Episode Summary:

The Franklin Delano Library and Museum is an amazing place which just celebrated its 75th anniversary.  President Roosevelt had the idea to build the library on his family property in Hyde Park, New York, using private funds.  And then he donated the library and its historical collections, including all of his personal and official papers, to the US Government.  This started the precedent of Presidential Libraries that we continue today.  

Last month, we sat down with the FDR Library and its director Bill Harris and had a great discussion about the Federal Writers' Project, its impact then, and why it still matters today.  Please join our host Chris Haley, writer-producers David Taylor and James Mirabello and historian Sara Rutkowski for a few highlights from that conversation.

You can see the full discussion on the FDR Library’s YouTube channel here.  

Links and Resources:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library and Museum

"Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers' Project" with Sara Rutkowski

Credits:

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Editor: Amy Young

Featuring music from Pond5

Featuring: Chris Haley, Bill Harris, David A. Taylor, Sara Rutkowski and James Mirabello

Produced with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Florida Humanities, Virginia Humanities, Wisconsin Humanities, California Humanities and Humanities Nebraska. 

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This month, we're doing something a little different.  There are some amazing podcasts out there that give us a view of America through a distinctive lens. One of our favorites is Sidedoor: A podcast from the Smithsonian.  

Every episode, host Lizzie Peabody sneaks listeners through Smithsonian's side door to search for stories that can't be found anywhere else.

We're excited to share one of those stories. “King’s Speech” is about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the evolution of his iconic I Have a Dream speech.  It’s fascinating to chart the history of his speech and to hear how Dr. King was influenced by poet Langston Hughes, who worked with the Federal Theatre Project in the 1930s and co-wrote a play with one of the writers featured in the People's Recorder, Zora Neale Hurston.

Guests:

Kevin Young, Director of Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture

W. Jason Miller, Author of Origins of the Dream: Hughes's Poetry and King's Rhetoric

Enjoy the episode!  To hear more, search for Sidedoor wherever you get your podcasts or go to www.si.edu/sidedoor.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

This episode features two more stories of outsiders remaking themselves and California history. 

Eluard McDaniel left the Jim Crow South for California as a boy, and remade himself as an activist and writer on the West Coast. His account of his life brought him national attention when it appeared in American Stuff, a book of creative works by members of the Federal Writers’ Project and Federal Art Project selected by Henry Alsberg.

Miné Okubo was a rising artist with the Federal Art Project who drew on her art and her life story to depict a hidden history of injustice during World War II in her book Citizen 13660. Even decades later, a culture of silence surrounded that experience – until her book won an American Book Award and became testimony that sought redress for Japanese Americans incarcerated during the war.

Speakers:

David Bradley, novelist

Seiko Buckingham, niece of Miné Okubo

Jeanie Tanaka, niece of Miné Okubo

David Kipen, journalist and author

Links and Resources:

"American Stuff" anthology by members of the Federal Writers' Project and prints by the Federal Art Project

'Citizen 13660" short film by the National Park Service

"Sincerely, Miné Okubo" short film from the Japanese American National Museum

"Pictures of Belonging" 2024 art exhibition

Eluard McDaniel entry, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives

Reading List:

Citizen 13660, by Miné Okubo

Miné Okubo: Following Her Own Road, by Greg Robinson

The Dream and the Deal, by Jerre Mangione

“Bumming in California” by Eluard McDaniel, in On the Fly: Hobo Literature and Songs, 1879 – 1941, PM Press

The Chaneysville Incident: A Novel, by David Bradley

Dear California, by David Kipen

Black California, edited by Aparajita Nanda

California in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the Golden State with introduction, by David Kipen

Credits:

Host: Chris Haley

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Writer: David A. Taylor

Editor: Ethan Oser

Assistant Editor: Amy Young

Story Editor: Michael May

Additional Voices: Jared Buggage, Mariko Miyazaki, Kate Rafter and Amy Young

Featuring music and archival from: 

Pete Seeger

Joseph Vitarelli

Bradford Ellis

Pond5

Library of Congress

National Archives and Records Administration

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Manny Harriman Video Oral History Collection, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, NYU Special Collections.

