 Poster advertising state-by-state writers projects that "describe America to Americans" | |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | July 27, 1935 |
| Dissolved | 1943 |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Agency executive | |
| Parent department | Works Progress Administration |
TheFederal Writers' Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers and to develop a history and overview of the United States, by state, cities and other jurisdictions. It was launched in 1935 during theGreat Depression. It was part of theWorks Progress Administration (WPA), aNew Deal program. It was one of a group of New Deal arts programs known collectively asFederal Project Number One or Federal One.
FWP employed thousands of people and produced hundreds of publications, including state guides, city guides, local histories, oral histories,ethnographies, and children's books. In addition to writers, the project provided jobs to unemployed librarians, clerks, researchers, editors, and historians.
Funded under theEmergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, FWP was established July 27, 1935, by PresidentFranklin Delano Roosevelt.Henry Alsberg, a lawyer, journalist, playwright, theatrical producer, and human-rights activist, directed the program from 1935 to 1939. In 1939, Alsberg was fired, federal funding was cut, and the project fell under state sponsorship led by John D. Newsom. FWP ended completely in 1943 after the US entered World War II and funds were diverted to the war effort.[1]
An estimated 10,000 people found employment in the FWP.[1] The project was intended not only to provide work relief for unemployed writers, but also to create a unique "self-portrait of America" through publication of histories and guidebooks. From 1935 to 1943, the project cost about $27,000,000 – 0.002% of all WPA appropriations.[2]
TheAmerican Guide Series, the most well-known of FWP's publications, consisted of guides to the then 48 states, theAlaska Territory,Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. The books were written and compiled by writers from individual states and territories, and edited by Alsberg and his staff in Washington, D.C. The format was generally uniform: each guide included detailed histories of the state or territory, with descriptions of every city and town, automobile travel routes, photographs, maps, and chapters on natural resources, culture, and geography. The inclusion of essays about the various cultures of people living in the states, including immigrants and African Americans, was unprecedented. City books, such asThe New York City Guide, were also published as part of the series. Some full-length books are available online at the Internet Archive.
The FWP also published another series,Life In America, and numerous individual titles. Many FWP books were bestsellers, includingNew England Hurricane: A Factual, Pictorial Record, a rapidly produced volume about the devastation wreaked by the1938 New England hurricane.[3] Others, such asCape Cod Pilot, written by authorJosef Berger using the pseudonym Jeremiah Digges, received critical acclaim.[3]
In each state, a Writers' Project non-relief staff of editors was formed, along with a much larger group of field workers drawn from local unemployment rolls. The people hired came from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from former newspaper workers towhite-collar andblue-collar workers without writing or editing experience.[citation needed]
Notable FWP projects included theSlave Narrative Collection, a set of interviews that culminated in more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.[4] Many of these narratives are available online from the above-named collection at theLibrary of Congress website. FolkloristBenjamin A. Botkin was instrumental in insuring the survival of these manuscripts. Among the many researchers and authors who have used this collection areColson Whitehead, who drew from it for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel,The Underground Railroad.
Other programs that emerged from Alsberg's desire to create an inclusive "self-portrait of America" were the Life History and Folklore projects. These consisted of first-person narratives and interviews (collected and conducted by FWP workers), which represented people of various ethnicities, regions, and occupations. According to the Library of Congress website,American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1940, the documents "chronicle vivid life stories of Americans who lived at the turn of the century and include tales of meeting Billy the Kid, surviving the1871 Chicago fire, pioneer journeys out West, grueling factory work, and the immigrant experience. Writers hired by this Depression-era work project includedRalph Ellison,Nelson Algren,May Swenson, and many others."[5]
Among several projects within these first-person narratives was the Southern Life History Project created byWilliam Couch, head of theUniversity of North Carolina Press, and Southeast Regional Director of the Federal Writers' Project.[6][7] InThese Are Our Lives, the only book published by the Southern Life History project, Couch explained that their goal was to "get life histories which are readable and faithful representations of living persons, and which taken together, will give a fair picture of the structure and working of society."[8]
The Illinois Writers' Project, was one of the few racially integrated project sites. Among its directors wasJacob Scher.[9] TheChicago project employedArna Bontemps, an established voice of theHarlem Renaissance, and helped to launch the literary careers of African-American writers such asRichard Wright,Margaret Walker,Katherine Dunham, andFrank Yerby.[10]
