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A NATION BROKEN (WPA), which hired millions A NATIONAL PORTRAIT B.A. Botkin, director of the corruption, the New Deal’s SOUL OF A PEOPLE A decade of soaring prosperity of the unemployed to build IN TRAVEL GUIDES WPA folklore division, urged opponents complained. Congress Writing America’s Story in the 1920s left Americans roads, bridges and schools. This The main purpose of WPA work, every interviewer to focus on created a committee to unprepared for the Depression. welfare-to-work effort became a including the Federal Writers’ the interviewee’s “real feeling.” investigate Un-American Activities For three full years after the lightning rod for debate. News- Project, was disaster relief, For Botkin, the Writers’ Project in 1938, and it criticized some The Great Depression was the most 1929 Crash, companies fired an papers published cartoons but Henry Alsberg, the agency’s was a way to show “a living sections of WPA guides as serious national crisis since the Civil average of 20,000 workers every lampooning WPA workers for director, also voiced higher culture” and its meaning “in propaganda. Amid the furor and working day. Banks collapsed. “boondoggling,” wasting time goals. “These writers will get democratic society as a whole.” belt-tightening as another world War. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 In Chicago, half of the working and taxpayer money. A nation- an education in the American war approached, President spelled financial disaster for millions, age population lost their jobs, wide poll in 1939 found that one scene,” he said. “A great deal When WPA writers delved Roosevelt slashed the WPA and many lost their homes when in four Americans ranked the of real American writing comes into uncomfortable issues such budget. Nonetheless, all the WPA reverberating for years and shaking they couldn’t pay the mortgage. WPA as the worst part of FDR’s out of seeing what is really as slavery and its legacy, local state guides were completed, Americans’ view of their country as a Then-President Herbert Hoover, government, more than for any happening to the American scandals, and episodes of funded mainly by the states. like many others, insisted that other issue. Yet the same poll people.” In the WPA guides and can-do culture. Nationwide, one out recovery was “just around found that roughly the same “life-history” interviews with of four Americans had no job. Families the corner.” percentage ranked WPA relief as ordinary citizens, the WPA writers the Roosevelt administration’s assembled a portrait of America often left town without a word to Franklin D. Roosevelt became greatest accomplishment. on an unprecedented scale. avoid debt collectors. president in 1933 and quickly acknowledged that the economic A very small section of the A LEGION OF and political system was on the WPA—the Federal Writers’ BIOGRAPHERS brink of collapse. When told that Project (FWP)—hired white- The WPA state guides, history would judge him the collar workers: jobless artists, containing tour routes and greatest president if he got the writers, musicians, and actors. chapters on local history and country back on its feet and the Administrators of the FWP features, revealed the many worst if he didn’t, Roosevelt replied, sometimes used a loose cultures in America and where “If I fail, I shall be the last one.” definition of “writer” to help they intersected. Interviews applicants. For many workers, of individual Americans added A NEW DEAL documenting American life to that picture. In Seattle, for On Roosevelt’s ambitious raft of in WPA travel guides was the example, WPA writers noted new agencies, the largest was the first time they were paid to the city’s Asian communities Works Progress Administration write anything. and episodes of anti-immigrant backlash. In Chicago, they found that white musicians left to right In the 1930s Franklin D. Roosevelt often learned the jazz musical Women in front of rooming house, St. Paul, vocabulary from black Minn., 1939. Courtesy of Library of Congress created a series of make-work agencies, musicians (sometimes defying President Franklin D. Roosevelt speaks a 1920s racial ban on playing from a train, Bismarck, N.D., 1936. Courtesy including the Federal Writers’ of Library of Congress together). In Florida, Project, to get the economy moving Zora Neale Hurston led WPA Poster publicizing “American Guide Week” Nov. 10-16 [1941]. Courtesy of Library of again. The purpose was emergency aid. workers in recording local Congress versions of Spanish songs Galena, Illinois, volume of the Nobody expected that such an agency and Bahamian versions of “American Guide Series.” Courtesy of would create anything as meaningful old English folk tunes. And in Library of Congress Harlem, a young Ralph Ellison Zora Neale Hurston, Federal Writers’ as a snapshot of America at a critical marveled at the unexpected Project author, 1935. Courtesy of Library of Congress moment: a time when old ways were intersections of race and culture, and recalled