Ellen Woodward and the Women Who Brought Literacy to Southern Families

In 1933, Ellen Woodward (1887-1971) came to Washington, D.C. She had recently begun working with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, but she held onto her primary passion: women’s poverty and unemployment. So when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt hosted a White House Conference on the Emergency Needs of Women later that same year, Woodward did not hesitate to attend.

At the conference, Woodward encouraged administrators and legislators to fund more jobs for women, especially women in the South (including in her native Mississippi). These projects would impact thousands of citizens and make American history.

Among Woodward’s favorite programs was the Mississippi Library Project, where counties received funding to create libraries. Over time, the WPA-era libraries in Mississippi were demolished or renovated. But preservationists continue to point to the Library Project as the start of something special, a legacy that would survive outside of the confines of any historic building.

While the federally funded libraries could employ women as librarians and improve literacy in Mississippi, these brick-and-mortar structures could not serve the families living in the most remote areas of her state. Woodward grew up in the American South and had traveled throughout its rural communities.

While she grew up with the financial privilege to attend seminary school and to read voraciously, Woodward saw firsthand that many Southern families did not have this same access to educational opportunities. So she hired women to deliver books on houseboats and by foot across Mississippi. Little did Woodward know, at the time, that word of these traveling librarians would circulate past even those rural spots in her home state.

The traveling women working with the Library Project inspired one of the most famous and influential WPA projects in rural America: the packhorse librarians.