Contact:
Elizabeth Blevins, Director, Office of Communications
Office: (740) 351-3810; FAX: (740) 351-3179; Cell: (740) 464-4854
940 Second Street – Portsmouth, Ohio 45662
E-mail: eblevins@shawnee.edu 
Web site: www.shawnee.edu

            When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office as president of the United States in 1933, the country was in the middle of the Great Depression. Thousands of people were out of work in every city across the United States and Roosevelt formed the Works Progress Administration that hired millions of people to work on roads, bridges and schools.
            A very small part of the WPA project was for artists, writers, musicians and actors. Travel guides documenting American life were created for the Federal Writers’ Project. The writers told America’s story with local history, culture, and interviews with local people for travel guides and state guides they produced.
            Writers like Studs Terkel, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Nelson Algren, Ralph Ellison, Eudora Welty, John Cheever and Jim Thompson created a permanent record of life during that era in American history. Some writers went on to win National Book Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. At its peak, the project employed more than 6,600 people in 48 states.
            The project was considered the largest cultural experiment in U.S. history. Writers interviewed former slaves and recorded the life histories of citizens all across America. Local histories, oral histories, ethnographies, children’s books and state guides were a result of the project with 200 volumes published including 48 state guides and 4,000 life histories collected that include slave narratives.
            Through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Clark Memorial Library at Shawnee State University is one of only 30 libraries in the country chosen to provide an outreach program in connection with an upcoming documentary on Smithsonian Channel HD, “Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story.” The documentary is a major television program that will air at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 6, Monday, Sept. 7 and Monday, Sept. 14.
            “We have plans for a number of events in conjunction with the Portsmouth Library and the Southern Ohio Museum that will introduce people to the Federal Writers’ Project and to the amazing resources it created,” said Connie Stoner, Clark Memorial Library director. “We look forward to sharing these resources with our community.”
            The “Soul of a People” kickoff will be an all-day event from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 15 at the Portsmouth Public Library. For the complete schedule of events, go to http://fwp.shawnee.edu.