Download or read book Henry Alsberg written by Susan Rubenstein DeMasi and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-07-13 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Great Depression, Henry Alsberg, a journalist with a passion for social justice, directed the Federal Writers' Project, a New Deal program of the Works Progress Administration. Under his guidance, thousands of unemployed writers were hired. Despite attacks from the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Project produced more than 1,000 publications from 1935 to 1939, including the still highly acclaimed American Guide series. Some writers, such as Richard Wright, went on to storied careers. Alsberg led the Project's collection of more than 10,000 oral histories from ex-slaves, immigrants and others. Alsberg was also a leader in the struggle to save Jewish pogrom survivors in Eastern Europe. Later, he initiated the first major effort to assist international political prisoners. His friends included anarchist revolutionary Emma Goldman and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. This book brings Alsberg to light as an important but forgotten figure of the 20th century.

Download or read book Republic of Detours written by Scott Borchert and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice | Winner of the New Deal Book Award An immersive account of the New Deal project that created state-by-state guidebooks to America, in the midst of the Great Depression—and employed some of the biggest names in American letters The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious—and utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of hard-up writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a series of guidebooks to the then forty-eight states—along with hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and towns—while also gathering reams of folklore, narratives of formerly enslaved people, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities. All this was the singular purview of the Federal Writers’ Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration founded in 1935 to employ jobless writers, from once-bestselling novelists and acclaimed poets to the more dubiously qualified. The FWP took up the lofty goal of rediscovering America in words and soon found itself embroiled in the day’s most heated arguments regarding radical politics, racial inclusion, and the purpose of writing—forcing it to reckon with the promises and failures of both the New Deal and the American experiment itself. Scott Borchert’s Republic of Detours tells the story of this raucous and remarkable undertaking by delving into the experiences of key figures and tracing the FWP from its optimistic early days to its dismemberment by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. We observe notable writers at their day jobs, including Nelson Algren, broke and smarting from the failure of his first novel; Zora Neale Hurston, the most widely published Black woman in the country; and Richard Wright, who arrived in the FWP’s chaotic New York City office on an upward career trajectory courtesy of the WPA. Meanwhile, Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel, John Cheever, and other future literary stars found encouragement and security on the FWP payroll. By way of these and other stories, Borchert illuminates an essentially noble enterprise that sought to create a broad and inclusive self-portrait of America at a time when the nation’s very identity and future were thrown into question. As the United States enters a new era of economic distress, political strife, and culture-industry turmoil, this book’s lessons are urgent and strong.

Download or read book Portrait of America written by Jerrold Hirsch and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2004-07-21 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How well do we know our country? Whom do we include when we use the word "American"? These are not just contemporary issues but recurring questions Americans have asked themselves throughout their history--and questions that were addressed when, in 1935, the Roosevelt administration created the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. Although the immediate context of the FWP was work relief, national FWP officials developed programs that spoke to much larger and longer-standing debates over the nature of American identity and culture and the very definition of who was an American. Hirsch reviews the founding of the FWP and the significance of its American Guide series, considering the choices made by administrators who wanted to celebrate diversity as a positive aspect of American cultural identity. In his exploration of the FWP's other writings, Hirsch discusses the project's pioneering use of oral history in interviews with ordinary southerners, ex-slaves, ethnic minorities, and industrial workers. He also examines congressional critics of the FWP vision; the occasional opposition of local Federal Writers, especially in the South; and how the FWP's vision changed in response to the challenge of World War II. In the course of this study, Hirsch raises thought-provoking questions about the relationships between diversity and unity, government and culture, and, ultimately, culture and democracy.

