May 8, 2025: The Works Progress Administration: Iconic Individuals

[On May 6^th, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of WPA histories, leading up to a weekend post on why we need a 21^st century revival!]

On three iconic and inspiring figures linked to the WPA (alongside the many many artists who became associated with it, like John Steinbeck and Zora Neale Hurston!).

1)      Harry Hopkins: I wrote a bit about Hopkins in yesterday’s post, referencing his excellent quote about artists needing to eat too. But Roosevelt’s Commerce Secretary was influential and instrumental in the New Deal far beyond just its artistic and cultural programs, and one of the main ways he did so was as a principal architect of the Works Progress Administration. By that time Hopkins had had a long and varied career, all of which I’m sure played into his New Deal and WPA efforts, but I would especially highlight his first professional jobs, as a social worker, including his stint as executive secretary of the Board of Child Welfare. The WPA made clear that federal social programs were crucial forms of social work, and I have to believe a good bit of that emphasis came from Hopkins.

2)      John Gaw Meem: The WPA’s programs and jobs spanned many different aspects of society and culture, but at its heart were architectural projects, including countless building and transportation projects that remain in use to this day. Those projects required tons of workers across a wide variety of roles, among them the architects and other creatives who imagined and designed these buildings, bridges, and more. One particularly impressive example of a WPA-supported architect was John Gaw Meem, the New Mexico architect who helped keep traditional Southwestern architecture and art (influenced by Mexican, indigenous, and Anglo presences alike) alive and thriving in the 20^th century. It’s impossible to know how many such architects and artists might not have been able to continue their work without the WPA and the New Deal, but it’s clear that our society and nation would be infinitely impoverished if we didn’t have the work they produced.

3)      Hallie Flanagan: Yesterday’s post focused on the WPA’s artistic and cultural programs, those comprised by the Federal Project Number One. Harry Hopkins was instrumental in creating those programs overall, and not coincidentally one of his college classmates and friends at Iowa’s Grinnell College, Hallie Flanagan, became a central figure in these artistic programs, and specifically the Federal Theatre Project. Flanagan eventually became a successful target of the conservative fears and attacks I also highlighted yesterday, but I don’t want to give them further credence by dwelling on them at least here. Instead, I want to note just how fully she and the FTR supported the work of American drama, from the political and social realism of the great Clifford Odets to the Modernist experimentation of young Orson Welles to a central emphasis on African American playwrights and productions (through the Negro Theatre Project). Contra those conservatives, I can’t imagine a more essentially and inspiringly American figure than Hallie Flanagan.

Last WPA post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

May 7, 2025: The Works Progress Administration: The Arts

[On May 6^th, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of WPA histories, leading up to a weekend post on why we need a 21^st century revival!]

On three quotes that together help sum up the creation and arc of the WPA’s vital artistic and cultural programs.

1)      “Hell, they’ve got to eat, too”: FDR’s Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins was one of the most vocal and influential architects of both the New Deal overall and the cultural programs comprised by Federal Project Number One specifically. And I really love Hopkins’s blunt quote about why a New Deal organization like the WPA should fund artists and their work. As the second quote will reveal, that wasn’t the only motivation behind creating Federal Project Number One, but it’s a really important emphasis nonetheless: that artists are both workers and people like everyone else, and needed the same collective support that all Americans did during the Depression.

2)      “The immediate concern of the ideal commonwealth”: Again, there were also other, more philosophical layers to the creation of Federal Project Number One, and they were nicely summed up in the program’s mission statement, and particularly the second of its main two main ideas: “that the arts, no less than business, agriculture, and labor, are and should be the immediate concern of the ideal commonwealth.” Of course I entirely agree, and my favorite word in that quote is “immediate”: that the arts are in no way a luxury or a higher-order concern, but a vital focus, never more so than in our darkest moments.

3)      “A dangerous promotion of race mixing”: Such was one of the attacks directed at the Federal Theatre Project by conservatives in Congress, attacks that led not only to the defunding of that project and Federal Project Number One in 1939, but in many ways the end of the New Deal overall. On the one hand, those attacks and fears were as nonsensical as they always have been, will be, and are. But on the other hand, it’s most definitely the case that artistic and cultural works do help us move toward a more perfect union, one that is genuinely inclusive and fully reflects our foundational and defining diversity. For the years that they existed and thrived, the WPA’s arts programs embodied and amplified that crucial goal.

