Brilliant High School basketball team photograph

This photograph, from a yearbook dated from 1940, shows the Brilliant High School basketball team. The front row of boys are sitting on a bench in their uniforms with the majority of the back row wearing what looks to be the warm-up outfits. Brilliant High School was located at 2nd Street in Brilliant, Ohio, in Jefferson County, Ohio. In 1952, a new building was opened at 1004 3rd Street. In 1972, Brilliant High School merged with Smithfield High School, to become Buckeye North High School. Finally, in 1990, the three schools in the district merged together to form the Buckeye Local High School in Rayland, Ohio. This photograph is one of the many visual materials collected for use in the Ohio Guide. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration by executive order to create jobs for the large numbers of unemployed laborers, as well as artists, musicians, actors, and writers. The Federal Arts Program, a sector of the Works Progress Administration, included the Federal Writers’ Project, one of the primary goals of which was to complete the America Guide series, a series of guidebooks for each state which included state history, art, architecture, music, literature, and points of interest to the major cities and tours throughout the state. Work on the Ohio Guide began in 1935 with the publication of several pamphlets and brochures. The Reorganization Act of 1939 consolidated the Works Progress Administration and other agencies into the Federal Works Administration, and the Federal Writers’ Project became the Federal Writers’ Project in Ohio. The final product was published in 1940 and went through several editions. The Ohio Guide Collection consists of 4,769 photographs collected for use in Ohio Guide and other publications of the Federal Writers’ Project in Ohio from 1935-1939