The People's Recorder

Episodes Summary:

A beautiful and powerful art exhibition is touring the country right now, called Pictures of Belonging, which explores three artists of Japanese descent - Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi and Miné Okubo.  The exhibition puts these artists and their work in their rightful place in the history of American art.  

For this bonus episode, producer and lead writer David Taylor visits the exhibit...

The People’s Recorder was funded in part with a grant from Wisconsin Humanities. But did you know that Wisconsin Humanities also has their own podcast, Human Powered?

Hosted by Adam Carr and Dasha Kelly Hamilton, Human Powered focuses on the power of the humanities in Wisconsin's prisons. We wanted to share an episode from that terrific show with you today. 

People in prisons are cut off from their fami...

Episode Summary:

In the 1930s, the notion of making an incubator for creativity in a region devastated by the Great Depression got tested in Nebraska. This episode looks at what happened there when the Writers’ Project came to town, through a group of creatives from contrasting backgrounds, including a hobo, a nurse and a hardware store poet – all under the watchful eye of a university professor and a celebrated novelist.&n...

Episode Summary:

The Franklin Delano Library and Museum is an amazing place which just celebrated its 75th anniversary.  President Roosevelt had the idea to build the library on his family property in Hyde Park, New York, using private funds.  And then he donated the library and its historical collections, including all of his personal and official papers, to the US Government.  This started the pre...

This month, we're doing something a little different.  There are some amazing podcasts out there that give us a view of America through a distinctive lens. One of our favorites is Sidedoor: A podcast from the Smithsonian.  

Every episode, host Lizzie Peabody sneaks listeners through Smithsonian's side door to search for stories that can't be found anywhere else.

We're excited to share one of those stories....

Episode Summary:

This episode features two more stories of outsiders remaking themselves and California history. 

Eluard McDaniel left the Jim Crow South for California as a boy, and remade himself as an activist and writer on the West Coast. His account of his life brought him national attention when it appeared in American Stuff, a book of creative works by members of the Federal Writers’ Project and Federal A...

Episode Summary:

California has always attracted outsiders, from the Gold Rush in the 1800s to young actors and filmmakers drawn to Hollywood. California was especially a place of migration during the Great Depression, when tens of thousands came searching for jobs and new beginnings. 

This is the first of two episodes about writers displaced by the Depression who took different paths to remaking themselves in California...

Episode Summary:

In the 1930s when America was deep in the disaster of the Dust Bowl, Wisconsin professor and wildlife expert Aldo Leopold brought a new way of thinking about how people engage with nature. Studying the dynamics of soil erosion and people’s behavior, he made suggestions for change that led him to the White House to meet the President.

Leopold faced a personal crisis too, while writing his way toward a new unde...

Episode Summary:

Gerald Hill is an Oneida lawyer and the former President of the Indigenous Language Institute. This bonus features a conversation with Hill, who provides the voice for Oneida community leader Oscar Archiquette in our episode about the WPA Oneida Language Project in Wisconsin. For that episode, Hill read a handful of Archiquette’s quotes about his life and work on the WPA. After each reading, he gave valuable his...

Episode Summary:

In 1977, Charlie Hill became the first Native comedian to perform on a national TV broadcast – a groundbreaking performance in television and cultural history.  

“It was a huge moment,” said Seminole filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, “When Charlie Hill went on national television and simply spoke like a human being... He changed the public perception about what a Native person is.” 

Episode Summary:

The Federal Writers’ Project interviews, collected in the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, have inspired generations with their personal experiences of American life. The Writers’ Project pioneered oral history and the idea of documenting history from the grassroots up.

In this bonus, following the episode on the Writers’ Project interviews in Florida, we hear excerpts from oral histories...

Episode Summary:

While working on the WPA Florida guidebook, the Federal Writers’ Project team – including Zora Neale Hurston and Stetson Kennedy – documented a wide range of life from prison camps to soup kitchens to hair salons, in recordings that reveal a living culture and enduring traditions.  

Hurston and Kennedy traveled the state, recording people’s stories and songs. That included a visit to a remote turpen...

Episode Summary:

As host Chris Haley said, Zora Neale Hurston was a homegrown Florida treasure, known for her wit, charm, and a true gift for collecting folklore.  As part of her work with the Writers’ Project, she made over a dozen recordings with audio equipment borrowed from the Library of Congress.

She knew about the equipment from earlier field recordings she had made with folklorist Alan Lomax. &nbs...

Episode Summary:

In the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston was already a nationally known novelist, anthropologist and member of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. Yet she saw her publishing income dry up during the Great Depression even with the publication of her best-known novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. When she took a job with the Writers’ Project in Florida, her first assignment was to write for the WPA Guide to Florida. ...

Episode Summary:

As detailed in episodes 2 and 3, Roscoe Lewis’ unit on the Federal Writers’ Project conducted interviews with the survivors of slavery in Virginia. One member of the unit, a former teacher named Susie RC Byrd, interviewed dozens of formerly enslaved persons in Petersburg in a series of weekly meetings. Lewis and Byrd also arranged to borrow equipment from the University of Virginia to record songs performed at ...

Episode Summary:

This episode looks at communities that have suffered neglect from official history, and the example of African American landmarks and burial grounds in Virginia. Some families and communities have pushed to reclaim their place and spaces, often using tools employed earlier by the Federal Writers’ Project. Project workers often consulted landmarks and cemetery headstones to present a fuller picture of local ...

Episode Summary:

Get to know The People's Recorder host Chris Haley a little bit better. Chris is Director of Research, Education and Outreach, and the Study of the Legacy of Slavery at the Maryland State Archives. He's also an actor, a poet, and a filmmaker.  

In this special bonus episode, he speaks with Spark Media's Bright Djampa about growing up as his Uncle Alex's iconic book "Roots" became a phenome...

Episode Summary:

In the depths of the Great Depression, the U.S government hired out-of-work writers and laid-off reporters and sent them out to record the stories of all kinds of Americans. Dubbed the Federal Writers’ Project, historians have called the program a giant "listening project." 

In this introductory episode, host Chris Haley sets the stage, laying out 1930s America, the New Deal, and the cultural forces ...

Episode Summary:

The Federal Writers’ Project set out to create a series of books that held up a mirror to America, and chronicled communities that had long been ignored. Howard University professor Sterling Brown led the agency’s effort to document African American history in a series of books. In Virginia, chemistry professor Roscoe Lewis led a small team to produce the first book in that national series, titled The Negro...