Next WPA post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

May 6, 2025: The Works Progress Administration: My Column on Federal Workers

[On May 6^th, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt estab-lished the Works Progress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of WPA histories, leading up to a weekend post on why we need a 21^st century revival!]

After I began drafting this blog series (inside baseball incoming for how long in advance I often draft blog series!), I decided to dedicate one of my Saturday Evening Post Considering History columns to federal workers under the New Deal, including a good bit of focus on the WPA. I’d love for you all to check that column out, so I’ll offer that hyperlink in lieu of today’s post and see you tomorrow for more WPA Studying!

Next WPA post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

May 5, 2025: The Works Progress Administration: EO 7034

[On May 6^th, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration [WPA]. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of WPA histories, leading up to a weekend post on why we need a 21^st century revival!]

On three significant elements of the Executive Order that established WPA.

1)      Building on the Past: While EO 7034 did in many ways create a new government agency, it didn’t quite do so officially; instead the WPA explicitly took the place of an existing agency, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Partly that shift was to make practical questions like leadership and funding for this new organization as smooth and straightforward as possible; the EO makes clear that “the Federal Emergency Relief Administrator shall serve also as Administrator of the Works Progress Administration,” for example. But I would argue that replacing FERA with WPA was also quite importantly symbolically, as it reflected the defining and important idea that these works projects—including, as we’ll see later in the week, artistic and cultural projects of all types—were part of the government’s Depression relief efforts.

2)      A Focus on Relief: That organizational shift was far from the only way in which the EO overtly and centrally linked the WPA to the concept of relief. Section 3a of the EO notes that one of the WPA’s “powers and duties” will be “to assure that as many of the persons employed on all work projects as is feasible shall be persons receiving relief.” For the prior two years, organizations like FERA and many other early New Deal programs had focused on precisely that mission, providing relief of many different kinds to Americans suffering from the Depression’s catastrophic and widespread effects. The WPA was one of many programs that became known as the “Second New Deal,” but details like the EO’s section 3a illustrate that despite this evolution, the New Deal would continue to focus on the goal of relief, even (if not especially) through these new projects.

3)      Wages and Working Conditions: Like most Executive Orders, 7034 didn’t go into great detail about specifics, leaving those for the follow-up work of the WPA (on layers to which, again, the rest of the week’s posts will focus). Which makes one particular specific section very telling: the fifth and final of the “powers and duties,” which authorizes the WPA “to investigate wages and working conditions and to make and submit to the President such findings as will aid the President in prescribing working conditions and rates of pay on projects.” That framing is ambiguous enough to allow in the abstract for less than ideal working conditions and wages, of course; but when we remember the FDR was considered in his own era and has been perceived ever since as one of the most pro-labor presidents in American history, it’s clear that this section was meant to give this federal program the ability to guarantee better working conditions and wages than might otherwise have been possible.

Next WPA post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

May 3-4, 2025: April 2025 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

March 31: Foolish Texts: A Fool’s Errand: For this year’s April Fool’s series, I AmericanStudied “fool”-ish cultural works, starting with Albion Tourgée’s ironic and powerful Reconstruction novel.

April 1: Foolish Texts: “Won’t Get Fooled Again”: The series continues with lessons and limits from an English classic rock anthem.

April 2: Foolish Texts: Nobody’s Fool: Two AmericanStudies takeaways from one of our quirkier and more affecting films, as the series fools on.

April 3: Foolish Texts: This Fool: Three Latino cultural works that can contextualize the recent sitcom about Los Angeles cholos.

April 4: Foolish Texts: Fool: The series concludes with a trio of pop culture adaptations of Shakespeare, inspired by Christopher Moore’s 2009 novel.

April 7: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Gatsby’s Pool: For the centennial of Fitzgerald’s novel, a tribute series kicks off with a tragic dip that’s as difficult to pin down as the man taking it.

April 8: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Three Phone Calls: The series continues with three calls that illustrates the novel’s portrayal of Modern technologies.

April 9: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Foshay Tower: The building and entrepreneur that bring an American icon to life, as the series reads on.

April 10: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Gatsby’s American Dreams: Two contrasting but also interconnected ways to analyze the novel’s ambiguous title character.

April 11: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Novelist-Narrators: The series concludes with a link to my 2011 American Literary Realism article on this innovative narrative technique.

