The Federal Theatre Project was established as a part of President Roosevelt's New Deal during the Great Depression. This program funded live artistic performances and entertainment programs to provide jobs to artists.

Brown heard about unedited play scripts from the 1930s Federal Theatre Project looming around. Now began her determined search for these. Lorraine started the search, “because of a course I taught in American drama. Materials from the 1930s were very scant. When I heard about some unedited play scripts at the Library of Congress, I began slogging around there one day asking questions.”

She landed herself in John Cole’s office, the then reference librarian at the Library of Congress. He is described as, "the kind of person you find in every organization, someone who has been around forever and knows what’s not written down." He pointed Brown and O'Connor to an abandoned airplane hangar in Middle River, Maryland. 

Cut to the summer of 1974, Brown, O'Connor, and Cole were in Middle River searching for the materials. Cue sheets, cast lists, and even music were different materials that were found in the aircraft hangar.

A National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant was given to make an archive possible. Brown is quoted saying the staff had completed, “the phenomenal task of unpacking, analyzing, and cataloging the materials in just three years.” According to assistant curator Louanne Wheeler, 25,000 production photographs, 7,000 play scripts, and 1,645 costume design sketches were amongst the vast number of materials in this collection. Additional funds in the NEH grant were allotted for oral history interviews of surviving actors and directors from the program.

Lorraine Brown’s insistence on finding the materials allowed for the FTP materials to be the first collection to be brought to George Mason's Fenwick Library and brought the need for our Special Collections Research Center where currently over 600 collections can be viewed.