Images

Figure 1.1: This billboard sends a disheartening “keep away” message to the unemployed, but it also reflects how overwhelmed many American communities felt in the face of economic catastrophe. [Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, NPX 74-20 (241)]

Figure 1.2: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins (Works Progress Administrator, 1935-1938), more than any one else, made it possible for the WPA to exist and to flourish. [Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, NPX 49-164:193]

Figure 2.1: WPA laborers repair a Michigan street, while a WPA artist sketches them at their work. [National Archives and Records Administration, 69-AG-410]

Figure 3.1: A group of women, both white and African-American, at work in one of the WPA’s 9,000 sewing centers. This one was in New York City. [National Archives and Records Administration, 518269, 69-N-224200]

Figure 3.2: As part of the WPA’s program to create reading material for the blind. a WPA worker in Indiana reads a book aloud, while her blind co-worker types the text into a Braille typewriter. [Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, NPX 58-508 (59)]

Figure 4.1: One of the WPA’s many bands gives a free noon-time concert in New Orleans’ Lafayette Square. [Louisiana Division/City Archives, New Orleans Public Library, WPA Photograph Collection, Music: Series 30-19]

Figure 4.2: Seeing WPA worker Concetta Scaravaglione so absorbed in sculpting a clay model for her statue, “Girl With a Faun,” reminds us what it meant to artists like her to be able to devote themselves full-time to creative work. [National Archives and Records Administration, (SPB) RG 69-6-7239-C]

Figure 4.3: Here we see some of the 60 unemployed writers in Nebraska who worked together to produce the WPA guide for their state, as well as numerous other publications. [Courtesy of the Jane Pope Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska Authors, Lincoln City Libraries, Lincoln, Nebraska]  

Figure 4.4:  The Federal Theatre’s “Living Newspapers” used lights, scenery, sound effects, and vivid scripts to dramatize significant issues of the day. In this scene from Triple-A Plowed Under (about the plight of American farmers), the actors are silhouetted against a copy of the U.S. Constitution. [Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, NPX 48-49:1 (50)]

Figure 5.1:  Periodically, when floods or hurricanes swept through American communities, the WPA sent workers—sometimes thousands of them—to assist. In this 1936 picture, a WPA crew in York, PA, is clearing a new channel for the flood-waters. (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, NPX 72-114 (1)]

Figure 6.1: During the WPA’s final two years (1941-1943), its workers spent much of their time on war-related activities. Here, for instance, is an air raid poster prepared by a WPA artist. [Library of Congress, Division of Photos, Prints, and Drawings, cph 3b49008]