Ohio Federal Writers' Project

Description

Dated September 19, 1936, this photograph shows young ladies who are students of the Butler County Emergency School's homemaking class. Butler County Emergency School was a Works Progress Administration program, at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The photograph's caption reads "Butler County Emergency Schools. Elm St., Oxford, Ohio, Mrs. Viola Smith, Teacher. Class in Homemaking- Cooking, Food Values, Meal Planning, Sewing, Quilting, Basketry. This class wrote a play and dramatized it in Stewart High School. From the proceeds they purchased materials to make aprons and dresses so they might learn more about sewing, designing and finishing garments." The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a government office that hired unemployed Americans to work on various government projects from April 8, 1935 to June 30, 1943. In the first six months that the WPA existed, more than 173, 000 Ohioans, including both men and women, found employment through this program. More than 1, 500 unemployed teachers in Ohio found work through the WPA teaching illiterate adults how to read. In twelve separate counties, primarily in southeastern Ohio, more than twenty-five percent of families had at least one member working for the WPA during the late 1930s. By the end of 1938, these various workers had built or improved 12, 300 miles of roads and streets and constructed 636 public buildings, several hundred bridges, hundreds of athletic fields, and five fish hatcheries. WPA employees made improvements to thousands of more buildings, roads, and parks within Ohio. WPA artists also painted a number of...

Record Contributed By

Ohio History Connection

Record Harvested From

Ohio Digital Network