Wesley (Holly Grove), Maggie Wesmoland (Brinkley), Calvin West (Widener), Mary Mays West (Widener), Sylvester Wethington (Holly Grove), Joe Whitaker (Madison), Julia A. White (Little Rock), Lucy White (Marianna), David Whiteman (Pine Bluff), Dolly Whiteside (Pine Bluff), J.W. Whitfield (Little Rock), Sarah Whitmore (Clarendon), Dock Wilborn (Marvell), Bell Wilks (Holly Grove), Bell Williams (Forrest City), Charley Williams, Charlie Williams (Brassfield), Columbus Williams (Stevens), Frank Williams (Little Rock), Gus Williams (Russellville), Henrietta Williams (El Dorado), Henry Andrew (Tip) Williams (Biscoe), James Williams (Brinkley), John Williams (Little Rock), Lillie Williams (Madison), Mary Williams (Clarendon), Mary Williams (Hazen), Mary Williams (Pine Bluff), Rosena Hunt Williams (Brinkley), William Ball (Soldier) Williams, III (Forrest City), Anna Williamson (Holly Grove), Callie Halsey Williamson (Biscoe), Charlotte Willis (Madison), Ella Wilson (Little Rock), Robert Wilson (Pine Bluff), Tom Windham (Pine Bluff), Alice Wise (Pine Bluff), Frank Wise (Little Rock), Lucy Withers (Brinkley), Anna Woods (Hot Springs), Cal Woods (Biscoe), Maggie Woods (Brassfield), Sam Word (Pine Bluff), Ike Worthy (Pine Bluff), Alice Wright (Little Rock), Hannah Brooks Wright (Pine Bluff),
Tom Yates (Marianna), Annie Young (Pine Bluff), John Young (Pine Bluff)