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Produced with support from:

National Endowment for the Humanities

California Humanities.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

California has always attracted outsiders, from the Gold Rush in the 1800s to young actors and filmmakers drawn to Hollywood. California was especially a place of migration during the Great Depression, when tens of thousands came searching for jobs and new beginnings. 

This is the first of two episodes about writers displaced by the Depression who took different paths to remaking themselves in California and documenting America. Future composer Harry Partch was more comfortable as a migrant than in straight mainstream society. Tillie Olsen found her way from Nebraska to become a reporter-activist who faced long odds to becoming a writer as a woman in the 1930s. 

With their work on the Federal Writers’ Project, Olsen and Partch helped create an expansive picture of California, people in migration, and the day-to-day reality that included deep labor unrest. Tensions that roiled across America boiled over in the California Writers’ Project, signaling the struggles to come in the national office. 

Speakers:

David Bradley, novelist

Mary Gordon, novelist

Andrew Granade, musicologist and biographer

David Kipen, journalist and author

Links and Resources:

California and the Dust Bowl - Oakland Museum of California

California Gold: Story Map of 1930s California Folk Music

"What Kind of Worker is a Writer" (about Tillie Olsen) by Maggie Doherty in The New Yorker

"I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen

"U.S. Highball," composed by Harry Partch, performed in 2018

Harry Partch: The Outsider

Reading List:

California in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the Golden State with introduction, by David Kipen

Harry Partch, Hobo Composer, by S. Andrew Granade

Tell Me a Riddle, by Tillie Olsen

The Chaneysville Incident: A Novel, by David Bradley

Payback: A Novel, by Mary Gordon

Credits:

Host: Chris Haley

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Writer: David A. Taylor

Editor: Ethan Oser

Assistant Editor: Amy Young 

Story Editor: Michael May

Additional Voices: Karen Simon, Tim Lorenz, Steve Klingbiel, Sarah Supsiri, and Ethan Oser

Featuring music and archival from: 

Joseph Vitarelli

Bradford Ellis

Pond5

Library of Congress

National Archives and Records Administration

BBC

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Produced with support from:

National Endowment for the Humanities

California Humanities.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

In the 1930s when America was deep in the disaster of the Dust Bowl, Wisconsin professor and wildlife expert Aldo Leopold brought a new way of thinking about how people engage with nature. Studying the dynamics of soil erosion and people’s behavior, he made suggestions for change that led him to the White House to meet the President.

Leopold faced a personal crisis too, while writing his way toward a new understanding of our relationship with nature. When the Federal Writers’ Project recruited him to write for the WPA Guide to Wisconsin, the picture he described in the guide’s section on Conservation marked a path toward the modern environmental movement. In this episode, Leopold’s biographer, Curt Meine, connects the dots to Earth Day and a new generation of environmentalists.

Speakers:

Curt Meine, biographer

Douglas Brinkley, historian

Tim Hundt, journalist

Links and Resources:

Aldo Leopold film on PBS

Gaylord Nelson announces the first Earth Day

Human Powered Podcast, episode on The Driftless region

Reading List:

WPA Guide to Wisconsin

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work by Curt Meine

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, edited by Ada Limón 

Credits:

Host: Chris Haley

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Writer: David A. Taylor

Editor: Ethan Oser

Story Editor: Michael May

Additional Voices: Tim Lorenz and Susanne Desoutter

Featuring music and archival from: 

Joseph Vitarelli

Bradford Ellis

Pond5

Library of Congress

National Archives and Records Administration

Wisconsin Humanities

Also featuring the song “Wisconsin” performed by Madilyn Bailey.  Written by Madilyn Bailey, Martijn Tienus, John Sinclair and Clifford Golio, and produced by Clifford Golio and Joseph Barba.  Find the full song here and visit her Spotify artist page to hear more.    

