The Federal 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 the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

. It was part of the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

(WPA), a

New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...

program. It was one of a group of New Deal arts programs known collectively as

Federal Project Number One Federal Project Number One, also referred to as Federal One (Fed One), is the collective name for a group of projects under the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program in the United States. Of the United States Dollar, $4.88 billion all ...

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.

History

Funded under the

Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 The Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 was passed on April 8, 1935, as a part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. It was a large public works program that included the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the National Youth Administration, ...

, FWP was established July 27, 1935, by President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

. 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. An estimated 10,000 people found employment in the FWP. 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.

American Guide Series and other publications

The ''American Guide'' Series, the most well-known of FWP's publications, consisted of guides to the then 48 states, the

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

Territory,

Puerto Rico ; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...

, and

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

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 as ''The 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, including ''New England Hurricane: A Factual, Pictorial Record'', a rapidly produced volume about the devastation wreaked by the

1938 New England hurricane The 1938 New England Hurricane (also referred to as the Great Long Island - New England Hurricane and the Long Island Express) was one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to strike the United States. The storm formed near th ...

. Others, such as ''Cape Cod Pilot'', written by author Josef Berger using the pseudonym Jeremiah Digges, received critical acclaim. 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 to white-collar and blue-collar workers without writing or editing experience.

Ancillary projects

Notable FWP projects included the Slave 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. Many of these narratives are available online from the above-named collection at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

website. Folklorist Benjamin A. Botkin was instrumental in insuring the survival of these manuscripts. Among the many researchers and authors who have used this collection are

Colson Whitehead Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, including his 1999 in literature, 1999 debut ''The Intuitionist''; ''The Underground Railroad (novel), The Underground Railroad'' (2016) ...

, 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 the 1871 Chicago fire, pioneer journeys out West, grueling factory work, and the immigrant experience. Writers hired by this Depression-era work project included

Ralph Ellison Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel '' Invisible Man'', which won the National Book Award in 1953. Ellison wrote '' Shadow and Act'' (1964), a co ...

, Nelson Algren,

May Swenson Anna Thilda May "May" Swenson (May 28, 1913 – December 4, 1989) was an American poet and playwright. Harold Bloom considered her one of the most important and original poets of the 20th century. Born to Margaret and Dan Arthur Swenson, she ...

, and many others." Among several projects within these first-person narratives was the Southern Life History Project created by William Couch, head of the

University of North Carolina Press The University of North Carolina Press (or UNC Press), founded in 1922, is a not-for-profit university press associated with the University of North Carolina. It was the first university press founded in the southern United States. It is a mem ...

, and Southeast Regional Director of the Federal Writers' Project. In ''These 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." The Illinois Writers' Project, was one of the few racially integrated project sites. Among its directors was Jacob Scher. The

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

project employed

Arna Bontemps Arna Wendell Bontemps ( ) (October 13, 1902 – June 4, 1973) was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance. Early life Bontemps was born in 1902 in Alexandria, Louisiana, into a Louisiana Creole peopl ...

, an established voice of the

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African-American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics, and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the ti ...

, and helped to launch the literary careers of African-American writers such as Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Katherine Dunham, and Frank Yerby. The Virginia Negro Studies Project employed 16 African-American writers and culminated in the publication of ''The Negro in Virginia'' (1940). Notably, it included photographs by Robert McNeill, now remembered as a groundbreaking African-American photographer. African-American writer

Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo ...

was employed by the Florida Writers' Project. Years after her death, her unpublished works from this time were compiled in ''Go Gator and Muddy the Water: Writings by Zora Neale Hurston from the Federal Writers' Project'' (1999). A short-lived FWP project was called America 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. 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 book ''America 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 the Montana 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.

Controversies

For most of its lifetime, the FWP faced a barrage of criticism from American conservatives. When ''Massachusetts: A Guide to its Places and People'', was published, it was lauded by government officials, including Governor Charles F. Hurley. But the day after its publication, "conservatives attacked the book over its essays on the 1912 Lawrence textile strike and other labor issues. Such critics were even more scathing about the coverage of the

Sacco and Vanzetti Nicola Sacco (; April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (; June 11, 1888 – August 23, 1927) were Italian immigrants and anarchists who were controversially convicted of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parm ...

affair." Scholars called the questionable passages fair accounts; the controversy helped increase book sales. The most poisonous attacks against the FWP came from the

House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative United States Congressional committee, committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 19 ...

(HUAC) and its chair, Congressman Martin Dies Jr. of Texas. Alsberg and

Hallie Flanagan Hallie Flanagan Davis (August 27, 1889 – June 23, 1969) was an American theatrical producer and director, playwright, and author, best known as director of the Federal Theatre Project, a part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). B ...

, his counterpart at the

Federal Theatre Project The Federal Theatre Project (FTP; 1935–1939) was a theatre program established during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal to fund live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States. It was one of five Federal ...

, 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." 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. Author Richard Wright, a future Guggenheim scholar, was often under attack, with his writings pronounced as "vile". Among the many charges leveled by HUAC against the FWP and its workers, was that Richard 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 Lady

Eleanor Roosevelt Anna Eleanor Roosevelt ( ; October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, first lady of the United States, during her husband Franklin D ...

supported the FWP, as did such mainstream publishing companies such as

Viking Press Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheimer and then acqu ...

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

, and Alfred A. Knopf, each of which published some of the books. 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. He continued to work past his firing date in order to meet contractual arrangements with the publishers of three upcoming ''American 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. In the 1937 musical ''

The Cradle Will Rock ''The Cradle Will Rock'' is a 1937 Musical theater, play in music by Marc Blitzstein. Originally a part of the Federal Theatre Project, it was directed by Orson Welles and produced by John Houseman. Set in Steeltown, U.S.A., the Bertold Brecht, ...

