More than 2000 interviews are conducted in 17 states. The interviewers, including author Zora Neale Hurston, listen and gather information on care and survival strategies, as well as other elements of everyday life.

Over the years, multiple critiques of these interviews will illuminate the racial and class dynamics that are sometimes evident between interviewer and interviewee. At the same time, the breadth of medical and cultural knowledge held in the interviews is often the only remaining evidence of these experiences. One tradition uplifted in these interviews is that of "fireside training," which is how enslaved elders taught younger people their medical and cultural practices.