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Produced with support from:

National Endowment for the Humanities

Wisconsin Humanities

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

Gerald Hill is an Oneida lawyer and the former President of the Indigenous Language Institute. This bonus features a conversation with Hill, who provides the voice for Oneida community leader Oscar Archiquette in our episode about the WPA Oneida Language Project in Wisconsin. For that episode, Hill read a handful of Archiquette’s quotes about his life and work on the WPA. After each reading, he gave valuable historical and cultural context for those quotes, which we are excited to share with you. 

Before you listen to this conversation, we strongly recommend you listen to Episode 6: Native Historians Do Stand-Up, which is about Oscar Archiquette and the WPA Oneida Language Project, and how that work still inspires tribal historians today. 

Links and Resources:

Oneida Nation Cultural Heritage Webpage

Oneida Books Rediscovered

Further Reading:

Oneida Lives edited by Herbert Lewis

Soul of a People by David A. Taylor

Credits:

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Editors: Amelia Jarecke and James Mirabello

Featuring music from The Oneida Singers and Pond5

Produced with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Wisconsin Humanities. 

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

In 1977, Charlie Hill became the first Native comedian to perform on a national TV broadcast – a groundbreaking performance in television and cultural history.  

“It was a huge moment,” said Seminole filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, “When Charlie Hill went on national television and simply spoke like a human being... He changed the public perception about what a Native person is.” 

Charlie Hill’s comedic approach to the Oneida story is part of a long lineage of storytellers and historians defying stereotypes that includes Oscar Archiquette, a young Oneida working construction when the Federal Writers’ Project came to Wisconsin in the 1935. Archiquette joined a local unit of the Writers’ Project that sought to preserve the Oneida language and histories by interviewing elders and transcribing their stories. That work – and its blend of activism, culture and disarming humor – inspired later Oneida historians such as Loretta Metoxen and Gordon McLester and continues to inspire tribal historians today.  

Speakers:

Michelle Danforth Anderson, Oneida documentarian

Gordon McLester, Oneida historian

Loretta Metoxen, Oneida historian

Betty McLester, Oneida elder

Gerald Hill, Oneida elder

Jennifer Webster, Council Member

Links and Resources:

Oneida Nation Cultural Heritage Webpage

Charlie Hill's performance on the Richard Pryor Show, 1977

Oneida Notebooks Rediscovered, 1999

Human-Powered Podcast, Episode 5, "The Power of Indigenous Knowledge

Further Reading:

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans in Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff

Oneida Lives edited by Herbert Lewis

Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Uncover Depression America by David A. Taylor

“Indian Humor” chapter in Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria Jr.

Credits:

Host: Chris Haley

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor and James Mirabello

Writer: David A. Taylor

Editor: Ethan Oser

Story Editor: Michael May

Additional Voices: Scott Nelson Elm, Gerald Hill, Ethan Oser and Marjorie Stevens

Special Thanks: Christopher Powless

Featuring music and archival material from: 

The Oneida Singers

Joseph Vitarelli

Bradford Ellis

Pond5

Library of Congress

National Archives and Records Administration

NPR

MSNBC

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Produced with support from:

National Endowment for the Humanities

Wisconsin Humanities

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

The Federal Writers’ Project interviews, collected in the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, have inspired generations with their personal experiences of American life. The Writers’ Project pioneered oral history and the idea of documenting history from the grassroots up.

In this bonus, following the episode on the Writers’ Project interviews in Florida, we hear excerpts from oral histories recorded with the nonprofit group StoryCorps. In two conversations, four Floridians talked about their experiences early in the Covid pandemic when frontline workers, often people of color, were particularly vulnerable.

StoryCorps, launched in 2003 with original WPA writer Studs Terkel on hand, is one of many oral history initiatives directly inspired by the Writers’ Project interviews.

