The Green Bay District Office of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was established early in 1936 and discontinued in September of the same year during a general reorganization of the Wisconsin FWP. The purpose of the FWP, as part of the Works Progress Administration, was to provide useful work for unemployed people in areas related to their occupational skills.
The major activity of the Green Bay FWP office during its brief existence was to prepare copy for a Wisconsin volume in the FWP's American Guide Series. Under the direction of Charles E. Lease, an Oconto minister, a staff of four to eight writers and typists prepared brief local studies and automobile tour information for the northeastern region of the state. The writers based their studies on both library research and field work. Lease edited their work and forwarded it to the state office in Madison. Some of this information eventually appeared in a volume compiled by the FWP, Wisconsin: A Guide to the Badger State (Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, New York, 1941). After the Green Bay office closed, Charles Lease continued as an FWP tours editor for at least several months.
