Washington-Liberty

Washington-Liberty

According to the school’s history page, “In 1938 with PWA funds, another addition” to Washington Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia “was completed. A PWA plaque is located in W-L’s present library.”

Luke Beverley

https://livingnewdeal.org/projects/washington-lee-high-school-addition-arlington-va/

1939

Creative commons

October 16, 2019

I hold great value in education, so I sought to select a New Deal project having to do with schooling. The New Deal project modernised a section of the Washington-Lee high school and thus revitalised the entire establishment, involving the school in the conversation around modern education-- namely, segregation (now that the school is bigger, who gets to come in it?). To bring it to what we've been going over in class, the renovation of W-L harkens back to whether or not the New Deal was for everyone. I was able to document W-L solely with my smart phone, a great boon to the convenience/democratisation of data-making as compared to what it would've been like in the 30s, lugging around recording equipment and transcribing everything without that equipment. Though the technology has improved in leaps and bounds, the principle of 1930s documentation and 2010s documentation remains the same: democracy in data-making. More narratives were being embraced into the fold of what was acceptable, and more people could record those narratives with the day's state of the art technology.