Echo of the New Deal
Will Obama follow FDR legacy?
By Dave Flessner dflessner@timesfreepress
Barack Obama’s inauguration Tuesday is likely to echo many of the themes of a previous Democratic president who came to the White House during an even bigger economic crisis. Franklin Roosevelt created an alphabet soup of federal agencies in the 1930s to hire workers and help lift the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression. However Mr. Obama’s pledge of change alters Chattanooga, historians agree that President Roosevelt’s New Deal clearly did. “The New Deal had a huge and lasting impact on this region,” said Erwin Hargrove, a Vanderbilt University professor of political science who has written books on the New Deal and presidential leadership. “I think today that President-elect Obama, like Roosevelt nearly 70 years ago, could be one of our truly formative presidents who brings a significant change in direction through government actions.” In the Tennessee Valley, President Roosevelt’s initiatives reshaped the physical, economic and political landscape. Across the South, workers hired through a half dozen newly created federal agencies erected hundreds of parks, roads, schools, dams and courthouses. “You can’t go into a town of any size in Georgia without seeing something built in the New Deal,” said historian Ed Jackson, who heads the University of Georgia’s Archway Partnership to promote local historical sites. In Chattanooga, projects ranging from the ornate Joel W. Solomon Federal Building to public housing projects such as College Hill Courts and East Lake Courts were built by the Public Works Administration, one of the New Deal agencies created during the first 100 days of FDR’s presidency. But the project that most affected Chattanooga was the Tennessee Valley Authority, created nearly 76 years ago to harness the power of the Tennessee River for power production, flood control, navigation, economic devel-
opment and recreation. “TVA revolutionized this area,” said Larry Ingle, a retired history professor at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “The Tennessee River was an annual spring flood until the New Deal. In building its dams, TVA not only tamed the river but it was able to bring electricity, jobs and hope to this area.” HOPEFUL SPENDING Like President Roosevelt, President-elect Obama wants to help lift the economy with government spending programs. Mr. Obama, who won the White House campaigning on the prospect of change and hope, has proposed a stimulus plan to promote more than $825 billion of green energy jobs, improvements in roads, sewers and schools and tax breaks to stimulate business and consumer spending. But as with the New Deal, the increase in government’s role in the economy threatens to crowd out private investment and push up the federal deficit, critics contend. Ultimately, the U.S. economy didn’t rebound fully until World War II erupted in the 1940s. U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said the foothills of Appalachia were helped as much as any area by the New Deal and the region is better positioned than the rest of the country for the future. “But we really have to remember that you can’t borrow your way out of debt and you can’t spend your way into prosperity,” Rep. Wamp said. “The government can’t spend enough money to improve the economy quick enough. Clearly, there is a temptation to want to spend a whole lot of money. But it’s a trap you get into.” “MAKE-WORK” JOBS Many of the New Deal agencies, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Workers Progress Administration, were derided as “make-work” programs set up simply to create more jobs. Martha Bird, who was a student at Chattanooga High School in the 1930s, recalled watching Public Works Administration employees adding wings to the school. “They would shovel a little dirt in the wheelbarrow and then stand around for a while and talk,” Mrs. Bird said. “They were rather slow in what they did.” But eventually, the additional classrooms were finished. Later Mrs. Bird taught English in one of them. The East Third Street school now is Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences. The Civilian Conservation Corps hired nearly 150,000 Tennessee and Georgia youths from 1933 to 1942 to work at hundreds of camps across the country, including four in the Chattanooga area. Boys 17 to 24 built parks, cleared brush, erected monuments and planted trees, among other duties. James Carroll, an 84-year-old retired TVA engineer, entered the Civilian Conservation Corps in Utah after he dropped out of high school. “It was a kind of make-work agency, but it turned out that the work we did was very useful and created a lot of the state and national parks we have today,” he said. Mr. Carroll took advantage of courses offered in auto mechanics and typing during his service. Like most CCC workers, Mr. Carroll later joined the military during World War II. Because the CCC camps were run by military officers, CCC workers had some experience with military command, Mr. Jackson said. CCC workers were paid $30 a month. Of that, $25 went to their families. “My mother did wonders with that money,” said George Palmer, the 86-year-old president of the local CCC alumni group. “It was a real adventure for all of us and helped my family, too.” PARKS BENEFIT The young workers helped create