European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 25, 1981, Darmstadt, Hesse                                First person America of the great depression by Kay Bartlett associated press the manuscripts had been decaying for 40 years in an airless room in the Library of con essentially but an energetic Young researcher found the voices and feelings of the survivors of the great depression were still alive As she pored Over listen loan auctioneer Tell about a colleague Herbert Baker had the softest Clear As a and his lower jaw would be going like a sewing or an Irish telling about working As a maid in Massachusetts you got hired by your and even if you looked they would test you once i was making a and right beside it was a five Dollar i snowed nobody dropped that for so i didst know if i should pick it up and Tell or but my face burned like for 1 snowed i was getting a prospector from Oregon they Call us hoboes but in them Days we was known As Overland and by i knew every Creek and cow Between Here and mexi co and right Back up to these Are but three of the 80 voices in a new Book entitled first person the voices Are those of Ordinary people with no claim to just Folk who worked in the quarries of and knew the dust would get them in the end a Man who smuggled liquor from Cuba to key but was too smart Ever to smuggle they were All collected four decades ago As part of the Federal writers a new Deal program that Al most moved into five years Ann Banks began wading through the pages of manuscripts that no one had Ever read in their she found first person accounts of life As it was and As it was the genre which today would be called Oral she selected 80 for her published by the Federal writers project employed about writers at its Peak and paid them about a a subsistence wage during the recent College former out work teachers and people who just Felt the Muse All ended up in the How could you measure who was a writer and who want when these people for the most part were in their 20s asks there was a great Deal of latitude depending upon the Talent of the state when funds were Cut and it was time to give out Pink some state directors got rid of those who showed the least Promise while other directors simply kept on those who needed the Money the regardless of the Quality or Quantity of literary the Federal project was Best known for a series of guidebooks to but the political clime of the Day even had its effect on this seemingly harmless the Man who wrote the guide Book for Stet son wanted to write More of How people what the Quality of life was really like amidst the Orange the cattle the Boom towns of the Gold the Man in charge was More interested in a trea Tise on Palm both sides says in sure Stetson Kennedy want completely satisfied with but on the other hand it shows it was written with a great Deal More sensitivity than a chamber of Commerce a the House Una Merican activities committee harshly criticized the work of the Federal writers project while the first person accounts were under the dreams for collecting the accounts and publishing them in an anthology never the project was Sim ply shut Down in 1942 and the finished work was never some of it has just been says but there is More around the scholars in some states Are working on anthropologists and sociologists write researcher Ann Banks retriever of the have been studying some of the Banks and an archivist from Indiana University Are searching for the missing manuscripts state by they have found some in some in historical societies and Learned that in the manuscripts had sat for years in the Post office because nobody could figure out what to do with the Only Section of the life histories that had been previously published was a collection of accounts by for Mer called the dream and the edited by Jerre Banks first was a Chil Drens Workbook about a Southern born Banks moved 11 times in her first 14 not too unusual for the army brat that she she is presently expanding those experiences into another Book about the Impact of such moves on military now living in was a re search associate at the american studies Center at bos ton College when she did the it was also sup ported by Grants from the Rockefeller and Ford top Young at 36 to remember new Deal pro was intrigued when she Learned of the Feder Al writers project and even More interested when she dug a Little into its it was a philosophy of trying to support the arts before a person became it was intended to give writers their first validation As nobody was pay ing you to write the great american but you were being paid As a Federal so you were a this was particularly important for Black they had fewer other Banks spent a rather concentrated eight months poring Over the manuscripts in a windowless affectionately called the Buzzards at the end of a labyrinth in the Library of Congress did in read every word some of it was very i didst read january 1981 More than a Page of some of if the words didst come alive in my minds i put it if they i put it in the pile to be Banks selections represent 41 the num ber is Low because she included some thematic Chap ters where All the interviewing was done by one she was Able to find about 20 writers or subjects still alive and interviewed them by Telephone or in person when she includes their observations in the they Tell How they How they got to know their subjects and got them to talk openly about their fears and i would treat myself occasionally to an interview with a real live she when she had chosen the 41 she went to the card Catalon and found that about half of them had gone on to write at least one mostly based upon the experiences the Federal project afforded one of the most notable was Ralph who inter viewed people of one of the Lloyd said to Ellison in in new but new York aint in a line Ellison was to use later in his most famous invisible another was Nelson whose interview with a prostitute is included in Banks Book and is echoed later in his a walk on the wild other Federal writers who went on to achieve Fame were novelists Saul Bellow and Jack Conroy and poet May a writer As Well As a has a bachelors degree in English and is a contributing editor to several does she consider herself a Good Story Teller yes and in a writer so i like to Tell but basically i think in a better i grew up listen ing to two wonderful Story one of my grandpa rents was Welsh and the other Southern and they could both Tell stories always knowing just what to hold Back and just when to the stars and stripes Page 11