WPA Building, New York World’s Fair
Source:NY Public Library

Fantastic mural, “Maintaining America’s Skills” by Philip Guston. It looks like they’ve included a woman engineering tableau.

May 6, 1935 – FDR creates Works Progress Administration (WPA)

“On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was just one of many Great Depression relief programs created under the auspices of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which Roosevelt had signed the month before. The WPA, the Public Works Administration (PWA) and other federal assistance programs put unemployed Americans to work in return for temporary financial assistance. Out of the 10 million jobless men in the United States in 1935, 3 million were helped by WPA jobs alone.While FDR believed in the elementary principles of justice and fairness, he also expressed disdain for doling out welfare to otherwise able workers. So, in return for monetary aid, WPA workers built highways, schools, hospitals, airports and playgrounds. They restored theaters–such as the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, S.C.–and built the ski lodge at Oregon’s Mt. Hood. The WPA also put actors, writers and other creative arts professionals back to work by sponsoring federally funded plays, art projects, such as murals on public buildings, and literary publications. FDR safeguarded private enterprise from competition with WPA projects by including a provision in the act that placed wage and price controls on federally funded products or services.Opponents of the New Deal in Congress gradually pared back WPA appropriations in the years leading up to World War II. By 1940, the economy was roaring back to life with a surge in defense-industry production and, in 1943, Congress suspended many of the programs under the ERA Act, including the WPA.“|
-History.com

This week in History:
May 3, 1952 First aircraft lands at North Pole
May 4, 1965 Willie Mays breaks National League home run record
May 5, 1961 Alan Shepard becomes first American in space
May 6, 1940 John Steinbeck wins Pulitzer for The Grapes of Wrath
May 7, 1994 Munch’s The Scream recovered after theft
May 8, 1945 V-E Day is celebrated in America and Britain
May 9, 1914 Woodrow Wilson proclaims first Mother’s Day holiday

Thisprint by Paul Kucharyson can be found in the online collection of The Columbus Museum.

Dox Thrash was a prolific printmaker who was born on this day in 1893 and settled in Philadelphia in the late 1920s. In 1937, at the height of the Great Depression, he became the first Black artist to work for the Fine Print Workshop of Philadelphia, a branch of the Works Progress Administration, a federal relief program designed to employ thousands of artists and share their work with the public. Learn more about the artist in the recently digitized publication “Dox Thrash: An African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered.”

“Monday Morning Wash,” around 1938–39, by Dox Thrash

Mermay 2022 - Day 01 prompt: Workers

I based my drawing on a WPA (Works Progress Administration) poster titled “Forging Ahead” by Harry Herzog (bottom picture), completed between 1936 and 1941 (during the Great Depression).

“Philadelphia is a good city in which to write American history.“

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Happy Constitution Day! Today’s the day when we celebrate the signing of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787!

The Constitution acted like a colossal merger, uniting a group of states with different interests, laws, and cultures. Under America’s first national  government, the Articles of Confederation, the states acted together only for specific purposes. The Constitution united its citizens as members of a whole, vesting the power of the union in the people. Without it, the American Experiment might have ended as quickly as it had begun.

The National Archives is home to the Constitution, as well as the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. Today is a great day to brush up on your Charters of Freedom history, or to learn something new about America’s founding documents. Head over to Archives.gov for Constitution Day!

Images:Painted plaster model of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Created in 1937 by the Pennsylvania Museum Extension Project (MEP), a branch of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). From the FDR Library; United States Constitution, page 1.

Children take a hearing test given by Works Progress Administration instructors in Holyoke, MA, 5/12/1937. 

Come for the New Deal, stay for the creepy fairy tale about playing in water! 

Series: WPA Information Division Photographic Index, ca. 1936 - ca. 1942

Record Group 69: Records of the Work Projects Administration, 1922 - 1944

Image description: A class of white, elementary-aged children sit at desks in a school room. Each child is wearing headphones and is writing on a piece of paper. A blackboard in the background is covered in cursive writing. 

Transcription of blackboard: 

The First Fountain

Once there was a little girl who loved to play in the water. One day she came to a little stream. She jumped up and down in it. At last she heard a voice from the grounds. She tried to run away but her feet were held fast. Her hair became streams of water. A fairy had turned her into a fountain.