|
Art, Culture, and Government: The New Deal at 75:
|
| |
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/newdeal/index.html
On March 13 and 14, 2008, leading scholars from throughout the United States joined experts from the Library of Congress in a free public presentation, Art, Culture, and Government: The New Deal at 75. The symposium at the Library, and similar events in the Washington, DC area, were aimed at re-focusing attention on the New Deal, the multi-faceted social, cultural, and fiscal recovery programs launched by the Roosevelt administration in 1933, to reform and reinvigorate national life in the wake of the Great Depression.
|
|
Teacher Resources:
|
| |
The Great Depression Themed Resources
Insights into the effects of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl; migrant workers; the New Deal and the WPA
|
| |
Dust Bowl Migration Primary Source Set
Photographs, recorded music, and song lyrics document the daily ordeals of rural migrant families from the Great Plains during a decade marked by both the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression
|
|
Collections with Materials Produced by New Deal Programs
|
 |
America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945
The images in the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection are among the most famous documentary photographs ever produced. Created by a group of U.S. government photographers, the images show Americans in every part of the nation. (Includes Collection Connections)
|
 |
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
These interviews or "life histories," were compiled and transcribed by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940. The Library of Congress collection includes 2,900 documents representing the work of over 300 writers from 24 states. (Includes Collection Connections)
|
 |
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
This collection contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 blackand-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. (Includes Collection Connections)
|
 |
Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present ‐The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and its territories. Administered since 1933 through cooperative agreements with the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and the private sector, ongoing programs of the National Park Service have recorded America's built environment in multiformat surveys comprising more than 350,000 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 35,000 historic structures and sites dating from pre-Columbian times to the twentieth century. (Includes Collection Connections)
|
 |
By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943
This collection consists of 908 boldly colored and graphically diverse original posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest.
|
 |
California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties Collected by Sidney
Robertson Cowell
This New Deal project was organized and directed by folk music collector Sidney Robertson Cowell for the Northern California Work Projects Administration. A multiformat ethnographic field collection, it includes sound recordings, still photographs, drawings, and written documents from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in Northern California. (Includes Collection Connections)
|
 |
Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1937-1942
This multiformat ethnographic field collection documents African-American, Arabic, Bahamian, British-American, Cuban, Greek, Italian, Minorcan, Seminole, and Slavic cultures throughout Florida. Recorded in conjunction with the Florida Federal Writers' Project, the Florida Music Project, and the Joint Committee on Folk Arts of the Work Projects Administration, it features folksongs and folktales in many languages, including blues and work songs from menhaden fishing boats, railroad gangs, and turpentine camps; children's songs, dance music, and religious music of many cultures; and interviews, also known as "life histories." The online presentation provides access to sound recordings and accompanying materials, including recording logs, transcriptions, correspondence between Florida WPA workers and Library of Congress personnel, and an essay on Florida folklife by Zora Neale Hurston. (Includes Collection Connections)
|
 |
The New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
The Federal Theatre Project was one of five arts-related projects established during the first term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). This online presentation includes images of items selected from the Federal Theatre Project Collection at the Library of Congress. (Includes Collection Connections)
|
 |
Traditional Music and Spoken Word Catalog from the American Folklife Center
The card catalog represented in this online database was first created by Work Projects Administration (WPA) workers in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and continued by the Archive of Folk Song (now part of the American Folklife Center) staff into the early 1960s.
|
 |
Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories
The recordings of former slaves in Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell
Their Stories come from several collections held in the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture. They were made by various interviewers working in nine Southern states between 1932 and 1975. Three of the recordings were made for the Commonwealth of Virginia between 1937 and 1940 by Roscoe E. Lewis in affiliation with the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
|
 |
Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker
Collection, 1940-1941
An online presentation of a multiformat ethnographic field collection documenting the
everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps in
central California in 1940 and 1941. (Includes Collection Connections)
|
|
Related Collections
|
 |
Captain Pearl R. Nye: Life on the Ohio and Erie Canal
This collection captures the culture and music of the men, women, and children who
worked and lived along the Ohio and Erie Canal. Included are 75 songs, sung by Nye,
along with transcribed lyrics, photographs, and personal letters Nye sent to the Library
from 1937 to 1944.
|
 |
Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B. Rael Collection
Selections of sound recordings and manuscript material collected by Juan Bautista Rael, a pioneer Hispano folklorist. The material he collected documents the religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado including alabados (hymns), folk drama, wedding songs, and dance tunes.
|
 |
The Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress
This collection contains a selection of ten plays written by Hurston (1891-1960), author, anthropologist, and folklorist. Deposited in the United States Copyright Office between 1925 and 1944, most of the plays remained unpublished and unproduced until they were rediscovered in the Copyright Deposit Drama Collection in 1997. The plays reflect Hurston's life experience, travels, and research, especially her study of folklore in the African-American South.
|
 |
Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
Nearly 700 sound recordings, as well as fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other material that documents a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through the southern United States. John and Ruby Lomax traveled from Port Aransas, Texas to Washington, DC documenting folk singers and folksongs across a broad spectrum of traditional musical styles. (Includes Collection Connections)
|
 |
Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song, Correspondence 1940-1950
A collection of letters that highlights the correspondence between Woody Guthrie and staff of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center). The material provides a unique perspective on Woody Guthrie's past, his art, his life in New York City, and his feelings about WWII. (Includes Collection Connections)
|