many of the nation’s parks, including much of Harrison Bay State Park, Booker T. Washington State Park and Fall Creek Falls State Park, Mr. Palmer said. Four CCC units were stationed at different sites in the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, including two all-black units, historian Jim Ogden said. At both the battlefield and atop Lookout Mountain, 700 CCC workers built trails and stone walls and cleared brush and trees, Mr. Ogden said. The Public Works Administration also built the headquarters facility at the park which still stands today. CCC workers also helped build and improve Cloudland Canyon State Park near Rising Fawn, Ga., and Fort Mountain State Park near Chatsworth, Ga. In Tennessee, 13 of the 53 state parks were begun by the federal government during the New Deal before being turned over to the state in the 1940s. The Workers Progress Administration and the CCC built such area parks as Fall Creek Falls, Harrison Bay State park and Booker T. Washington, one of two parks built in thensegregated Tennessee for blacks. At Cumberland State Park, the CCC built a dam and bridge as its biggest masonry structure in the country. “We have a parks system now in Tennessee because of all of the work that the CCC and the WPA during the New Deal,” said Jack Gilpin, a natural and cultural resource officer for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. “That was really the start of our state park system in Tennessee.” NEW DEAL ART The New Deal also tried to extend art into rural areas. Murals, wall paintings and sculptures were created by artists who competed for Public Works Administration projects. Howard Hull, a retired University of Tennessee art professor who wrote a book on 28 of the New Deal paintings in Tennessee, said art courses were added in schools and contracts were granted for art in public buildings to help give jobs to artists and enhance art education and appreciation. “There were a lot of starving artists who needed jobs, and these programs were seen as a way to help broaden art throughout our country,” Dr. Hull said. In Southeast Tennessee, such murals are painted at federal buildings in Chattanooga, Dayton, Decherd, Sweetwater and Manchester, Dr. Hull said. Typical of the murals is the 17- by 5-foot mural that hangs behind the judge’s bench in U.S. District Court in Chattanooga. Artist Hilton Leech painted the mural, titled the “Allegory of Chattanooga,” in 1937 as a historical panorama of Chattanooga’s history. Across Georgia, nearly 50 similar murals are painted in courthouses and post offices, Mr. Jackson said. President Roosevelt, a wealthy native of Hyde Park, N.Y., wanted to spread art appreciation to poorer areas of the country, Mr. Jackson said. The Georgian historian argues that much of President Roosevelt’s support for the agencies of the New Deal was formed, in part, by his 42 visits to Georgia. President Roosevelt, who had polio, frequently visited Warm Springs, Ga., for therapy. He died in Warm Springs in April 1945 just three months after starting his unprecedented fourth term. “When he was in Warm Springs, he often traveled around that area and he got to see some of the rural poverty of the South, especially during the Depression,” Mr. Jackson said. “I think that helped shape the New Deal.” MAJOR NEW DEAL BUILDING PROJECTS Chickamauga and Watts Bar Dam and Lock Federal Building in downtown Chattanooga College Hill Courts and East Lake Courts public housing projects Additional classrooms at the old Chattanooga High School, now Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences Post office buildings in South Pittsburg, Decherd and Dayton Runways at Lovell Field UTC and Sequatchie County libraries WHAT AREA PARKS WERE HELPED? Booker T. Washington State Park on Lake Chickamauga Harrison Bay State Park on Lake Chickamauga Fall Creek Falls State Park The Grundy County Lakes and Recreational Area Cumberland Mountain State Park Cloudland Canyon State Park Chickamauga National Military Park Fort Mountain State Park near Chatsworth, Ga. Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, Tenn. NEW DEAL AGENCIES Tennessee Valley Authority was created in 1933 to harness the power of the Tennessee River by providing electricity, flood control, navigation, soil conservation, economic development and recreation to a seven-state region. Works Progress Administration was established in 1935 and employed more than 8 million workers building roads, bridges, schools and public buildings. Civilian Conservation Corps, which operated from 1933 to 1942, employed boys and young men for six-month assignments building parks, planting trees and putting in trails and shelters. Public Works Administration, which operated from 1933 to 1939, spent $6 billion to construct an estimated 70 percent of all educational buildings in the country, 65 percent of the courthouses and city halls and a third of all the hospitals at that time. Agricultural Adjustment Administration, was created in 1933 to reduce cotton, tobacco, livestock and other farm products and thereby lift their price. Rural Electrification Administration was created in 1935 to help bring electric service to rural areas by creating rural electric cooperatives.
Staff Photo by Tim Barber The mural in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier was done in the 1930s as part of the New Deal art program.
