"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 1 & 2 of the South Carolina Slave Narratives (and their city or county, if known) were:
M.E. Abrams (Whitmire), Ezra Adams (Swansea), Mary Adams (Spartanburg), Victoria Adams (Columbia), Frank Adamson, Frances Andrews (Newberry), Pete Arthur (Union), Josephine Bacchus (Marion), William Ballard (Greenwood), Charley Barber (Winnsboro), Ed Barber (Winnsboro), Millie Barber, Anderson Bates (Winnsboro), Millie Bates (Union), Welcome Bees (Parkersville), Anne Bell (Winnsboro), Caroline Bevis (Union), Maggie Black (Marion), Gordon Bluford (Newberry), Samuel Boulware (Columbia), John Boyd (Union), Jane Bradley (Newberry), Andy Brice (Ridgeway), George Briggs (Union), Josephine Bristow (Marion), Anne Broome, Hagar Brown (Murrels Inlet), Henry Brown (Charleston), John C. Brown (Winnsboro), Mary Frances Brown (Charleston), Sara Brown (Marion), Margaret Bryant (Murrells Inlet), Savilla Burrell, C.B. Burton (Newberry), George Ann Butler (Garnett), Isaiah Butler (Garnett), Solbert Butler (Scotia), Granny Cain (Newberry), Laura Caldwell (Newberry), Solomon Caldwell (Newberry), Nelson Cameron (Woodward), Thomas Campbell, Sylvia Cannon (Florence), Albert Caroline (Murrells Inlet), Silvia Chisolm (Estill), Tom Chisolm (Columbia), Maria Cleland (Newberry), Peter Clifton, Henry Coleman (Carlisle), Rev. Tuff Coleman (Newberry), Louisa Collier (Marion), John Collins (Winnsboro), Bouregard Corry (Gaffney), Caleb Craig (Winnsboro), Dinah Cunningham (Ridgeway), Lucy Daniels (Luray), John N. Davenport (Newberry), Moses Davenport (Newberry), Charlie Davis (Marion), Charlie Davis (Columbia), Heddie Davis (Marion), Henry Davis (Winnsboro), Jesse Davis, Lizzie Davis (Marion), Louisa Davis, Wallace Davis (Newberry), William Henry Davis (Marion County), Elias Dawkins (Gaffney), Will Dill (Spartanburg), Thomas Dixon (Winnsboro), Isabella Dorroh (Newberry), Laurence Downing (Newberry), Washington Dozier (Pee Dee), Alice Duke (Gaffney), Silva Durant (Marion), Harriet Eddington (Newberry), Mary Edwards (Greenwood), Rev. John B. Elliott (Columbia), Emanuel Elmore (Gaffney), Ryer Emmanuel (Claussens), Pen Eubanks (Union), Lewis Evans (Winnsboro), Phillip Evans, Eugenia Fair (Greenwood), Caroline Farrow (Newberry), Gus Feaster (Union), Ann Ferguson (Estill), Aaron Ford, Charlotte Foster (Spartanburg), John Franklin (Columbia), Emma Fraser (Charleston), Adele Frost, Amos Gadsden (Charleston), Janie Gallman (Spartanburg), Lucy Gallman (Newberry), Simon Gallman (Newberry), Laurence Gary (Newberry), Louisa Gause (Brittons Neck), Gracie Gibson, Charlie Giles (Union), Willis Gillison (Luray), Brawley Gilmore (Union), Pick Gladdeny (Pomaria), Henry Gladney (White Oak), Emoline Glasgow (Newberry), Silas Glenn (Newberry), John Glover (Timmonsville), Hector Godbold (Pee Dee), Daniel Goddard (Columbia), Ellen Godfrey (Conway), Thomas Goodwater (Charleston), Charlie Grant (Florence), Rebecca Jane Grant (Lena), John (Uncle Brack) Graves (Union), Sim Greely (Spartanburg), Elijah Green (Charleston), W. M. Green (Gaffney), Adeline Grey (Luray), Fannie Griffin (Columbia), Madison Griffin (Whitmire), Peggy Grigsby (Newberry), Violet Guntharpe, John Hamilton (Charleston), Susan Hamlin (Hamilton) (Charleston), Anson Harp (Columbia), Thomas Harper (Newberry), Abe Harris (Winnsboro), Eli Harrison (Winnsboro), Charlie Jeff Harvey (Union), Eliza Hasty (Blackstock), Dolly Haynes (Arthurtown), Liney Henderson (Marion), Jim Henry (Winnsboro), Zack Herndon (Gaffney), Lavinia Heyward (Columbia), Lucretia Heyward, Mariah Heywood (Murrells Inlet), Jerry Hill (Spartanburg), Jane Hollins (Charleston), Cornelius Holmes (Winnsboro), Ben Horry (Murrells Inlet), Margaret Hughes (Columbia), Hester Hunter (Marion)