As the people and economy of the United States struggled to recover during the Great Depression, 42 towns in North Carolina would benefit directly from the $83 million the federal government allocated for public art as part of the New Deal. The result was some of the state's most memorable murals, sculptures, reliefs, paintings, oils, and frescoes, most of which were installed in post offices and courthouses. This book is the only record of all of the North Carolina public art works under the program. It provides in-depth accounts of the works themselves and the artists who created them. Photographs of all of the buildings that originally received the art, the works themselves, and almost all of the 41 artists are provided. An appendix describes federal art projects, 1933-1943. There are detailed footnotes, an extensive bibliography, and an index.

Between 1935 and 1939, the United States government paid out-of-work artists to write, act, and stage theatre as part of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), a New Deal job relief program. In segregated "Negro Units" set up under the FTP, African American artists took on theatre work usually reserved for whites, staged black versions of "white" classics, and developed radical new dramas. In this fresh history of the FTP Negro Units, Kate Dossett examines what she calls the black performance community—a broad network of actors, dramatists, audiences, critics, and community activists—who made and remade black theatre manuscripts for the Negro Units and other theatre companies from New York to Seattle. Tracing how African American playwrights and troupes developed these manuscripts and how they were then contested, revised, and reinterpreted, Dossett argues that these texts constitute an archive of black agency, and understanding their history allows us to consider black dramas on their own terms. The cultural and intellectual labor of black theatre artists was at the heart of radical politics in 1930s America, and their work became an important battleground in a turbulent decade.

In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration--unwilling to antagonize a powerful southern congressional bloc--refused to endorse legislation that openly sought to improve political, economic, and social conditions for African Americans. Instead, as historian Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff shows, the administration recognized and celebrated African Americ...

This book examines the involvement of African American artists in the New Deal art programs of the 1930s. Emphasizing broader issues informed by the uniqueness of Black experience rather than individual artists’ works, Mary Ann Calo makes the case that the revolutionary vision of these federal art projects is best understood in the context of access to opportunity, mediated by the reality of racial segregation. Focusing primarily on the Federal Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Calo documents African American artists’ participation in community art centers in Harlem, in St. Louis, and throughout the South. She examines the internal workings of the Harlem Artists’ Guild, the Guild’s activities during the 1930s, and its alliances with other groups, such as the Artists’ Union and the National Negro Congress. Calo also explores African American artists’ representation in the exhibitions sponsored by WPA administrators and the critical reception of their work. In doing so, she elucidates the evolving meanings of the terms race, culture, and community in the interwar era. The book concludes with an essay by Jacqueline Francis on Black artists in the early 1940s, after the end of the FAP program. Presenting essential new archival information and important insights into the experiences of Black New Deal artists, this study expands the factual record and positions the cumulative evidence within the landscape of critical race studies. It will be welcomed by art historians and American studies scholars specializing in early twentieth-century race relations.

As the United States struggled to recover from the Great Depression, 24 towns in Alabama would directly benefit from some of the $83 million allocated by the Federal Government for public art works under the New Deal. In the words of Harold Lloyd Hopkins, administrator of the Federal Emergency Relief Act, "artists had to eat, too," and these funds aided people who needed employment during this difficult period in American history. This book examines some of the New Deal art--murals, reliefs, sculptures, frescoes and paintings--of Alabama and offers biographical sketches of the artists who created them. An appendix describes federal art programs and projects of the period (1933-1943).

In 1935, the United States Congress began employing large numbers of American artists through the Works Progress Administration--fiction writers, photographers, poster artists, dramatists, painters, sculptors, muralists, wood carvers, composers and choreographers, as well as journalists, historians and researchers. Secretary of Commerce and supervisor of the WPA Harry Hopkins hailed it a "renascence of the arts, if we can call it a rebirth when it has no precedent in our history." Women were eminently involved, creating a wide variety of art and craft, interweaving their own stories with those of other women whose lives might not otherwise have received attention. This book surveys the thousands of women artists who worked for the U.S. government, the historical and social worlds they described and the collaborative depiction of womanhood they created at a pivotal moment in American history.

JACK IRBY HAYES, JR., revisits the South Carolina of the 1930s to determine the impact of federal programs on the state's economy, politics, culture, and citizenry. He traces the waxing and waning of support for programs such as Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and concludes that the modernization of South Carolina would have been delayed without their intervention. Suggesting that the New Deal hastened the end of one-party political domination, Hayes proposes that it also initiated a new era of modernized agriculture and banking practices, rural electrical service, labor restrictions, relief programs, and cultural resurgence. Hayes finds that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's initiatives enjoyed widespread support among South Carolinians. He documents the welcoming of agricultural and erosion controls, welfare relief, child labor laws, minimum wage requirements, public construction, state parks, and massive hydroelectric projects. He also credits the New Deal with sparking an intellectual reawakening and a restoration of faith in capitalism, democracy, and progress. But Hayes demonstrates that

Through interviews with survivors of the Depression, the use of photographs taken by Federally supported photographers (many reproduced here) and research into the history of the period, the work provides an accurate and even uplifting portrait of the people of the mountains, piedmont and Coastal areas of North Carolina in the 1930s. The chapters include examinations of the industries and natural resources of North Carolina during the Depression, as well as information on the education, health, population, labor, governorships, housing and entertainment of the time. The effects of the New Deal Programs and other important historic events are discussed. The work includes 200 photographs to complement interviews with North Carolina natives about their experiences, as well as appendices, a bibliography, and an index covering important federal photographers in North Carolina during the Great Depression.

At its height in 1935, the New Deal devoted roughly $27 million ($320 million today) to supporting tens of thousands of needy writers, dancers, actors, musicians, and visual artists, who created over 100,000 worksbooks, murals, plays, concertsthat were performed for or otherwise imbibed by millions of Americans. But why did the government get so involved with the arts in the first place? Musher addresses this question and many others by exploring the political and aesthetic concerns of the 1930s, as well as the range of responsesfrom politicians, intellectuals, artists, and taxpayersto the idea of active government involvement in the arts. In the process, she raises vital questions about the roles that the arts should play in contemporary society."

Arizona’s art history is emblematic of the story of the modern West, and few periods in that history were more significant than the era of the New Deal. From Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams to painters and muralists including Native American Gerald Nailor, the artists working in Arizona under New Deal programs were a notable group whose art served a distinctly public purpose. Their photography, paintings, and sculptures remain significant exemplars of federal art patronage and offer telling lessons positioned at the intersection of community history and culture. Art is a powerful instrument of historical record and cultural construction, and many of the issues captured by the Farm Security Administration photographers remain significant issues today: migratory labor, the economic volatility of the mining industry, tourism, and water usage. Art tells important stories, too, including the work of Japanese American photographer Toyo Miyatake in Arizona’s internment camps, murals by Native American artist Gerald Nailor for the Navajo Nation Council Chamber in Window Rock, and African American themes at Fort Huachuca. Illustrated with 100 black-andwhite photographs and covering a wide range of both media and themes, this fascinating and accessible volume reclaims a richly textured story of Arizona history with potent lessons for today.