Related Resources

The following titles from the Florida WPA Collection have not been included in this online presentation:

AFS 3137a1 - A Storm Story
AFS 3138b1 - Ever Been Down
AFS 3139a1 - Tampa
AFS 3146b2 - Nina [translation]
AFS 3378a3 - When the Leaf Turns Red
AFS 3379a6 - A Sweet Little Woodmouse [fragment]
AFS 3381a3 - Papa, Mama y el Niño
AFS 3381b2 - La Cucaracha
AFS 3382a1 - La Cucaracha
AFS 3386b3 - Abaco [comment]
AFS 3387a2 - They'll Only Talk About You [comment]
AFS 3387b2 - Crab is a Better Man Than Man [comment]
AFS 3391a1 - [In the Still of the Night]
AFS 3392b1 - Cabbage
AFS 3393a1 - Just Before I Go
AFS 3393b1 - The Little Black Cat Sitting Under the Stove
AFS 3394a1 - I Got a Gal, She Mean Me No Good
AFS 3524a1 - Kerosene Charlie Stays Over Night for Sixty-Five Cents
AFS 3524a2 - Little Dick and Big Dick
AFS 3524a3 - Kerosene Charlie Goes Fishing
AFS 3524a4 - The Man with the Bellyache
AFS 3528b1 - [Saints and Sinners]
AFS 3528b4 - [From the Heart]
AFS 3530b5 - Cantos Juajiros
AFS 3531a1 - Birthday Party
AFS 3531a2 - [Test of recording equipment]
AFS 3531b1 - Birthday Party
AFS 3532b2 - The Story of a Woman and a Preacher
AFS 3535b2 - Italian Verse
AFS 3536a2 - Calinga
AFS 3536a3 - La Cucaracha
AFS 3537a5 - Farewell Song (fragment)
AFS 3537a6 - [Test of recording equipment]
AFS 3537b3 - Dance Song (Polka)
AFS 3538b1 - [Test of recording equipment]
AFS 3545a1 - Fromajadas
AFS 3547a3 - The Little Brook
AFS 3888a6 - [Introduction to Play]
AFS 3888b1 - [Untitled]
AFS 3888b2 - [Untitled]
AFS 3888b3 - [Untitled]
AFS 3888b4 - [Recitation]
AFS 3891a1 - The Johnson Girls (and The Johnson Girls [textual transcription])
AFS 3896a2 - [Announcement about Mother Ella Lassiter]
Chanteys [textual transcription]

Research Materials from the Florida WPA Collections

"Proposed Recording Expedition into the Floridas"

A seven-page essay about Florida folklife written by Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston, originally of Eatonville, Florida, was already a published novelist and folklorist when she took a job with the Federal Writers' Project in Florida. She wrote this essay in preparation for the visit of Herbert Halpert (director of the folk song department of the National Service Bureau, Federal Theatre Project) as part of the Southern recording expedition sponsored by the Joint Committee on Folk Arts and Library of Congress. Carita Doggett Corse, state director of the Florida Federal Writers' Project, forwarded it to B. A. Botkin, national folklore director for the Federal Writers' Project and chairman of the Joint Committee on Folk Arts of the WPA. Corse explained, "[Halpert's] trip was cut short so that only a few of these recordings were made. Zora Neale Hurston completed contacts for Negro recordings at the turpentine camp in Cross City and in Tampa before she was called to Philadelphia."

Recording Logs

Two lists of song titles and performers, documenting two of the five recording expeditions featured in this online presentation. The first, a five-page excerpt from Herbert Halpert's Southern recording expedition log, covers the June 18-21, 1939, recording sessions in Jacksonville and Tampa (AFS 3135a1-3146b3). The second, nine pages, lists the recordings made by Stetson Kennedy and Robert Cook in Riviera and Key West, January 15-31, 1940 (AFS 3378a1-3395b2).

Transcripts

Transcripts of twenty-five of the songs collected by the Florida WPA fieldworkers, plus detailed logs, including transcripts of speech, for thirteen of the disks recorded by the fieldworkers. The extant song-text transcriptions were derived primarily from the recordings of Bahamian Americans and Cuban Americans made in Riviera and Key West in January 1940. Lyrics were transcribed in the original language and translated into English. The partial set of disk logs documents the recordings made in Jacksonville, Cross City, and Ybor City in August 1939 by Stetson Kennedy and Robert Cook, as well as the recordings of Greeks made at Tarpon Springs in May 1940 by John Filareton.