Download or read book Long Past Slavery written by Catherine A. Stewart and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1936 to 1939, the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project collected life stories from more than 2,300 former African American slaves. These narratives are now widely used as a source to understand the lived experience of those who made the transition from slavery to freedom. But in this examination of the project and its legacy, Catherine A. Stewart shows it was the product of competing visions of the past, as ex-slaves' memories of bondage, emancipation, and life as freedpeople were used to craft arguments for and against full inclusion of African Americans in society. Stewart demonstrates how project administrators, such as the folklorist John Lomax; white and black interviewers, including Zora Neale Hurston; and the ex-slaves themselves fought to shape understandings of black identity. She reveals that some influential project employees were also members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, intent on memorializing the Old South. Stewart places ex-slaves at the center of debates over black citizenship to illuminate African Americans' struggle to redefine their past as well as their future in the face of formidable opposition. By shedding new light on a critically important episode in the history of race, remembrance, and the legacy of slavery in the United States, Stewart compels readers to rethink a prominent archive used to construct that history.

Download or read book Subsidizing Culture written by James T. Bennett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the American mind, state subsidization of writers and artists was long associated with monarchies and, in later years, socialist states. The support these regimes gave to intellectuals was understood to come with a cost, yet, beginning with the New Deal's Federal Writers', Art, and Theater Projects, a new policy consensus asserted that by offering financial support to the arts, the federal government was affirming their importance to the nation.Subsidizing Culture examines the development of and controversies surrounding federal programs that directly benefit writers, artists, and intellectuals. James T. Bennett examines four cases of such support: the New Deal's Federal Writers', Art, and Theater Projects; the vigorous promotion, in the post-World War II and early Cold War eras, of abstract expressionism and other forms of modern art by the US government; the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which has fortified its position as the preeminent arts bureaucracy; and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the NEA's less embattled twin, which funnels monies to scholars.Bennett concentrates on the creation of and the debate over these government programs, and he gives special attention to the critics, who are usually ignored. He reminds us that the chorus of anti-subsidy voices over the years has included such disparate figures as writers William Faulkner and John Updike; artists John Sloan and Wheeler Williams; and social critics Jacques Barzun and H.L. Mencken.

Download or read book Black Culture and the New Deal written by Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration--unwilling to antagonize a powerful southern congressional bloc--refused to endorse legislation that openly sought to improve political, economic, and social conditions for African Americans. Instead, as historian Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff shows, the administration recognized and celebrated African Americans by offering federal support to notable black intellectuals, celebrities, and artists. Sklaroff illustrates how programs within the Federal Arts Projects and several war agencies gave voice to such notable African Americans as Lena Horne, Joe Louis, Duke Ellington, and Richard Wright, as well as lesser-known figures. She argues that these New Deal programs represent a key moment in the history of American race relations, as the cultural arena provided black men and women with unique employment opportunities and new outlets for political expression. Equally important, she contends that these cultural programs were not merely an attempt to appease a black constituency but were also part of the New Deal's larger goal of promoting a multiracial nation. Yet, while federal projects ushered in creativity and unprecedented possibilities, they were also subject to censorship, bigotry, and political machinations. With numerous illustrations, Black Culture and the New Deal offers a fresh perspective on the New Deal's racial progressivism and provides a new framework for understanding black culture and politics in the Roosevelt era.

Download or read book Soul of a People written by David A. Taylor and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soul of a People is about a handful of people who were on the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930s and a glimpse of America at a turning point. This particular handful of characters went from poverty to great things later, and included John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Studs Terkel. In the 1930s they were all caught up in an effort to describe America in a series of WPA guides. Through striking images and firsthand accounts, the book reveals their experiences and the most vivid excerpts from selected guides and interviews: Harlem schoolchildren, truckers, Chicago fishmongers, Cuban cigar makers, a Florida midwife, Nebraskan meatpackers, and blind musicians. Drawing on new discoveries from personal collections, archives, and recent biographies, a new picture has emerged in the last decade of how the participants' individual dramas intersected with the larger picture of their subjects. This book illuminates what it felt like to live that experience, how going from joblessness to reporting on their own communities affected artists with varied visions, as well as what feelings such a passage involved: shame humiliation, anger, excitement, nostalgia, and adventure. Also revealed is how the WPA writers anticipated, and perhaps paved the way for, the political movements of the following decades, including the Civil Rights movement, the Women's Right movement, and the Native American rights movement.

