Bias

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who were still living. Even these interviews could not be viewed
as 100% accurate. One example, is a geographic bias. The people that were
interviewed were only a very small portion of the millions of freed slaves.
Counting the number of slaves interviewed from each state, it was discovered
that there were only 155 interviews from black people living in Virginia,
Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky, which is about 6% of the total
number of published interviews. Twenty-three percent of the southern slave
population lived in those states. In these statistics, the upper-south was
unrepresented.

Another example would be the ages of the ex-slaves interviewed.
Two-thirds of them were over 80 years of age, leaving the question of how
accurate were their memories. Also, most of the interviewees were under the age
of 20 when they were slaves. Since the conditions for children were not as
harsh compared to adults, they might have an optimistic view of slavery.

Finally, the ...

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