The Virginia Negro Studies Project employed 16 African-American writers and culminated in the publication ofThe Negro in Virginia (1940).[11] Notably, it included photographs byRobert McNeill, now remembered as a groundbreaking African-American photographer. African-American writerZora Neale Hurston was employed by the Florida Writers' Project. Years after her death, her unpublished works from this time were compiled inGo Gator and Muddy the Water: Writings by Zora Neale Hurston from the Federal Writers' Project (1999).[12]
A short-lived FWP project was calledAmerica Eats, a proposed book of the regional foodways of the United States. Writers in each state were tasked with gathering information about foods and food-related events unique to their area, and preparing essays about these.[13] The country was divided into five regions: the Northeast, the South, the Middle West, the Far West, and the Southwest. While materials, in various quantities, were gathered from all five regions, the bookAmerica Eats! was never completed and published. The United States entry into World War II in 1943 resulted in a loss of funding for the FWP and its projects. Materials from the America Eats project are held in various archives and libraries around the country, including at the Library of Congress and theMontana State University Archives and Special Collections. A large digital archive called What America Ate has been created to house the digitized remains of the project.[14]
For most of its lifetime, the FWP faced a barrage of criticism fromAmerican conservatives. WhenMassachusetts: A Guide to its Places and People, was published, it was lauded by government officials, including GovernorCharles F. Hurley. But the day after its publication, "conservatives attacked the book over its essays on the1912 Lawrence textile strike and other labor issues. Such critics were even more scathing about the coverage of theSacco and Vanzetti affair."[1] Scholars[who?] called the questionable passages fair accounts; the controversy helped increase book sales.[citation needed]
The most poisonous attacks against the FWP came from theHouse Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and its chair, CongressmanMartin Dies Jr. of Texas.[15] Alsberg andHallie Flanagan, his counterpart at theFederal Theatre Project, faced tremendous scrutiny from the committee. The Dies HUAC committee, like the McCarthy committee of the 1950s, "used inquisitorial scare tactics, innuendo, and unsupported accusations." Alsberg, Flanagan, and others who were accused of supporting the communist agenda could not "examine evidence against them, could not produce their own witnesses, could not cross-examine accusers."[1] Accusations that communist activities were carried out openly, and that Soviets funded labor unions, which took control of the arts' projects, were found to be false.[citation needed] AuthorRichard Wright, a future Guggenheim scholar, was often under attack, with his writings pronounced as "vile".[1] Among the many charges leveled by HUAC against the FWP and its workers, was thatRichard Wright was not born in the United States. (He was born in Mississippi.) Alsberg wrote a long court brief and provided supporting documents to refute each charge.
First LadyEleanor Roosevelt supported the FWP, as did such mainstream publishing companies such asViking Press,Random House, andAlfred A. Knopf, each of which published some of the books.[citation needed]
By 1939, HUAC's tactics seemed to work, and the newly elected Congress cut the WPA budget while increasing HUAC's funding. In January 1939, 6,000 people were laid off from Federal One. By July 1939, Congress voted to eliminate the Theatre Project, which had been criticized for communist influence. Federal sponsorship for the Federal Writers' Project ended in 1939. The program was permitted to continue under state sponsorship, with some federal employees, until 1943. In the last months of the FWP's operation, Henry Alsberg was fired.[citation needed]
He continued to work past his firing date in order to meet contractual arrangements with the publishers of three upcomingAmerican Guide books. By the time of his departure in 1939, the FWP had published 321 works; hundreds more remained in various stages of publication. Some were published in the years leading up to 1943 under the renamed Writers' Program. Others were never completed. Over the lifetime of the FWP and the Writers' Program, 10,000 people were estimated to be employed.[16]
In the 1937 musicalThe Cradle Will Rock, funded by the Federal Theater Project, composerMarc Blitzstein incorporated some of opponents' efforts to prevent this production.
In September 2009 a documentary about FWP,Soul of a People: Writing America's Story, premiered on theSmithsonian Channel . It was funded by theNational Endowment for the Humanities.The film includes interviews with American authorsStuds Terkel andStetson Kennedy, and American historianDouglas Brinkley. A companion book was published byWiley & Sons asSoul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America.
The Slave Narrative Collection was featured in theHBO documentary,Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives. The film includes actorsAngela Bassett andSamuel L. Jackson performing dramatic readings of selected transcripts.
The 1999 filmCradle Will Rock, byTim Robbins, while depicting the events of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), dramatizes the attacks against Federal One by HUAC. Its efforts resulted in closing both the FTP and the FWP.
In the wake of the 2020COVID-19 pandemic and consequent global economic disruption, several writers and politicians called for a new U.S. Federal Writers' Project.[17][18] In May 2021, on the anniversary of the original project, CongressmanTed Lieu and CongresswomanTeresa Leger Fernandez introduced legislation to create a new FWP, to be administered by theDepartment of Labor, that would hire unemployed and underemployed writers.[19] Supporters of the legislation included writersJames Fallows, Ruth Dickey, andJonathan Lethem.[20]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)EISBN 978-0252094958
