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90 Kansas History Documenting Struggle and Resilience: the Federal Writers’ Project Records for Kansas

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90 Kansas History Documenting Struggle and Resilience: the Federal Writers’ Project Records for Kansas President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered his support for the Federal Writers’ Project American Guide Series on this poster celebrating American Guide week, November 10 –16, 1941. The individual state guides were meant, as he noted, to “illustrate our national way of life, yet at the same time portray variants in local patterns of living and regional development.” Poster courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 35 (Summer 2012): 90–115 90 Kansas History Documenting Struggle and Resilience: The Federal Writers’ Project Records for Kansas by Lorraine Madway he essays that form the core of the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project are a powerful demonstration of why records matter. They are a storehouse of ordinary people’s responses to the Great Depression of the 1930s, a compilation of firsthand interpretations of American history that documents what people valued about their past and their present. Never before had the federal government funded a public history project through which states could record their contributions to the story of America and the people and places within it. The project’s ultimate Tpurpose, beyond providing employment, was to fuse the many voices compiled in research essays produced by the project’s writers into state and local guidebooks written in the voice of a single unidentified narrator. Thus, going back to the records to hear the stories of the original contributors takes us back to the beginning threads of the conversation, adding depth to our readings of the final published summaries that came out of the project. Both the conception and the implementation of the Federal Writers’ Project elicited strong support and ultimately stronger opposition. When some of the state guides later documented the more shameful aspects of the nation’s past and present, like the treatment of former slaves and racial segregation, the harshest critics, notably those involved in the 1938 congressional investigation headed by Representative Martin Dies, came to see the project as publicly funded subversion. More moderate critics of the project objected to spending public money on something as intangible and materially unproductive as research and guidebooks on state and local history and customs, scenic wonders, and agricultural and industrial achievements. Supporters of the project worked hard to make a case for it and, although they had high hopes for its success, only the fervently committed anticipated that the project would create the most enduring cultural legacy of the New Deal. Lorraine Madway is curator of special collections and university archivist at the Wichita State University Libraries, Wichita, Kansas. In addition to Kansas history, her research interests include early modern British history and Jewish history. Her recent publications include “Rites of Deliverance and Disenchantment: The Marriage Celebrations for Charles II and Catherine of Braganza, 1661–62,” Seventeenth Century 27 (Spring 2012); and “Gibraltar,” in the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World (Brill, 2010). The author wishes to thank Kathy Downes, senior associate dean at the Wichita State University Libraries, who patiently and perceptively critiqued several previous drafts of this article. The Federal Writers’ Project Records for Kansas 91 xamining the hundreds of interviews and back- from 1935 to 1942 and contains entries on 52 of the state’s ground essays created for the Federal Writers’ 105 counties, form the basis for much of the Kansas state Project by Kansas writers is an essential yet guide in the American Guide Series, originally published neglected starting point in determining how in September 1939 as Kansas: A Guide to the Sunflower State.3 ordinary citizens in the Sunflower State understood the To accommodate space limitations and satisfy the ed- Epurpose of this bold cultural experiment. The impetus itorial policies of the national office, which had to approve to search the documentary record is especially overdue the final copy, the state guides distilled many thousands for Kansas and other states that have received, at best, a of pages of essays based on research and interviews cursory glance in scholarly accounts of the project written into approximately five hundred pages. Each guide during the past four decades.1 Fortunately for students included a narrative section covering the state’s history, of Kansas history, there is a rich, yet largely overlooked geography, and culture. In addition to agriculture and source of Federal Writers’ Project records in Wichita State industry, guides addressed such topics as archaeology, University Libraries’ Special Collections and University art, conservation, education, and folklore. Each volume Archives. Although there are other collections of Federal was also to include sections on cities and towns and on Writers’ Project materials held at institutions throughout automobile tours as well as photographs, maps, and Kansas and at the Library of