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K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

American Life Histories: Manuscripts form the Federal Writers' Project , 1936-1940

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html

Provider: Library of Congress

About this resource

Appropriate grades
6–12
Subjects
English language arts (folklore), social studies (African Americans, North Carolina, United States history)
Provider
Library of Congress

Legal

Creative Commons License

This catalog record is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This license applies to the content of this page only and does not apply to the referenced website.

These life histories were written by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940. The Library of Congress collection includes 2,900 documents representing the work of over 300 writers from 24 states. Typically 2,000-15,000 words in length, the documents consist of drafts and revisions, varying in form from narrative to dialogue to report to case history. The histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations. Pseudonyms are often substituted for individuals and places named in the narrative texts.