75 Years of WPA Today

To mark today's 75th anniversary of the Works Progress Administration, here's a roundup of blog postings around, from Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania to southern Texas, where Zora Neale Hurston's niece Lucy Ann Hurston will be speaking in a few days. There's also an artful selection of WPA posters here to commemorate the date. And in two days an exhibit celebrating the WPA legacy in California will open in Berkeley, and will run through August.

On the policy front, bloggers from Deepak Bhargava to Sarah VonEsch and The Progressive Pulse call for something like WPA's jobs program to address today's unemployment crisis, citing local movements and national initiatives, including Jobs for America Now. There are plans for a march for jobs next month. Which all points to the currency of that history in the dialogue about our present.

John Wiley & Sons, the publisher of Soul of a People, plans to issue a digital edition of the book this spring, and the Smithsonian Channel will release the dvd of Soul of a People: Writing America's Story on June 29th.

Traveling to Carolina with the WPA Guide

For my trip to Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill last week I checked out the WPA guide to North Carolina from the local library. In Durham, WUNC host Frank Stasio had probing questions on the WPA experience and its relevance today -- you can hear the show online. We read from the 1939 guide about the work-day rhythm at the American Tobacco Factory building, now home to the WUNC studio along with other offices and restaurants, and Carolina-bred plott hounds.

At Quail Ridge Books that night, a lively discussion touched on the political factors that made the WPA arts projects happen: new legislation combined with protests by out-of-work writers and editors in early 1935. Any sign of policies like that coming up now? Stay tuned.