This collection is comprised of papers, photographs, and audiovisual materials relating to the career and personal life of folk arts administrator, folklorist, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, musician, and teacher Bess Lomax Hawes, most from 1960-2001. It includes work produced by Hawes when she was a professor at San Fernando Valley State College in Northridge, California, and as head of the National Endowment for the Arts Folk Arts Program in Washington, D.C. This presentation includes approximately 12,000 manuscripts including writings, correspondence, and business records.

This online presentation combines sound recordings and manuscript materials from four discrete archival collections made by Work Projects Administration (WPA) workers from the Joint Committee on Folk Arts, the Federal Writers' Project, and the Federal Music Project from 1937-42. This online presentation provides access to 376 sound recordings and 106 accompanying materials, including recording logs, transcripts, correspondence between Florida WPA workers and Library of Congress personnel, and a proposal to survey Florida folklore by Zora Neale Hurston. An essay by Stetson Kennedy, who worked with Hurston and other WPA collectors, reflects on the labor and the legacy of the WPA in Florida; and an extensive bibliography and list of related Web sites add further context about the New Deal era and Florida culture.

Through a tour of (mostly blues) clubs and musical hot spots, Chicago Blues and Jazz spotlights the working lives of musicians and singers who have become part of the American Folklife Center’s online Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection.