The government envisioned the American Guide Series, as one Federal Writers’ Project official observed, as a “history of the whole people…in which the people are historians as well as the history, telling their own stories in their own words—Everyman’s history, for Everyman to read.” In both theory and practice, the series raised uncomfortable questions about who constituted “the whole people” and what aspects of a “people’s history” should be remembered. Federal and state officials censored the contributions of local authors heavily, actions that resulted in power struggles and political
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