Аннотация:Slavery throughout the world has always been severely denounced.At the end of the twentieth century this textbook concept was adjusted,the reason for it was the widespread adoption by American scientists of theformer slave’s narrative collection from the Library of Congress, compiled inthe late 1930s. At the time, 2,300 former slaves were interviewed in 17 Statesabout their lives under slavery. These interviews, later published in the public domain on the website of the Library of Congress, recreate an ambiguouspicture of the plantation daily life of African Americans. This article explainsthe historical reliability of the results of a mass survey of African Americans.Additionally, it tries to understand why eyewitnesses of the same event 70years later hold a diametrically opposite view. There are several reasons forit, among them, is the imperfection of the memory of elderly respondents,who at the time of the interview their ages ranged from 85 to 100 years old.Moreover, there are other factors such as shortcomings in the survey, errorsin the data collection, and inaccuracies in the questionnaire. In Russian historiography the analysis of the archive “Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938” has not yet been carried out,but only briefly mentioned as one of the documentary aspects of the institution of slavery. At the same time the material contained in it is important forscientific understanding of the bygone era of slavery, which in general shouldbe considered as a cultural trauma reflected in the collective memory of thelong-suffering African American sub-ethnic group.