The WPA employed around 6,500 out-of-work journalists and writers in the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), paying them about twenty dollars a week. In addition to its objective of providing work and necessary income, the FWP explicitly aimed to document American folklife—much to the consternation of New Deal critics who viewed funding such initiatives as a boondoggle.

Unlike some New Deal initiatives, the FWP did not shy away from documenting the diversity of Americans, including African Americans who had grown up in chattel slavery. African American sociologist Charles Johnson had conceived of this initiative to have the federal government fund the collection of interviews with formerly enslaved individuals as part of the FWP, with the goal of studying racial mores, or what he called “racial folkways,” including folktales, music traditions, ceremonies and rituals, and other leisure activities. In part, the project aimed to document African American life before the last generation who grew up in slavery died. It resulted in a body of work that helped define African American culture and history into the next century, demarcating and debating what it meant to be a Black American.

The companion Folklore Project focused on showcasing the ethnic diversity of Americans, interviewing individuals about their everyday experiences in work, family, and leisure.

These interviews, however, are not objective accounts of the past. Most were not audio recorded and scholars have shown that some out-of-work creative writers may have embellished their narratives, and some narrators may have reflected on their past experiences with rose-colored glasses. Despite these limitations, the project remains a valuable means through which Americans learned about—and continue to learn from—our collective pasts.