April 12-13: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Fellow GatsbyStudiers: And here’s a special weekend post highlighting a ton of great work from fellow studiers of the novel!

April 14: Kyle Contexts: Younger Siblings: A series inspired by my awesome younger son’s 18^th birthday kicks off with prior posts on badass younger siblings in American history and culture.

April 15: Kyle Contexts: The ACLU: The series continues with three significant stages in the evolution of the nation’s preeminent civil rights organization.

April 16: Kyle Contexts: Musical Crossovers: A handful of examples of historic musical crossovers, as the series celebrates on.

April 17: Kyle Contexts: Track & Field Fighters: Five moments when track stars (like my younger son) dealt with and overcame challenges (like my younger son has).

April 18: Kyle Contexts: Chinchillas: The series concludes with three ways to contextualize my son’s favorite cute animal.

April 19-20: Kyle Railton’s Guest Post on the OJ Simpson Trial: And I couldn’t dedicate a series to Kyle without re-sharing his excellent Guest Post!

April 21: EarthquakeStudying: San Francisco in 1906: For Charles Richter’s 125^th birthday, an earthquake series kicks off with two distinct, equally inspiring responses to one of our most destructive disasters.

April 22: EarthquakeStudying: Three Other California Quakes: The series continues with one striking detail about each of three major 20^th century quakes.

April 23: EarthquakeStudying: The Indian Ocean in 2004: Three cultural works that can help us remember one of the most devastating natural disasters in history, as the series shakes on.

April 24: EarthquakeStudying: Haiti in 2010: Two interconnected ways to AmericanStudy a Caribbean disaster.

April 25: EarthquakeStudying: Movies: The series concludes with takeaways from three blockbuster films about catastrophic quakes.

April 26-27: EarthquakeStudying: Charles Richter: For his 125^th birthday, the very strange things I learned about Charles Richter, and what we do with such private details about public figures.

April 28: Ending the Vietnam War: The Mayaguez Incident: For the 50^th anniversary of the symbolic end of the Vietnam War, a series on cultural representations of that conclusion kicks off with a maritime crisis turned military incident.

April 29: Ending the Vietnam War: First Blood: The series continues with what an iconic film speech gets wrong about the end of the war, and what it gets very right.

April 30: Ending the Vietnam War: Miss Saigon: Two bravura sequences that reveal what a musical can and can’t do with history, as the series rolls on.

May 1: Ending the Vietnam War: “Galveston Bay”: Two ways an underrated Springsteen song importantly adds to his body of work about the war.

May 2: Ending the Vietnam War: Da 5 Bloods: The series concludes with one fraught and one vital meaning of “unfinished business” in Spike Lee’s recent film.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

May 2, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: Da 5 Bloods

[On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace in Saigon, a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. That conclusion has been represented frequently & complicatedly in American media, so this week for its 50^th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of such representations!]

On one fraught and one crucial meaning of unfinished business in Spike Lee’s recent film.

In Da 5 Bloods (2020), one of Spike Lee’s more underrated joints (due at least in part to its release directly onto Netflix during Covid), four Black Vietnam vets (Norm Lewis, Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, and Isaiah Whitlock Jr.) return to Vietnam nearly half a century after the war (along with one of their sons, played by then up-and-coming, now-disgraced Jonathan Majors) in search of both the remains of their charismatic squad leader (the always-great Chadwick Boseman) and a buried cache of stolen gold that he helped them hide before he was killed. As he so often does, Lee combines multiple genres (in this case a war film, a heist film, and the “one last roadtrip with old friends” genre, among others), defying easy categorization and creating a sprawling and messy but always compelling and at times transcendent work that is well worth checking out if you haven’t had the chance.

In terms of its depiction of the end and aftermaths of the Vietnam War, I’d say that Lee’s film focuses on the idea of “unfinished business,” in two distinct ways. The more obvious is also to my mind more problematic, as the film’s premise echoes the narrative of the ubiquitous POW/MIA flags that have, at least at times over the last few decades, been used as cover for extremist anti-government rhetoric (seriously, check out that Rick Perlstein column if you aren’t familiar with that movement’s appropriation of the flag). In particular, Lee’s film gets dangerously close at times to stereotyping (if not downright racist) depictions of its Vietnamese secondary characters—of course Lee has never been shy about grappling with uncomfortable questions of prejudice between as well as toward various communities, but at its best in his works these themes implicate all the characters; whereas in Da 5 Bloods, the anti-Vietnamese prejudices sometimes expressed (or at the very least implied) by his protagonists are much more one-sided. The worst of the POW/MIA narratives implies that the war itself is “unfinished business,” and there are moments in Lee’s film where we feel the same.