Correspondence

Images and transcriptions of sixty-five items (seventy-nine pages) of correspondence written before, during, and after the recording trips. The correspondence included in this collection comprises typed and handwritten manuscripts and telegrams. Much of the communication is between Carita Doggett Corse, state director of the Florida Federal Writers' Project, and Harold Spivacke, chief of the Music Division at the Library of Congress from 1937 to 1972, regarding the progress of the fieldwork.

Selected Bibliography

Florida writings from the Federal Writers' Project (FWP)

This section includes writings about Florida history and folklife published by Federal Writers' Project workers both inside and outside the scope of their federal employment.

American Stuff: An Anthology of Prose and Verse by Members of the Federal Writers' Project. 1937. Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1976.
Bolton, Ruth. "Irene Jackson." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1939. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
---. "Rev. Harden W. Stucky." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1939. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
Botkin, B. A., ed. Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery. 1945. Reprint, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989.
---. A Treasury of American Folklore. 1944. Reprint, New York: Wings Books, 1993.
---. A Treasury of Southern Folklore. 1949. Reprint, New York: American Legacy Press, 1984.
Clark, Bernal Emerson, and Carita Doggett Corse. Dr. Andrew Turnbull and the New Smyrna Colony of Florida. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1919.
Corse, Carita Doggett. Florida: Empire of the Sun. Tallahassee: State Hotel Commission, 1930.
Darsey, Barbara B. "Ella Lassiter (Life and Songs in Slavery)." Folklore Project, Florida Writers' Project, 1940. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
Darsey, Barbara Berry, and Stetson Kennedy. "Florida Squatters." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1938. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State. American Guide Series. Compiled and written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Florida. 1939. Reissued, with a new introduction by John I. McCollum, as The WPA Guide to Florida: The Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s Florida. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
Foster, Charles C. Conchtown USA: Bahamian Fisherfolk in Riviera Beach, Florida. Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic University Press, 1991.
Hurston, Zora Neale. The Complete Stories. Introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sieglinde Lemke. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
---. "Dance Songs and Tales from the Bahamas." Journal of American Folklore 43 (July-September 1930): 294-312.
---. Dust Tracks on a Road. 1942. Reprint, with restored text, foreword by Maya Angelou, and afterword by Henry Louis Gates Jr., New York: HarperPerennial, 1996.
---. Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings. New York: Library of America, 1995.
---. Go Gator and Muddy the Water: Writings by Zora Neale Hurston from the Federal Writers' Project. Edited and with a biographical essay by Pamela Bordelon. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.
---. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing . . . & Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader. Edited by Alice Walker, introduction by Mary Helen Washington. Old Westbury, N.Y.: The Feminist Press, 1979.
---. Mules and Men. Reprint, with a foreword by Arnold Rampersad and afterword by Henry Louis Gates Jr., New York: HarperPerennial, 1990.
---. The Sanctified Church. Berkeley, Ca.: Turtle Island, 1981.
---. Seraph on the Suwanee: A Novel. 1948. Reprint, with a foreword by Hazel V. Carby, and afterword by Henry Louis Gates Jr., New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.
---. Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel. 1937. Reprint, with a foreword by Mary Helen Washington, New York: HarperPerennial, 1990.
Huss, Veronica D. "A Riviera 'Conch'." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1936. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
Huss, Veronica, and Evelyn Werner. "The Conchs of Riviera, Florida." Southern Folklore Quarterly 4 (September 1940): 141-51.
Kennedy, Stetson. "Cantantes Callejeros y La Cucaracha." Southern Folklore Quarterly 6 (September 1942): 140-50.
---. "Enrique and Amanda." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1939. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
---. "Mrs. Amelia Devoe." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1939. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
---. "Mister Homer." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1939. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
---. "Nanigo in Florida." Southern Folklore Quarterly 4 (September 1940): 153-6.
---. Palmetto County. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1942. Reprint, with a new afterword by the author, Tallahassee: Florida A&M University Press, 1989.
---. "La Paloma in Florida." Southern Folklore Quarterly 7 (September 1943): 163-4.
---. "Pedro and Estrella." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1939. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
McDonough, Gary W., ed. The Florida Negro: A Federal Writers' Project Legacy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.
Morris, Alton C. Folksongs of Florida. 1950. Reprint, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1990.
Shepherd, Rose. "Mrs. Isabel Barnwell." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1939. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
---. "Nueva Esperanza Plantation." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1939. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.
---. "Slaves of Nueva Esperanza." Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers' Project, 1939. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1998), accessed June 30, 2000.

The FWP and the WPA

The following publications relate particularly to the cultural programs ("Federal One") of the WPA--their creation, their implementation, their achievements, and their legacy. Some of these publications place special emphasis on the WPA's work in Florida and the South.