Download or read book Coming Through written by Kincaid Mills and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oral histories of formerly enlaved people and their families along the South Carolina coast Coming Through marks the first complete publication of these interviews with former slaves and their descendants living in the Waccamaw Neck region of South Carolina as collected by Genevieve W. Chandler as part of the WPA Federal Writers Project. Between 1936 and 1938 Chandler interviewed more than one hundred individuals in and around All Saints Parish, a portion of Horry and Georgetown counties located between the Waccamaw River and the Atlantic Ocean. Her subjects spoke freely with her on topics ranging from slave punishment to folk medicine, from conditions in the Jim Crow South to the exploits of Brer Rabbit. A teacher, artist, writer, and later museum curator, Chandler had no formal training as an oral historian or folklorist, yet the sophistication of her work as documented here anticipates developments in these fields of study a generation later. Her detailed descriptions add social context to folktales, and her careful and systematic renderings of the Gullah language have since been praised as foundational work by Creole linguists. Chandler's Gullah-speaking African American informants range in age from the 9-year-old George Kato Singleton to 104-year-old Welcome Bees. A biography of each subject accompanies the interviews. Collectively these interviews form an intimate portrait of a fascinating subculture of the Carolina coast and the Sea Islands as shared with a remarkable woman who has special access to converse with the people of this traditionally insular world. Moreover they provide an unparalleled firsthand account of the African American experience in South Carolina in the words of those who lived it. The volume is edited by Chandler's daughter, Genevieve C. Peterkin, and two scholars, Kincaid Mills and Aaron McCollough. The three have carefully established the texts of the interviews in a manner that highlights Chandler's skills as a field linguist and have supplemented the texts with revealing documentation. The collection is enhanced with a foreword by Charles W. Joyner, Burroughs Distinguished Professor of History at Coastal Carolina University; appendixes respecting the WPA project and the nuances of Gullah language and culture; and photographs of the subjects taken by renowned photographer Bayard Wootten—many published here for the first time.

Download or read book Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume Two written by Philip A. Greasley and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-08 with total page 1074 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips, graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest's continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature.

Download or read book Investigation and Study of the Work of the Works Progress Administration Hearings 76th Congress 1st Session written by United States. Congress. House. Appropriations and published by . This book was released on 1939 with total page 1464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Investigation and Study of the Works Progress Administration written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations and published by . This book was released on 1939 with total page 1468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Guides written by Wendy Griswold and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the midst of the Great Depression, Americans were nearly universally literate--and they were hungry for the written word. With an eye to this market and as a response to unemployment, Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration created the Federal Writers' Project. They produced the Project's American Guides, an impressively produced series that set out not only to direct travelers on which routes to take and what to see throughout the country, but also to celebrate the distinctive characteristics of each individual state. The series unintentionally diversified American literary culture's cast of characters--promoting women, minority, and rural writers--while it also institutionalized the innovative idea that American culture comes in state-shaped boxes.

Download or read book Letters to Eleanor written by Paul Bernstein and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2004 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Letters to Eleanor: Voices of the Great Depression examines how the flood of letters from ordinary Americans to the First Lady established a bond of hope and trust. Through this paper trail, Eleanor Roosevelt was able to help many petitioners find jobs, food, housing, and clothes. To others she offered the encouragement and support many needed in the bleak Thirties. Through it all Eleanor Roosevelt exhibited a tradionalist social outlook by her support of homemakers and opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. But as the New Deal matured, she became an ardent reformer who fought for an anti-lynching law and job opportunity for women in the federal service. But beneath her incessant activity to help others there was an inner Eleanor who constantly sought emotional support from female colleagues or her distant correspondents, a support she did not receive form FDR or her family.