But there’s a second way to think about “unfinished business” in Da 5 Bloods, and I think it’s a significantly more meaningful as well as productive lens. More than 300,000 Black Americans served during the Vietnam War, comprising more than 16% of the armed forces (despite numbering less than 12% of the US population at the time), yet I would argue that our collective memories and representations of Vietnam vets have not done anything like justice to that community. To do so would also require us to put them in conversation with Black soldiers during WWI and WWII, and the broader question of African American military service—itself a frustrating bit of national “unfinished business” to be sure. But such complementary broader frames shouldn’t overshadow the specific stories of Black Vietnam War soldiers, casualties (like Boseman’s character), and veterans (like the other four main characters), stories that, despite our consistent cultural focus on the war and its aftermaths, remain largely untold. Lee’s film represents a crucial starting point for rectifying that omission.  

April Recap this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Representations of the war you’d highlight?

May 1, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: “Galveston Bay”

[On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace in Saigon, a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. That conclusion has been represented frequently & complicatedly in American media, so this week for its 50^th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of such representations!]

On two important ways that one of The Boss’s most underrated songs adds to his body of work.

The novelist Tim O’Brien is certainly in contention, but I don’t believe any American artist has created more cultural works depicting the Vietnam War overall, and definitely not its aftermaths in the United States specifically, than Bruce Springsteen. “Born in the U.S.A.” is without question the most famous (and the most famously misunderstood), but I could dedicate an entire week’s series to other Bruce songs about Vietnam vets, from “Shut Out the Light” to “The Wall” to “Brothers Under the Bridge (95)” and more. Springsteen has been working with vets for almost half a century now, and I think it shows; despite his own lack of experience with the war (compared to O’Brien for example, himself a Vietnam vet), Bruce has consistently depicted this community and its experiences with nuance, sensitivity, and impressive attention to detail. Taken together these songs constitute an important body of late 20^th century cultural and historical texts.

We have to be willing to be analytical and critical about such texts, though—yes, even if they’re by Bruce Springsteen—and it’s fair to say that they’re pretty thoroughly white, or at least that they elide any questions of race and culture for and around the community of Vietnam vets. That’s one reason why I think Springsteen’s moving and beautiful song “Galveston Bay” (1995) is one of his most frustratingly underrated songs: it depicts two Vietnam vets from two distinct races and cultures, white U.S. soldier Billy Sutter and South Vietnamese soldier Lee Bin Son; and, more complicatedly and importantly still, it portrays Billy as joining the Ku Klux Klan’s efforts to attack South Vietnamese immigrants as, after “the South fell/And the communist rolled into Saigon,” “the refugees came/Settled on the same streets/And worked the coast they’d grew up on.” By this point in the song Billy has been well developed as a multi-dimensional human character, so he’s not a caricatured racist, and that’s precisely the point—any white Americans, even those who’ve served their country honorably as Billy and the vast majority of Vietnam vets (white and otherwise) did, are susceptible to these white supremacist narratives and the violence that they can produce.

That’s one important way that “Galveston Bay” complicates, challenges, and ultimately adds to Springsteen’s body of Vietnam War songs. But the second is more significant still: it reminds us that even in the United States (that is, not just in Vietnam), the war connects to the Vietnamese community, a seemingly obvious point but one that is missing from many, many depictions of the war, Vietnam vets, and related histories. Of course Vietnamese American artists can tell that story in particularly meaningful ways, a long list that includes such recent masterpieces as Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer (2015) and Eric Nguyen’s Things We Lost to the Water (2021), among many others as I highlighted in this post. But as I hope this blog has always illustrated, American culture (like our identity, community, history) is additive, and Springsteen’s song likewise engages in thoughtful and compelling ways with the Vietnamese American experience in the aftermath of the war, including Lee’s impressive resistance to the KKK’s racial terrorism—and how those actions and Lee himself, in the song’s surprising and amazing climactic moment, change Billy Sutter for the better.

Last portrayal tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Representations of the war you’d highlight?