Links and Resources:

American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Storycorps

Tips for a great oral history interview

Credits:

Host: Chris Haley

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Editors: James Mirabello, Amy Young and Ethan Oser

Writer: David A. Taylor

Featuring music and archival material from:

Pond5

Interview excerpts shared with permission from StoryCorps. The StoryCorps interviews were recorded and produced by StoryCorps and originally aired on April 17th and May 15th, 2020 on NPR’s Morning Edition. Those broadcasts were made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Produced with support from:

National Endowment for the Humanities

Virginia Humanities

Florida Humanities

Wisconsin Humanities

California Humanities

Humanities Nebraska

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

While working on the WPA Florida guidebook, the Federal Writers’ Project team – including Zora Neale Hurston and Stetson Kennedy – documented a wide range of life from prison camps to soup kitchens to hair salons, in recordings that reveal a living culture and enduring traditions.  

Hurston and Kennedy traveled the state, recording people’s stories and songs. That included a visit to a remote turpentine work site where they encountered a forced labor camp and the brutal conditions in a form of slavery that continued well into the 20th century. 

Project interviewers in Florida also searched for survivors of pre-Civil War slavery and gathered hundreds of interviews. Nationally, thousands of “ex-slave interviews” are treasures for understanding that lived experience. But the Project’s written interviews should be read with caution. Historians remind us that those manuscripts are complicated and often reinforced racial bias and stereotypes.  Historian Tameka Hobbs helps put this work in context and brings it alive.

Speakers:

Peggy Bulger, folklorist

Maryemma Graham, literary historian

Tameka Hobbs, historian

Stetson Kennedy, author and Project alum

James McBride, novelist

Ernest Toole, folk musician

Flo Turcotte, historian

Links and Resources:

"Turpentine Camp, Cross City" typescript essay by Zora Neale Hurston

"Viola Muse Digital Edition" Digital Archive of Muse's Writers' Project work

Zora Neale Hurston Collection at the University of Florida

Library of Congress webcast: 75th Anniversary of "These Are Our Lives" a collection of Writers' Project life histories

Drop on Down in Florida

Ernest Toole Spotify Artist Page

Further Reading:

WPA Guide to Florida

Go Gator and Muddy the Water by Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Pamela Bordelon

Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston

To Walk About in Freedom, by Carole Emberton

These Are Our Lives, life histories from the Federal Writers’ Project

Conchtown USA: Bahamian Fisherfolk in Riviera Beach, Florida, by Charles C. Foster

Credits:

Host: Chris Haley

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor and James Mirabello

Writer: David A. Taylor

Editor: Ethan Oser

Story Editor: Michael May

Additional Voices: Jared Buggage

Featuring music and archival material from: 

Joseph Vitarelli

Bradford Ellis

Pond5

Library of Congress

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Produced with support from:

National Endowment for the Humanities

Florida Humanities

Stetson Kennedy Foundation

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

As host Chris Haley said, Zora Neale Hurston was a homegrown Florida treasure, known for her wit, charm, and a true gift for collecting folklore.  As part of her work with the Writers’ Project, she made over a dozen recordings with audio equipment borrowed from the Library of Congress.

She knew about the equipment from earlier field recordings she had made with folklorist Alan Lomax.  So, when she had the chance to use it for the Writers’ Project, Hurston “checked it out” from the Library. 

We do use short excerpts in our last episode, but the full recordings really are a lot of fun to listen to.  After you listen to these, we encourage you to go to the Library of Congress to listen to more!  

Links and Resources:

Preserving Songs and Culture: Zora Neale Hurston and the Federal Writers' Project

Original Recording: Georgia Skin

Original Recording: Dat Old Black Gal

Original Recording: Let the Deal Go Down

Original Recording: Mule on the Mount

Original Recording: Uncle Bud

Credits:

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Editors: James Mirabello and Ethan Oser

Writer: James Mirabello

Featuring music and archival material from:

Pond5

Library of Congress 

For additional content, visit peoplesrecorder.info or follow us on social media: @peoplesrecorder

Produced with support from:

National Endowment for the Humanities

Virginia Humanities

Florida Humanities

Wisconsin Humanities

California Humanities

Humanities Nebraska

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.