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Within the Resettlement Administration, the New Deal agency charged with relocating struggling families, a little known Music Unit deployed field workers to government-planned communities around the country to boost residents’ morale and solidarity through folk music. Using the latest 1930s technology, the aluminum disk, they recorded hundreds of performances in a multitude of styles and languages. In the mind of Sidney Robertson, who recorded and archived many of them, every song represented America's voice.
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By Sheryl Kaskowitz
The Resettlement Administration was one of the New Deal’s most radical, far-reaching and highly criticized programs. It lasted just two years, from 1935 to 1937, when it became the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Its folk music recordings, now archived at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, are the sonic equivalents to the FSA’s famous photographs documenting the hardscrabble 1930s.
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By Catherine Hiebert Kerst
From 1938 to 1940, Sidney Robertson directed and carried out a remarkable ethnomusicological survey—the WPA California Folk Music Project—to document the state’s diverse musical culture. She recorded 35 hours of folk songs in twelve languages and 185 musicians from numerous ethnic communities. READ MORE
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Living New Deal Webinars
 “Ranger of the Lost Art”
with Doug Leen
Tuesday, April 16, 2024, 5pm-6pm PDT
While a seasonal ranger at Grand Teton National Park, Doug Leen salvaged a New Deal-era park poster destined for the burn pile. It led him on a decades-long quest to find and preserve the original thirteen WPA park poster designs and spurred the creation of Ranger Doug Enterprises. Learn about Doug’s new book, Rediscovering the WPA Posters of Our National Parks. FREE. REGISTER
"Whose Stories? Exploring the Legacy of the Federal Writers’ Project"
with David Taylor and Michelle Danforth Anderson
Tuesday, June 11, 2024, 5-6pm PDT
 The People's Recorder, a national podcast launched in 2024, recounts stories of American life in the 1930s using interviews and recordings made by workers of the WPA’s Federal Writers’ Project. This webinar intertwines voices from the past with contemporary stories that echo with them, while exploring the FWP’s legacy—what it achieved, where it fell short, whose stories got told and what it means to America today.
David Taylor is writer and producer of The People Recorder, from Spark Media. He wrote and co-produced the 2009 award-winning documentary "Soul of a People, Writing America’s Story”, directed by Andrea Kalin, about the origins of the FWP.
Michelle Danforth Anderson is Marketing and Tourism Director for the Oneida Nation and producer of the documentary, "Missing Threads, The Story of the Wisconsin Indian Child Welfare Act." FREE. REGISTER
In-Person Events
 National New Deal Preservation Association (NNDPA)
"The New Deal: Inspiration and Hope”
Friday-Saturday, April 12-13, 2024
The public is invited to this two-day conference hosted by our new New Mexico Chapter, featuring New Deal historians and the publication of a new book, “The New Deal—Looking Back, Moving Forward.”
MORE INFO
LOCATION: Santa Fe Woman's Club, 1616 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM
 The Huntington
The Sargent Claude Johnson Exhibition
"From the Harlem Renaissance through the Civil Rights Movement"
Through May 20, 2024
The California-based African-American artist Johnson served as unit supervisor of the WPA sculpture division. His powerful masks, portrait busts, lithographs and sculptures have become emblems of the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson began a monumental architectural installation for the California School for the Blind in Berkeley, commissioned by the federally sponsored Public Works of Art Project. WATCH THE VIDEO
LOCATION: MaryLou and George Boone Gallery. The Huntington, huntington.org. 151 Oxford Rd, San Marino, CA
 Kansas State University
"To the Stars Through Art: A History of Art Collecting in Kansas Public Schools, 1900-1950”
Through May 11, 2024
The art collected by Kansas schools reflects local school administrators' and regional artists' efforts to keep the arts at the forefront of K-12 public education. MORE INFO
In connection with the exhibit, on April 13, 2024, 1-4pm, the "Kansas Schools, Native Americans, and the New Deal Symposium” features presentations by artists and art historians, including Living New Deal National Associate Kara Heitz. FREE. MORE INFO
LOCATION: Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, 701 Beach Lane, Manhattan, KS
 Cascadia Art Museum
"Lines of Empathy: Prints and Drawings by Richard Correll"
Through June 2, 2024
This exhibition features works by WPA artist Richard V. Correll (1904-1990), one of the Northwest’s most accomplished printmakers. Beginning in 1937 Correll participated in the Washington State WPA as a printmaker and muralist. He is known for his Paul Bunyan imagery and the murals he painted for the Arlington, Washington High School. MORE INFO
LOCATION: Cascadia Art Museum, East Gallery, 190 Sunset Ave. S., #E, Edmonds, WA
 Baltimore Museum of Art
"Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA"
Through June 30, 2024
In 1943 the US General Services Administration entrusted to the BMA nearly one thousand prints by women printmakers working for the WPA’s Federal Art Project (1935-1942). The exhibition features artists who used their imagery to call out the racial, gendered and class-based inequities exacerbated by the Great Depression.
