The Viola Muse Digital Edition (VMDE) presents the notes and drafts prepared by Viola B. Muse (1898-1981), who worked from 1936 through 1939 as an interviewer and writer in the Negro Writers Unit of the Florida Federal Writers Project in Jacksonville, Florida. The VMDE includes historical maps that locate the homes of Muse’s interview subjects and other localities mentioned, along with contextual essays on Muse’s biography, the history of the Florida Federal Writers Project and the Florida Negro Writers Unit, and the geography of early 20th-century African American Jacksonville.
The VMDE is directed by Laura Heffernan, Tru Leverette, and Clayton McCarl, and is a collaboration between the University of North Florida (UNF) and the Jacksonville Historical Society, where Muse’s papers are held. This scholarly digital edition was undertaken with the support of the Digital Humanities Institute at UNF and a Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