later Family in front of shack home, Oklahoma City, 1939. Courtesy of Library of Congress breaking down and new American that his “appreciation of American cultural possibility New York City Guide, American Guide Series. stories were just emerging. Courtesy of Library of Congress was vastly extended.” LEGACIES ambitious work, Moses, Man ADDITIONAL Soul of a People: Writing America’s Soul of a People programs Generations of travelers have of the Mountain, soon afterward. READINGS Story is a major documentary in libraries are supported been surprised by the portraits By the 1950s, books by former television program about the by a grant from the SOUL OF of American culture in the WPA WPA writers had won a Banks, Ann. First-Person America. Federal Writers’ Project produced National Endowment for guides. Journalist Alistair Cooke string of National Book Awards, New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. by Spark Media, a Washington, the Humanities: great ideas gathered a large collection including Nelson Algren’s D.C.-based production and brought to life. of the guides and used them The Man with the Golden Arm, Bold, Christine. The WPA Guides, outreach company specializing APEOPLE to map a cross-country trip in Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Mapping America. Jackson: University in issues of social change. Any views, findings, the early 1940s. Later John Augie March, and Ralph Ellison’s Press of Mississippi, 1999. Soul of a People is being broad- conclusions, or Writing America’s Story Steinbeck used WPA guides as Invisible Man. Other prominent cast on the Smithsonian Channel recommendations he crossed the continent in writers in the WPA included Hirsch, Jerrold. Portrait of HD. Check local listings for expressed in this brochure the early 1960s, a journey he novelists Eudora Welty, John America: A Cultural History of broadcast times or visit http:// do not necessarily described in Travels with Charley. Cheever, and Jim Thompson; the Federal Writers’ Project. www.SmithsonianChannel.com. reflect those of the poets Conrad Aiken, May Chapel Hill: University of North National Endowment for Some writers from the Federal Swenson, Weldon Kees, and Carolina Press, 2006. Programs supporting the the Humanities. Writers’ Project went on to Kenneth Rexroth; and national broadcast of Soul of a make remarkable contributions nonfiction authors Loren Eiseley Mangione, Jerre. The Dream ON THE WEB People are being presented Soul of a People Documentary to American culture. Richard and Juanita Brooks. Still, the and the Deal: The Federal Writers’ in 30 libraries throughout the Producer and Director: Wright wrote Native Son, stigma of working in the Project, 1935–1943. Boston: America Eats: United States, coordinated by the Andrea Kalin, President, Spark Media, Washington, DC. a novel that marked a new era in WPA, arising from the earlier Little, Brown, 1972. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/ American Library Association social realist fiction, while he “boondoggling” innuendo and treasures/tri098.html Public Programs Office. Brochure Author was a WPA writer. Zora Neale Un-American Activities Taylor, David. Soul of a People: David Taylor, Soul of a People Hurston published her most investigation, lasted for decades. The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Images of the Great Depression: For a list of libraries presenting Documentary, Co-Producer and Co-Writer Depression America. New Jersey: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ Soul of a People programs, Wiley & Sons, 2009. fsowhome.html please visit http://www.ala.org/ Program Coordination publicprograms American Library Association Taylor, Nick. American-Made: The New Deal Network: Public Programs Office, Chicago, IL The Enduring Legacy of the http://newdeal.feri.org/ For further information, call Brochure design WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to 1-800-545-2433, ext. 5045. Silvio Design, Chicago, IL Work. New York: Bantam, 2008. Timeline of the Great Depression: http://www.pbs.org/ Weisberger, Bernard, ed. wgbh/amex/rails/timeline/ The WPA Guide to America: The Best of 1930s America as Seen by WPA Life Histories: the Federal Writers’ Project. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ New York: Pantheon, 1985. wpaintro/wpahome.html Willard, Pat. America Eats: On WPA Slave Narratives: the Road with the WPA. New York: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ Bloomsbury, 2008. snhtml/snhome.html left to right Cover (top to bottom): Nelson Algren, Federal Writers’ Project Musicians in South Side Chicago tavern, author, undated photograph. Courtesy of 1941; Farm woman near Northhampton, Library of Congress Mass., 1939; WPA poster, 1936-41; California from the American Guide Series. Unemployed man, Omaha, Nebraska, 1938. All photographs courtesy of Library Courtesy of Library of Congress of Congress Main Street, Twin Falls, Idaho, 1941. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

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