Banks, Ann, and Robert Carter. Survey of Federal Writers' Project Manuscript Holdings in State Depositories. Foreword by Alan Brinkley. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1985.
Bindas, Kenneth J. All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA's Federal Music Project and American Society, 1935-1939. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995.
Bordelon, Pamela G. "Mirror to America: the Federal Writers' Project's Florida Reflection." Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 1991.
Botkin, B. A. "WPA and Folklore Research: 'Bread and Song.'" Southern Folklore Quarterly 3 (March 1939): 7-14.
---. "We Called It Living Lore." New York Folklore Quarterly 14 (Autumn 1958): 189-201.
Brewer, Jeutonne P. The Federal Writers' Project: A Bibliography. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1994.
Cole, John Y. Amassing American "Stuff": The Library of Congress and the Federal Arts Projects of the 1930s. Reprinted from Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress (Fall 1983): 356-89. In The New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program, 1999), accessed June 30, 2000.
Couch, William T., ed. These Are Our Lives. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939.
Davidson, Katharine H., ed. Preliminary Inventory of the Records of the Federal Writers' Project, Work Projects Administration, 1935-44 (Record Group 69). Preliminary inventories of the National Archives of the United States, No. 57. National Archives Publication No. 54-2. Washington, D.C.: National Archives, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1953.
Findlay, James A., and Margaret Bing. "Touring Florida Through the Federal Writers' Project." Reprinted from The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 23 (1998): 288-305. In The WPA: An Exhibition of Works Progress Administration (WPA) Literature and Art from the Collections of the Bienes Center for the Literary Arts (Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Broward County Library, Bienes Center for the Literary Arts, 1998), accessed July 28, 2003.
Henderson, Ann, and Stetson Kennedy. "The WPA Guide to Florida: A Conversation Between Ann Henderson and Stetson Kennedy." In Florida Forum 9 (Fall 1986): 10-13.
Kennedy, Stetson. "Way Down Upon . . . Gathering Tales of Folklife in Suwannee Country." FHC Forum 17 (Spring/Summer 1993): 22-27.
---. "The W.P.A. Florida Writers Project: A Personal View." FEH Forum 12 (Spring 1989): 1-4.
Leuchtenburg, William. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940. New York: Harper and Row, 1963.
McDonald, William F. Federal Relief Administration and the Arts: The Origins and Administrative History of the Arts Projects of the Works Progress Administration. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969.
McElvaine, Robert S. "New Deal Cultural Programs." In Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, 649-50. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Mangione, Jerre. The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers' Project, 1935-1943. 1972. Reprint, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Penkower, Monty Noam. The Federal Writers' Project: A Study in Government Patronage of the Arts. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.
Selvaggio, Marc S. The American Guide Series: Works by the Federal Writers' Project. 1990. Reprint, Berkeley, Ca.: Schoyer's Antiquarian Books, 1998.
Swados, Harvey, ed. The American Writer and the Great Depression. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1966.
Terkel, Studs. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. 1970. Reprint, New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
Terrill, Tom, and Jerrold Hirsh. Such as Us: Southern Voices of the Thirties. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978.
Watkins, T. H. The Hungry Years: A Narrative History of the Great Depression in America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999.

Florida Writers

The following publications contain biographical and/or bibliographical information about writers whose work and whose voices appear in this online presentation.

Blackman, Lucy Worthington. The Women of Florida.. 2 vols. Jacksonville: The Southern Historical Publishing Associates, 1940. Vol. 2, p. 27 includes biographical information for Carita Doggett Corse.
Blake, Emma. "Zora Neale Hurston: Anthropologist and Folklorist." Negro History Bulletin 29 (April 1966): 149-50.
Bulger, Peggy A. "Stetson Kennedy: Applied Folklore and Cultural Advocacy." Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1992.
---. "Stetson Kennedy: Folklore and the Struggle for Human Rights." The Folklore Historian 8 (1991): 56-66.
Crawley, Laura K., and Joseph C. Hickerson. Zora Neale Hurston: Recordings, Manuscripts, and Ephemera in the Archive of Folk Culture and Other Divisions of the Library of Congress. LCAFAFA No. 11. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1992. ASCII version available.
Dance, Daryl C. "Zora Neale Hurston." In American Women Writers: Biographical Essays, edited by Maurice Duke, Jackson R. Bryer, and M. Thomas Inge, 321-51. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. "A Negro Way of Saying." The New York Times Book Review, April 21, 1985, 1, 43, 45. Reprinted as afterword in HarperPerennial editions of Zora Neale Hurston works.
Glassman, Steve, and Kathryn Lee Seidel, eds. Zora in Florida. Orlando: University of Central Florida Press, 1991.
Gold, Pleasant Daniel. History of Duval County, Florida. St. Augustine, Fla.: The Record Company, 1928. Includes biographical information for Carita Doggett Corse, p. 298.
Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Foreword by Alice Walker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.
Hurst, Fannie. "Zora Hurston: A Personality Sketch." Yale University Library Gazette 35 (1961): 17-21.
Lomax, Alan. "Zora Neale Hurston--A Life of Negro Folklore." Sing Out! 10 (Oct.-Nov. 1960): 12-13.
Newson, Adele S. Zora Neale Hurston: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.
Terkel, Studs. "Stetson Kennedy, 77." In Coming of Age, 391-400. New York: New Press, 1995.
Walker, Alice. "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston." Ms., March 1975, 74-79, 85-89.

