WPA Negro Guide to South Carolina, 1936-1937
Document Description:
This article was written for the Negro Writer’s Project, a subset of the Office of Negro Affairs in the Federal Writer’s Project (FWP). The project was designed to create Negro Guides to accompany FWP’s state guidebooks. Black writers in Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville worked for the Negro Writer’s Project from January 1936 through July 1937 to collect information for the South Carolina guide. South Carolina’s Negro Writer’s Project ended, without publication, when the project’s director, Elise Jenkins, was let go due to budget cuts. Virginia was the only state to publish a Negro Guide, although some large cities like New York City, Pittsburgh, and Chicago produced black guidebooks, and Florida and Louisiana, along with South Carolina, had black writer’s projects. This article, from the unpublished guide, compiles accounts from the race riots in Charleston in 1919. It tells the story of how after World War I ended, the city, like others across the country, experienced conflicts as returning black and white soldiers renegotiated social conventions. Other sections for the guide looked at African-American history, education, and organizations from a black perspective.
Citation:
Ladson, Augustus. “The Charleston Insurrection: Controversies of Origin and Result.” WPA: Historical and Education. K-1-2-2. Manuscripts Division, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.
Correlating SC Social Studies Academic Standards:
Standard 3-5: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the major developments in South Carolina in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century.
Indicator 3-5.5 Explain the effects of the Great Depression and the New Deal on daily life in South Carolina, including the widespread poverty and unemployment and the role of the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Standard 5-4: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the economic boom-and-bust in America in the 1920s and 1930s, its resultant political instability, and the subsequent worldwide response.
Indicator 5-4.3 Explain the immediate and lasting effect on American workers caused by innovations of the New Deal, including the Social Security Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Standard 8-6: The student will demonstrate an understanding of South Carolina’s development during the early twentieth century.
Indicator 8-6.5 Explain the effects of the Great Depression and the lasting impact of New Deal programs on South Carolina, including the Rural Electrification Act, the Civilian Conservation Corps, Works Progress Administration and Public Works Administration building projects, the Social Security Act, and the Santee Cooper electricity project.
Standard USHC-7: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the economic boom-and-bust in America in the 1920s and 1930s, its resultant political instability, and the subsequent worldwide response.
Indicator USHC-7.5 Compare the first and second New Deals as responses to the economic bust of the Great Depression, including the rights of women and minorities in the workplace and the successes, controversies, and failures of recovery and reform measures such as the labor movement.
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