MORE INFO
LOCATION: BMA, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD
 The Met Fifth Avenue
"The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism"
Through July 28, 2024
The show delves into the far-reaching impact of Black artists portraying everyday life in the new Black cities that sprang up in the decades between the 1920s and 40s. The exhibit features over 150 artworks, including by prominent artists of WPA. MORE INFO
LOCATION: The Met, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery for Special Exhibitions, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
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The Presidential Yacht USS Potomac was FDR's getaway from the pressures of the White House. Four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, FDR boarded the vessel ostensibly for a fishing trip. Instead, he secretly traveled to Newfoundland to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to form the Allied partnership. READ MORE
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 To Preserve and Enhance
Riverside Park, New York, NY
By Kevin Baker
As a longtime resident of New York City, it was difficult for me to pick a favorite New Deal site—there are so many possibilities! I finally settled on Riverside Park, a 6.7-mile-long strip of leafy grandeur along Manhattan’s Upper West Side. READ MORE
Tell us about your favorite New Deal Site. Send us a first-person story of 100 (or so) words about your favorite New Deal site and why you chose it. Send your submissions to: [email protected]. Thanks!
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Some links may limit access for nonsubscribers. Please support local journalism, if you can.
Who experts consider the greatest American president is changing with the times
The London School of Economics released its third Presidential Greatness Project survey, which shed light on what may be an evolution in how presidential experts assess the presidency. The poll rated Abraham Lincoln the greatest president, with an average score of 93.9/100 across all respondents. This year, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (90.8) edged out George Washington (90.3) for number two spot.
By Brandon Rottinghaus and Justin Vaughn
USAPP, February 19, 2024
Biden Should Channel His Inner FDR and Soak the Rich
Roosevelt welcomed the hatred of the plutocrats—and won a landslide. Biden should take note
By John Nichols
The Nation, March 13, 2024
Surviving the Ugliness of It All
Roosevelt looked forward with such optimism, such an assumption of abundance, such a faith in progress that he saw present difficulties as stumbles on the path to the sunlit uplands to come.
By David Brooks
The New York Times, March 7, 2024
Biden Seeks $8 Billion to Expand American Climate Corps
President Joe Biden is asking Congress for $8 billion to hire 50,000 workers annually through 2031 for a New Deal-inspired jobs program to fight climate change.
By Ari Natter
Bloomberg, March 11, 2024
History Fellow Examines Frances Perkins Immigration Policy
In her new book, Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany, Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham drew heavily on the records of the National Archives to examine Frances Perkins’s challenges as Secretary of the Department of Labor, which then encompassed the Naturalization and Immigration Service, and the backlash she faced over immigration policy.
By Angela Tudico
National Archives News, March 11, 2024
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"Propagandists, defeatists, and dupes, protected as they are by our fundamental civil liberties, have been preaching, and are still preaching, the ungodly gospel of fear. They use insinuation and falsehood. They have tried to shatter the confidence of Americans in their Government and in one another...They have attempted to exploit the natural love of our people for peace. They have represented themselves as pacifists, when actually they are serving the most brutal warmongers of all time."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, Radio Address from the U.S.S. Potomac, March 29, 1941
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