Federal Project Number One
Federal Project Number One, also referred to as Federal One, is the collective name for a group of projects under the
The five divisions of Federal One were these:
- Federal Art Project
- Federal Music Project
- Federal Theatre Project
- Federal Writers' Project
- Historical Records Survey (originally part of the Federal Writers' Project)
All projects were supposed to operate without discrimination regarding race, creed, color, religion, or political affiliation.[2]: 44
Federal Project Number One ended in 1939 when, under pressure from Congress, the theater project was cancelled and the other projects were required to rely on state funding and local sponsorship.[5]
Controversy
Many people[
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.”[7]
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
As previously mentioned, 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.[3] Many people benefitted from these programs and some FWP writers became famous, such as John Steinbeck and Zora Neale Hurston.[3] These writers were considered to be federal writers.[3] Furthermore, these projects also published books such as New York Panorama and the WPA Guide to New York City.[3]
See also
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.
- ^ OCLC 855945294.
- ^ JSTOR 24238170.
- JSTOR 25482075.
- JSTOR 20187801.
- ^ Don Adams, Arlene Goldbard (March 2013). "Webster's World of Cultural Democracy". New Deal Cultural Programs." – via WWCD.
- JSTOR 29781993.
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.