1940 WPA Bookbinding Project

Work of the WPA Bookbinding Project on display during "This Work Pays Your Community Week."

Workers were employed in reconditioning old volumes by the colored section of the WPA Bookbinding Project in the McDonogh High School #24. A September, 1938 article describes a celebration of "Achievement Day,"..."having cleansed and rebound more than 25,000 books during the last year, 2,880 of them during August. Not even the presence of hundred of visitors during "Achievement Day" caused them to cease work."

It is sad commentary on the social norms of that era that a matronly white woman was chosen as the subject for a photograph of the 1940 display.

Source: http://nutrias.org/photos/wpa/wpa09.htm