Federal Writers' Project
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. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. It was one of a group of New Deal arts programs known collectively as Federal Project Number One or Federal One.
Agency overview
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[edit]
Funded under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, FWP was established July 27, 1935, by President Franklin 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]
Film[edit]
In September 2009 a documentary about FWP, Soul of a People: Writing America's Story, premiered on the Smithsonian Channel . It was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.The film includes interviews with American authors Studs Terkel and Stetson Kennedy, and American historian Douglas Brinkley. 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 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, 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[edit]
In the wake of the 2020 COVID-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, Congressman Ted Lieu and Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez introduced legislation to create a new FWP, to be administered by the Department of Labor, that would hire unemployed and underemployed writers.[19] Supporters of the legislation included writers James Fallows, Ruth Dickey, and Jonathan Lethem.[20]
Display for Who's Who in the Zoo, part of the Children's Science Series created by authors in the Federal Writers’ Project
Federal Writers' Project of California poster advertising the American Guide Series volume on California, 1936–1941
A book exhibit at the Ohio State Fair for the Federal Writers’ Project in 1937
The Book of Stones, part of the children's science series created by the Federal Writers Project and published in Pennsylvania in 1939
North Carolina oral history project by the Federal Writers’ Project, documenting child laborers at a local mill in Lincolnton
A map of the town of Portsmouth for New Hampshire: A Guide to the Granite State by Federal Writers' Project, 1927.
A photo of a California Federal Writers' Project location within a Works Progress Administration building in Oakland, 1940
Poster for the Illinois Writers’ Project radio series Moments with Genius, presented by the Museum of Science and Industry (circa 1939)
