Congress, the play was directed by or sun wells. On the Opening Night in 1936, 10,000 people crowded the streets of harlem in preferred to score a ticket. We were a discouraged people. Because we were the first to lose our jobs when the old man depression came along. The struggle while depression fear and failure stop the nation. A tenth of the population of the United States went out of every four of us was in vain we sought for something to restore our confidence, our whole our courage. Without jobs we had no money. Without money if we could not purchase food for the hungry mouths at home. Our only hope late and charity. It youll wear people to the bread lines. We waited for some sign of better days. Then came the federal governments work program. One by one, it took us out of the bread land and gave us a new chance to take a normal place in the life of our community. It made a self supportive. It changed the haggard hopeless faces of the bread line into face is filled with hope and
They created a number of Arts Projects to put writers and artists back to work. It happened in the 1930s that they created the federal writers project and started to collect slave testimony. It was kind of like the 19 thirties was the last opportunity to collect the oral histories of the last generation of African Americans who had experienced slavery firsthand before they passed away. They actually created through that project that only lasted a few years, 1936 to 1939, that project created the largest repository of ex slave testimony that we have within the united states. Winding up with over 2300 interviews that are largely Available Online at the library of congress website. Anyone who is interested can go in and use those. Scholars have used them to dramatically transform the way they right about the history of slavery and emancipation and kind of reconsider. That my book took a slightly different turn by looking at the ex slave project to look at the racial politics of the 1930s.
Now this is a self selecting crowd. I know some of you already know who Frances Perkins is, but a lot of people dont. So, lets start by asking this question. How many of you know who Frances Perkins is . Oh, yes. This is great. Good, good, good. How about this . How many of you know someone on Social Security . Please raise your hand. How many of you know someone who is receiving Unemployment Insurance or who has ever received Unemployment Compensation . How many of you know someone working a 40hour week . More or less. Frances pirngs work. How many of you know a 12yearold who has quit going to school so she can work fulltime in a factory . Frances perkins work, her ban on child labor enacted in the fair standards act made it possible to keep kids in School Longer instead of in mills and factories. Its awfully noisy here. I want to talk more so you know about the breadth of Frances Perkins accomplishments. A middleaged woman waited expectantly to meet with her employer at his residence
Experienced slaevry firsthand before they passed away. They had created through that project that lasted only a few years, 1936 to 1939, that project created the largest repository of exslave testimony we have in the united states, winding up with over 2300 exslave interviews that are now largely Available Online at the library of congress website. Anyone who is interested can go in and use those. Scholars have used them to dramatically transform the way they write about the history of slavery and emancipation and kind of reconsider that. My book took a slightly different turn or different tact by looking at the exslave collection as its known to look at the racial politics of the 1930s and really to see what does it tell us about race and the federal government and attempts to rewrite a National Historical narrative during the kind of moment of economic crisis and kind of a nationwide crisis in terms of the sense of national identity. What are the racial politics at the time . Well, y
Espn putting out a Young Readers bookcalled the fierce 44 . For the undefeated, our platform which is based on race, sports and culture, we had done a digital project in 2017 that was kind of an ode to the first africanamerican president , hence the title the fierce 44 so we had this idea that lets do kind of an all my two in arguably i think the greatest achievement for africanamericans is tobecome president and who else should be on that list . We did a list, an Interactive Digital project and it was well received. Highlydonated. And then Houghton Mifflin harcourt published it. Said could you turn this into a Childrens Book . And because there are not a lot of africanamerican biographies in the genre that was popular, childrens biography collections so they let robert ball have thesebig beautiful illustrations so we edited our digital project and turned it into a book. Whats the format of this book . Its basically short bio sketches with a couple of illustrations and it just gives yo