FDR Presidential Library: 'We Work Again (1937)'

Source:Film Preservation- from the 1937 film We Work Again.

“We Work Again (1937)

Production Co.: U.S. Works Progress Administration. Transfer Note: Copied from a 35mm positive preprint preserved by the National Archives and Records Administration. Running Time: 15 minutes.

Priceless historical footage can be “lost” within unlikely films. We Work Again, a Depression-era documentary on African American reemployment, also includes a forgotten record of the first professional play staged by Orson Welles.

It had long been assumed that no sound or moving images survived from Welles’s legendary “Voodoo Macbeth,” his 1936 Harlem stage production of Shakespeare’s play, set in Haiti with an African American cast. As one of Welles’s many biographers lamented in 1996, “Nothing remains but still photographs and memories.” However, We Work Again turns out to include the…

From Film Preservation 

“We Work Again – FDR Presidential Library 1937 – Video 352 – From IMDB. In the 1930s, the economic depression has been especially hard on African-American families and communities. But the federal government’s Works Progress Administration now provides many new opportunities for employment and advancement. Both skilled and unskilled laborers are employed in many public works projects. Others find work in a wide range of fields, including education, medicine, and even music and the performing arts. Written by Snow Leopard.” 

Source:Public Resource- from the 1937 film We Work Again.

From Public Resource  

I believe this photo is from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. It’s about the domestic legacy of President Franklin Roosevelt, which of course is the New Deal.  

Source:FDR Library- President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat, New York) 32nd President of the United States (1933-45)

If you are familiar with the Great Depression of the late 1920s and 1930s, you know that it was an economic hell for America: 20% unemployment rates, negative 10% economic growth rates, 1/2 Americans unemployed and living in poverty, homelessness and hunger became crisis’s in America, even in big cities and urban areas.

Even with the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt still wanted to get reelected in 1936 and managed to do that, because the economy started improving somewhat. But by 1937 we were still trying to recover from the crisis of the Great Depression and the FDR Administration needed something positive to show the voters. And I believe that’s what you see here which is really just a government propaganda film in favor of the New Deal. 

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