Florida and Florida Folklife

The following publications are recommended for further reading on the culture, environment, ethnology, and history of Florida.
Bailey, Guy. "Conchs." In Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, 786. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Boggs, Ralph Steele. "Spanish Folklore from Tampa, Florida." Southern Folklore Quarterly 1 (September 1937): 1-12.
Bretos, Miguel A. Cuba & Florida: Exploration of an Historic Connection, 1539-1991. Miami: Historical Association of Southern Florida, 1991.
Bucuvalas, Tina, Peggy A. Bulger, and Stetson Kennedy. South Florida Folklife. Folklife in the South Series, edited by William Lynwood Montell. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.
Capron, Louis. "The Medicine Bundle of the Florida Seminole and the Green Corn Dance." In A Seminole Source Book, edited by William C. Sturtevant, 159-69. New York: Garland, 1987.
Colburn, David R., and Jane L. Landers, eds. The African American Heritage of Florida. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995.
Dicenta, Joaquìn. Juan José. 1916. Edición de Jaime Mas. Madrid: Cátedra, 1982. A retelling of this story by Martin Noriega, learned from the reading of a lectore in a cigar factory in Ybor City, appears in this online collection.
Doering, J. Frederick. "Folk Customs and Beliefs of Greek Sponge-Fishers of Florida." Southern Folklore Quarterly 7 (June 1943): 105-7.
Douglas, Marjory Stoneham. The Everglades: River of Grass. 1947. Reprint, Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, 1997.
---. Florida: The Long Frontier. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.
---. Hurricane. New York: Rinehart, 1958.
Gannon, Michael, ed. The New History of Florida. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995.
Garbarino, Merwyn S. The Seminole. Indians in North America series, edited by Frank W. Porter III. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.
Georges, Robert A. Greek-American Folk Beliefs and Narratives: Survivals and Living Tradition. New York: Arno Press, 1980.
---. "The Greeks of Tarpon Springs: An American Folk Group." Southern Folklore Quarterly 29 (June 1965): 129-41.
Jumper, Betty Mae. Legends of the Seminoles. Foreword by James E. Billie, introduction by Peter B. Gallagher. Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, 1994.
Kersey, Harry A., Jr. The Florida Seminoles and the New Deal, 1933-1942. Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic University Press, 1989.
---. "Seminoles." In Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, 440-41. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
McWhiney, Grady. Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South. University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1988.
Mohl, Raymond A. "Black Immigrants: Bahamians in Early Twentieth Century Miami." The Florida Historical Quarterly 65 (January 1987): 271-97.
Mormino, Gary R. "Italians." In Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, 434-35. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Mormino, Gary R., and George E. Possetta. The Immigrant World of Ybor City: Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Morris, Allen C. Florida Place Names. Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, 1995.
Moskos, Charles C. "Greeks." In Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, 431-32. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Perez, Lisandro. "Cubans." In Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, 427-28. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Pierce, Charles W. Pioneer Life in Southeast Florida. Edited by Donald W. Curl. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1970.
Quinn, Jane. Minorcans in Florida: Their History and Heritage. St. Augustine, Fla.: Mission Press, 1975.
Ramirez, Manuel D. "Italian Folklore from Tampa, Florida." Southern Folklore Quarterly 5 (June 1941): 101-6.
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan. Cross Creek. 1942. Reprint, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Read, William A. Florida Place-Names of Indian Origin and Seminole Personal Names. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1934.
Reed, Veda. "West Indians." In Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, 444-45. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Shubow, David. "Sponge Fishing on Florida's East Coast." Tequesta: the Journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida 29 (1969): 3-15.
Wehr, Paul. Like a Mustard Seed: The Slavia Settlement. Chuluota, Fla.: Mickler House Publishers, 1982.
Wilson, Charles Reagan. "'Crackers.'" In Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, 1132. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

Collection Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1937 to 1942