The Edith Lett Papers: The Federal Writers’ Project, West Virginia, and the Everyman Writer

The Everyman

On June 10, 1937, Edith Lett accepted a job offer to become a writer for the West Virginia branch of the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), a New Deal work-relief project launched in 1935 under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Charleston office told her to write about Greenbrier County with an emphasis on Lett’s hometown, Lewisburg. Over the next few months, she submitted dozens of historical essays and resources about such topics as Greenbrier County’s early settlers, the Clendenin massacre, and an anecdote about a young farmer who discovered an underground river.¹ The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration created the FWP to provide work relief for unemployed Americans who both qualified for welfare and displayed some skill as a writer.² Edith Lett was just the type of person this project intended to help: a single mother raising three children, working sporadically as a church organist, and trained as a local historian.³ She earned ninety dollars per month to support her family as she wrote from her home on Elm Street in Lewisburg, only leaving FWP work once the state project office closed about three years later.⁴

Edith Lett quickly became one of the West Virginia FWP office’s most productive workers.⁵ Throughout the FWP’s existence, she submitted more information about Greenbrier County than anyone within the organization, and very likely submitted more reports overall than anyone else on the West Virginia FWP payroll. On the surface, Edith Lett’s story is the epitome of a New Deal work-relief success story. While it is certainly true that the FWP provided Lett and her family much-needed financial support, digging deeper reveals that the FWP often neglected, ignored, or dismissed the writings of people like her. Lett wrote hundreds, possibly thousands, of pages about Lewisburg, yet West Virginia: A Guide to the Mountain State—the only published, extended-length book produced by the state FWP office—contains only four (out of 559 total) pages on the town. Of these four pages, only one brief passage clearly relates to Lett’s writings. On November 3, 1937, Edith Lett submitted a report on Lewisburg entitled “Favorite Loafing Places,” containing the following passage:

Mr. Honck’s store used to be a loafing place for the colored men, and on the corner outside the store is a loafing place for them, altho [sic] the town council passed an ordinance that it was not allowed along any of the windows of the stores. . . . Both colored and white congregate on the corner of the Liquor store, especially on Saturday night. Saturday night in Lewisburg is what some call “New York night” because men, women, boys, girls and children from the country and town gather in the street. . . . The spring back of the court house is still flowing. It is cemented and full all the time. It’s about twelve feet in diameter. All the horses driven to town are watered there. Not so many these days as used to be but at court time and Fair time quite a number of horse traders meet in the hollow by the mill and around the spring and pace their horses up and down and trade, some drunk, the rest half drunk.⁶

Compare that with this brief passage appearing in the published guidebook:

Lewisburg . . . has retained much of the appearance and many of the customs of a leisurely village of the Old South. The stock-breeding gentry of the fertile valley come into town frequently to buy supplies, swap horses, talk politics, and exchange gossip. Except during the annual fair week in August, the tempo of life is unhurried and sedate.⁷

These passages are similar enough to leave little doubt that authors of the guidebook passage used Edith Lett’s writings, but there are some clear differences. The guidebook omitted references to drinking alcohol, miscast the community described by Lett as “stock-breeding gentry,” and ignored references to African Americans and local segregationist laws. FWP editors also described Lewisburg as a “village of the Old South...