'', funded by the Federal Theater Project, composer

Marc Blitzstein Marcus Samuel Blitzstein (March 2, 1905January 22, 1964), was an American composer, lyricist, and Libretto, librettist. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-Trade union, union musical ''The Cradle Will Rock'', directed by Orson Welles, ...

incorporated some of opponents' efforts to prevent this production.

Film

In September 2009 a documentary about FWP, ''Soul of a People: Writing America's Story'', premiered on the

Smithsonian Channel The Smithsonian Channel is an American pay television channel owned by Paramount Global through its media networks division under MTV Entertainment Group. It offers video content inspired by the Smithsonian Institution's museums, research facil ...

. It was funded by the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

.The film includes interviews with American authors

Studs Terkel Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1985 for ''The Good War'' and is best remembered for his oral histor ...

and Stetson Kennedy, and American historian

Douglas Brinkley Douglas Brinkley (born December 14, 1960) is an American author, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities, and professor of history at Rice University. Brinkley is a history commentator for CNN, Presidential Historian for the New York Historica ...

. A companion book was published by Wiley & Sons as ''Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America''. The Slave Narrative Collection was featured in the

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

documentary, '' Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives''. The film includes actors Angela Bassett and Samuel L. Jackson performing dramatic readings of selected transcripts. The 1999 film '' Cradle Will Rock'', by

Tim Robbins Timothy Francis Robbins (born October 16, 1958) is an American actor. He is best known for portraying Andy Dufresne in the film '' The Shawshank Redemption ''(1994), and Jacob Singer in '' Jacob's Ladder'' (1990), as well as winning an Academy ...

, 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.

Proposal for a new Federal Writers' Project

In the wake of the 2020

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

and consequent global economic disruption, several writers and politicians called for a new U.S. Federal Writers' Project. In May 2021, on the anniversary of the original project, Congressman Ted Lieu and Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez introduced legislation to create a new FWP, to be administered by the

Department of Labor A ministry of labour (''British English, UK''), or labor (''American English, US''), also known as a department of labour, or labor, is a government department responsible for setting labour standards, labour dispute mechanisms, employment, workfor ...

, that would hire unemployed and underemployed writers. Supporters of the legislation included writers James Fallows, Ruth Dickey, and

Jonathan Lethem Jonathan Allen Lethem (; born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His Debut novel, first novel, ''Gun, with Occasional Music'', a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, ...

Notable participants

* Conrad Aiken * Nelson Algren * William Attaway *

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only write ...

* Benjamin Botkin * Max Bodenheim *

John Cheever John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs ...

* Richard Durham * Arnold S. Eagle * Loren Eiseley * Eliot Elisofon *

* Vardis Fisher * Irving Fishman * Robert Hayden * Leon Srabian Herald *

* Weldon Kees * Stetson Kennedy *

Claude McKay Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay OJ (September 15, 1890See Wayne F. Cooper, ''Claude McKay, Rebel Sojourner In The Harlem Renaissance'' (New York, Schocken, 1987) p. 377 n. 19. As Cooper's authoritative biography explains, McKay's family predate ...

* Vincent McHugh *

Harry Partch Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century com ...

Kenneth Patchen Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911January 8, 1972) was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of Will ...

* Kenneth Rexroth *

* Jim Thompson * Margaret Walker * Dorothy West * Walker Winslow * Richard Wright * Frank Yerby * Anzia Yezierska

Gallery

File:Federal Writers' Project Presentation.jpg, Display for ''Who's Who in the Zoo'', part of the Children's Science Series created by authors in the Federal Writers’ Project File:A guide to the golden state from the past to the present LCCN98516742.jpg, Federal Writers' Project of California poster advertising the American Guide Series volume on California, 1936–1941 File:Federal Writers Project exhibit at Ohio State Fair.png, A book exhibit at the Ohio State Fair for the Federal Writers’ Project in 1937 File:The book of stones,compiled and written by the Federal writers' project, Work projects administration, commonwealth of Pennsylvania... (IA bookofstonescomp00fede).pdf, ''The Book of Stones'', part of the children's science series created by the Federal Writers Project and published in Pennsylvania in 1939 File:Federal Writers Project USE 1.jpg, North Carolina oral history project by the Federal Writers’ Project, documenting child laborers at a local mill in Lincolnton File:Collection of maps relating to publication of "New Hampshire, a guide to the Granite State" by Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of New Hampshire LOC 2008624019-10.tif, A map of the town of Portsmouth for ''New Hampshire: A Guide to the Granite State'' by Federal Writers' Project, 1927 File:Photograph, California no. 8, Oakland May 23, 1940, Writers Project, and centers for other P & S projects.... - NARA - 296093.jpg, A photo of a California Federal Writers' Project location within a Works Progress Administration building in Oakland, 1940 File:Moments-with-Genius-Poster.jpg, Poster for the Illinois Writers’ Project radio series ''Moments with Genius'', presented by the Museum of Science and Industry (''circa'' 1939)

References

External links

Overviews

U.S. Senate: The American Guide Series (.pdf)
Bibliographic overview of the guides.
U.S. Works Projects Administration (American Guide Series)
eBooks: 20th-Century US History: Federal Writers' Project Books (mostly Travel). Links to over 100 free full-text guides. *
Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1940
', Library of Congress: American Life Histories {{Authority control New Deal projects of the arts New Deal agencies Works Progress Administration American writers' organizations Arts organizations established in 1935 1935 establishments in the United States Oral history Federal Writers' Project