Cooper Hewitt says...
The Milwaukee Handicraft Project (MHP), a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program, was organized in November of 1935, five years into the Great Depression, and remained in operation until 1942. During that time it trained over 5,000 workers, including women, minorities, and people with developmental disabilities. Only one person per household was allowed to be certified for relief work, and preference (as well as a higher wage) was typically given to the male head of household. The MHP targeted unskilled women on the relief roles who were responsible for supporting their families.
Every WPA project required a local sponsor who would pay 25% of the program's operating costs; the MHP was sponsored by the Milwaukee State Teachers College (now the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee), which specialized in art education.
Teachers College art department students and graduates served as designer/ foremen, and eventually eleven workshops were formed, making furniture, draperies, rugs, toys and dolls, and printed fabrics. At its peak, the project employed 1350 people. The MHP was unusual among WPA projects in that it accepted people of color, and the workshops were fully integrated. After federal monies were redirected to the war effort in 1942, Milwaukee County continued the program into the 1960s to support workers with disabilities on relief.
