The People's Recorder

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...

Join us on an unvarnished tour of America.

The People’s Recorder is a podcast about the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project: what it achieved, where it fell short, and what it means for Americans today.

Each episode features stories of individual writers, new places, and the project's impact on people's lives. Along the way we hear from historians, novelists, and others who shed light on that experience and unexpected connectio...