Congress and National drawings. The narrative section of the Kansas guide con- Archives in Washington, D.C., the records at Wichita tains only 158 pages, making it one of the shortest in State University (WSU) comprise the largest collection of the series.4 In order to achieve the goal of the project— Federal Writers’ Project research materials in the state.2 to tell America’s diverse story through the voice of one The interviews and essays by Federal Writers’ Project narrator, a goal as paradoxical as it was ambitious—the researchers that make up the collection, which spans guide’s editors attempted to capture the tone, content, and themes of the writers’ interviews and research essays and, primarily through omission, they selectively altered them. History, of course, is as much about what is left out 1. See, for example, Jerre Mangione, The Dream and the Deal: The of a narrative as it is about what is included. What do Federal Writers’ Project, 1935–1943 (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1972); the records omitted from the final product of the Federal Christine Bold, The WPA Guides: Mapping America (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999); Jerrold Hirsch, Portrait of America: A Cultural Writers’ Project reveal about people, places, and events in History of the Federal Writers’ Project (Chapel Hill: University of North Kansas? What do they conceal? And how do the essays Carolina Press, 2003); David A. Taylor, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ and interviews that resulted from the project illuminate Project Uncovers Depression America (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2009). Only Bold and Hirsch mentioned Kansas, and each did so in a cursory what mattered to ordinary Kansans who were retelling way. Bold referred to a celebratory headline from the Wichita Eagle to their state’s history and forging its future at a time of promote guidebooks (p. 17); and Hirsch noted Governor Alfred M. Landon’s disapproval of the national and state projects in his discussion political, economic, and cultural transition marked by of style formatting instructions sent from the national office to state crisis and yet filled with opportunity? officials (pp. 51, 57). 2. The online finding aid to this collection, Federal Writers’ Project Records for Kansas of the Work Projects Administration, MS 71-01, Special Collections and University Archives, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas (hereafter cited as “FWP for Kansas”), is accessible finding aid to the collection at the Library of Congress, see United States online at specialcollections.wichita.edu/collections/ms/71-01/71-1-a. Work Projects Administration Records: A Finding Aid to the Collection html. No information is available to explain why this particular collection in the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C., 2008), available online remained in Kansas instead of being sent to Washington, D.C., after at hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms009053. For the finding aid to the World War II along with other records from the state’s Federal Writers’ collection at the National Archives, see Records of the Federal Writers’ Project. Since these records focus on south central Kansas, particularly Project, in the Records of the Work Progress Administration [WPA], Sedgwick County, the University of Wichita, as Wichita State University Record Group 69.5.5, compiled by Katherine H. Davidson, Preliminary was then known, was a logical place to archive them. Several smaller Inventory of the Records of the Federal Writers’ Project, Work Projects collections of records documenting the project in Kansas also exist, Administration, 1935-44, PI 57 (National Archives, Washington, D.C., including the American Guide Research Reports, Federal Writers 1953), available online at archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/ Project, Collection 59-16-03-14, 6 boxes, State Archives Division, Kansas groups/069.html#69.5.5. Historical Society, Topeka, comprised largely of drafts of historical 3. Federal Writers’ Project of the Work Projects Administration for essays on various topics for towns and counties throughout southwest the State of Kansas, Kansas: A Guide to the Sunflower State (New York: Kansas, such as Dodge City and Scott City and Ford, Finney, Hodgeman, Viking Press, 1939); reprinted as Federal Writers’ Project of the Work Clark, and Meade counties; historic photographs of buildings and parks Projects Administration for the State of Kansas, with a new introduction in Dodge City and Larned; and reports on race relations in several of by James R. Shortridge, The WPA Guide to 1930s Kansas (Lawrence: these localities. A collection at the Salina Public Library documents University Press of Kansas, 1984). records from eighteen counties in the north central part of the state. 4. “The American Guide Series,” n.d., available online at senate. Various Kansas records from throughout the state are included in gov/reference/resources/pdf/WPAStateGuides.pdf. This publication the national collection of the Federal Writers’ Project at the Library mistakenly states that the narrative section of the Kansas guide runs to of Congress and the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
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