Ola Mae Spinks was a retired librarian who led the team that organized the historic “Slave Narratives” in the U.S.
Library of Congress.Raised in the historic all-Black community of Vernon, Oklahoma, Spinks settled in Detroit as an adult, where she taught first grade before becoming a middle school librarian.
A few years before her 1976 retirement, she volunteered to begin organizing a collection of narratives that tell the stories of slaves in their own words.
Gathered during the Great Depression by public works employees, the narratives weren’t easily useable before Spinks and a friend began their organizational work.
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