Download or read book Confronting Modernity written by Richard Megraw and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2008 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confronting Modernity: Art and Society in Louisiana examines how the conflicts and benefits of modernity's nationalizing influences were reflected and resisted by the state's artists in the first half of the twentieth century. In Louisiana, such change not only produced the turbulent politics of the Huey Long era but also provoked debate over new ideas on art and social roles for artists. By using two of Louisiana's most prominent cultural figures of the era as lenses, Megraw reveals the state's complex relationship with modernity. Artist Ellsworth Woodward and writer Lyle Saxon battled to retain artistic control over what they considered the exceptional character of Louisiana. Woodward defended localized assumptions through art in the world-renowned pottery program he established in 1892 and directed for more than forty years at Sophie Newcomb College. Saxon, on the other hand, fought against modernity's encroachment from within, serving as director of the Federal Writers Project in Louisiana. He used his position to promote literature and culture that preserved local place and historic structure from the transformations wrought by industrialism, consumerism, and the mass media. Confronting Modernity vividly explores how Louisiana's struggles with America's rush to modernize mirrored battles for autonomy happening between artists and governments across the country. Richard Megraw is associate professor of American studies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. His work has been published in Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies.

Download or read book Nebraska during the New Deal written by Marilyn Irvin Holt and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a New Deal program, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) aimed to put unemployed writers, teachers, and librarians to work. The contributors were to collect information, write essays, conduct interviews, and edit material with the goal of producing guidebooks in each of the then forty-eight states and U.S. territories. Project administrators hoped that these guides, known as the American Guide Series, would promote a national appreciation for America's history, culture, and diversity and preserve democracy at a time when militarism was on the rise and parts of the world were dominated by fascism. Marilyn Irvin Holt focuses on the Nebraska project, which was one of the most prolific branches of the national program. Best remembered for its state guide and series of folklore and pioneer pamphlets, the project also produced town guides, published a volume on African Americans in Nebraska, and created an ethnic study of Italians in Omaha. In Nebraska during the New Deal Holt examines Nebraska’s contribution to the project, both in terms of its place within the national FWP as well as its operation in comparison to other state projects.

Download or read book To Walk About in Freedom The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner written by Carole Emberton and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary life of Priscilla Joyner and her quest—along with other formerly enslaved people—to define freedom after the Civil War. Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged—feelings that no emancipation proclamation could assuage. Her life story—candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers’ Project—captures the intimate nature of freedom. Using Joyner’s interview and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s charter generation—the people born into slavery who walked into a new world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new possibilities: what to wear and where to live, what jobs to take and who to love. Although Joyner was educated at a Freedmen’s Bureau school and married a man she loved, slavery cast a long shadow. Uncertainty about her parentage haunted her life, and as Jim Crow took hold throughout the South, segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence threatened the loving home she made for her family. But through it all, she found beauty in the world and added to it where she could. Weaving together illuminating voices from the charter generation, To Walk About in Freedom gives us a kaleidoscopic look at the lived experiences of emancipation and challenges us to think anew about the consequences of failing to reckon with the afterlife of slavery.

Download or read book Democratic Art written by Sharon Ann Musher and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-05-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the Great Recession American artists and public art endowments have had to fight for government support to keep themselves afloat. It wasn’t always this way. At its height in 1935, the New Deal devoted $27 million—roughly $461 million today—to supporting tens of thousands of needy artists, who used that support to create more than 100,000 works. Why did the government become so involved with these artists, and why weren’t these projects considered a frivolous waste of funds, as surely many would be today? In Democratic Art, Sharon Musher explores these questions and uses them as a springboard for an examination of the role art can and should play in contemporary society. Drawing on close readings of government-funded architecture, murals, plays, writing, and photographs, Democratic Art examines the New Deal’s diverse cultural initiatives and outlines five perspectives on art that were prominent at the time: art as grandeur, enrichment, weapon, experience, and subversion. Musher argues that those engaged in New Deal art were part of an explicitly cultural agenda that sought not just to create art but to democratize and Americanize it as well. By tracing a range of aesthetic visions that flourished during the 1930s, this highly original book outlines the successes, shortcomings, and lessons of the golden age of government funding for the arts.