Federal Project Number One, part of the Works Progress Administration under the New Deal, was a United States initiative that funded artists, musicians, actors, and writers during the Great Depression. Funded by the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, it employed up to 40,000 creatives, guided by the principle that artists deserve public support like manual workers. The program included five divisions: the Federal Art Project, Federal Music Project, Federal Theatre Project, Federal Writers’ Project, and the Historical Records Survey. The initiative aimed for non-discrimination and ended in 1939 after congressional pressure ended the theater project and shifted funding locally.
Controversy
Many people[example needed] were opposed to government involvement in the arts. They[who?] feared that government funding and influence would lead to censorship and a violation of freedom of speech. Members of the House Un-American Activities Committee believed the program to be infiltrated by communists.7
However, with support from Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt signed the executive order to create this project because the government wanted to support, as Fortune magazine stated, “the kind of raw cultural material—the raw material of new creative work—which is so necessary to artists and particularly to artists in a new country.”8
Most of the newspapers and magazines in America were Republican and anti-Roosevelt, and they made what capital they could out of traditional American Philistinism. The Art Projects were scorned as "boondoggling." Under this constant and relentless attack it was necessary to develop work projects that could be defended as "worthwhile." For the project to have sent every artist home to paint his own pictures his own way without supervision or accountability would have invited disaster. Mural projects were a little less liable to charges of boondoggling than easel painting. They were relatively public and subject to scrutiny and criticism.
— Edward Laning, “When Uncle Sam Played Patron of the Arts: Memoirs of a WPA Painter”
Legacy
Further information: American Guide Series, Slave Narrative Collection, and America Eats
At its peak Federal One employed 40,000 writers, musicians, artists and actors and the Federal Writers' project had around 6,500 people on the WPA payroll.9 Many people benefitted from these programs and some FWP writers became famous, such as John Steinbeck and Zora Neale Hurston.10 These writers were considered to be federal writers.11 Furthermore, these projects also published books such as New York Panorama and the WPA Guide to New York City.12
See also
External links
- National Archives and Records Administration: A New Deal for the Arts
- New Deal Cultural Programs: Experiments in Cultural Democracy
- Federal Project Number One The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, George Washington University
- McCausland, Elizabeth, "Save the Arts Projects," The Nation, July 17, 1937.
References
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (August 26, 1935). "Letter on Allocation of Work Relief Funds". The American Presidency Project. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley. Retrieved 2015-03-02. /wiki/Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt ↩
Flanagan, Hallie (1965). Arena: The History of the Federal Theatre. New York: Benjamin Blom, reprint edition [1940]. OCLC 855945294. /wiki/Hallie_Flanagan ↩
Mutnick, Deborah (November 2014). "Toward a Twenty-First-Century Federal Writers' Project". College English. 77 (2): 124–145. JSTOR 24238170. /wiki/JSTOR_(identifier) ↩
Edmonds, Rosalie (Spring 2008). "Documenting the Depression: Wisconsin's WPA Art". The Wisconsin Magazine of History. 91 (3): 18–23. JSTOR 25482075. /wiki/JSTOR_(identifier) ↩
Flanagan, Hallie (1965). Arena: The History of the Federal Theatre. New York: Benjamin Blom, reprint edition [1940]. OCLC 855945294. /wiki/Hallie_Flanagan ↩
Hendrickson Jr., Kenneth (Spring 1993). "The WPA Federal Art Projects in Minnesota, 1935-1943". Minnesota History. 53 (5): 170–183. JSTOR 20187801. /wiki/JSTOR_(identifier) ↩
Don Adams, Arlene Goldbard (March 2013). "Webster's World of Cultural Democracy". New Deal Cultural Programs." – via WWCD. http://www.wwcd.org/policy/US/newdeal ↩
Cole, John (Fall 1983). "Amassing American "Stuff": The Library of Congress and the Federal Arts Projects of the 1930s". The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress. 40 (4): 356–389. JSTOR 29781993. /wiki/JSTOR_(identifier) ↩
Mutnick, Deborah (November 2014). "Toward a Twenty-First-Century Federal Writers' Project". College English. 77 (2): 124–145. JSTOR 24238170. /wiki/JSTOR_(identifier) ↩
Mutnick, Deborah (November 2014). "Toward a Twenty-First-Century Federal Writers' Project". College English. 77 (2): 124–145. JSTOR 24238170. /wiki/JSTOR_(identifier) ↩
Mutnick, Deborah (November 2014). "Toward a Twenty-First-Century Federal Writers' Project". College English. 77 (2): 124–145. JSTOR 24238170. /wiki/JSTOR_(identifier) ↩
Mutnick, Deborah (November 2014). "Toward a Twenty-First-Century Federal Writers' Project". College English. 77 (2): 124–145. JSTOR 24238170. /wiki/JSTOR_(identifier) ↩