Date

2-29-2024

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)

Chair

Michael Davis

Keywords

Federal Writers' Project, White-Collar Relief, WPA, Texas, Federal Project Number One, Texas Federal Writers' Project, Texas Cultural Nationalism, Texas Works Progress Administration, Works Progress Administration

Disciplines

History

Abstract

My academic interest in the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) began in 1993. I have been interested in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from the time I was in my middle school years listening to stories from my grandmother. As a result, I grew up feeling that the WPA represented a part of a remarkable time and was a fascinating attempt by the far-away national government to help ordinary people in Texas struck down by the Great Depression. While conducting research on my master’s thesis, I met an archivist at the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina who suggested that I study the Southern Life Histories collected by the North Carolina FWP. I read some of these stories and became quite enthralled. This led me to researching and writing my master’s thesis (Writers on Relief: The Role of the Writers on the North Carolina Federal Writers’ Project) during which I examined how the Federal writers influenced the interviews that they conducted. This led me to my current investigation of the FWP in Texas when I observed that no comparable study had been done on the Lone Star State. My interest in Texas is personal. I am a native Texan who wants to contribute to a better understanding of the history of my state. One reason I undertook this project was to fill a gap in that understanding by providing a study of the Texas FWP. In this examination, I intend to show how New Deal optimism, cultural nationalism, and push for diversity influenced the Federal Writers’ Project in Texas. I will show how white Texas resisted the approach of the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project and how these contrasting and at times contradicting forces helped to forge a synthesis that made the Guides, the Ex-slave Narratives, and stories of Texas folklore appealing and acceptable to both white citizens and local governments while incorporating some, if not all, of the New Deal ideal of inclusion and diversity. The contrasting views of national FWP officials and those who directed the Texas project are reflected in the Texas guides, ex-slave narrative, and folklore and oral history. The result included some of the New Deal emphasis on inclusion and diversity, while not challenging too much the racial and class hierarchy of Texas. Thus, the products of the Texas FWP produced work that both ratified and somewhat challenged the Texas social order. In this way, the Texas FWP worked out a compromise that the national FWP office could accept and still keep their publications appealing to local elites and government officials in Texas.

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