Thenie Latham, a white woman employed as an educator by the WPA, provides needlework guidance to eight African American women in a domestic setting. The photo appears posed rather than candid, in that some of the women have gathered behind the couch, standing or sitting on windowsills, in a way likely not conducive to hand sewing. This lesson in needlework was part of Butler County’s Emergency School, a program run by the WPA. Here the African American women were learning the “expert” ways from a white woman, with the home economist’s status and education level likely exacerbating a racial power dynamic that existed in its own forms in the North.