"Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities."
                                                                               -- Frank Lloyd Wright
                    

ARCHITECTURE
Frank Lloyd Wright, John Russell Pope, Art Deco, and Bauhaus. The Empire State Building, Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Fallingwater. Ever noticed that the old post offices in Lenoir City, Sevierville, and Clinton look almost exactly the same? Of course you have--now you can explain why to the rest of us!

THE ARTS AND THE FEDS
Like your creative juices strained through a government bureaucracy? Try the Federal Music Project, the Federal Theatre Project, or the Federal Art Project. Read the WPA American Guide Series, visit the post office murals in Clinton or Lenoir City. Investigate the controversy over the Cradle Will Rock, watch the Plow That Broke the Plains, or view any of the hundreds of pictures taken by photographers documenting life in hard times. What they accomplished for the government was both remarkable and beautiful. Anyway, who else could afford to hire artists during a depression?

BUSINESS AND THE ECONOMY: HARD TIMES
In order to fight the Depression, the nation needed to know how bad it actually was—how many were unemployed, how many businesses had closed, how many banks had failed, or as George Jones put it, “The cold hard facts of life.” Your job is to tell us how hard the hard times were and how American business reacted to the economic and regulatory medicine of the New Deal. Investigate FDR’s programs aimed specifically at American businesses and find out why some industrialists called the New Deal a “Raw Deal.” One thing is certain: Americans would face future economic problems armed with a new vocabulary that included terms like gross national product, deficit spending, and fiscal policy. Whew!

THE CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS
In 1933 Congress created the CCC--destined to be one of the most popular of all New Deal agencies. It employed millions of young men in outdoor projects that included reforestation, fire fighting, flood control, and swamp drainage. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was home to many of the CCC’s hard working boys in East Tennessee (there were 22 camps established in the park), and the fruits of their labors are still visible.

CIVIL RIGHTS AND AMERICAN MINORITIES
The Scottsboro Boys, anti-lynching laws, the D.A.R. and Marion Anderson, share croppers in the South, Nixon vs. Candan, and the Indian Reorganization Act. An average of 19 people were lynched each year from 1933-1935, but each anti-lynching bill introduced in Congress was defeated. It was hard times indeed for America’s minorities, who also began the Depression in worse shape than white citizens. Would the New Deal lift all Americans out of poverty and despair, or would minorities continue to be the “last hired—first fired”?

COPS AND ROBBERS
“Baby Face” Nelson, “Pretty Boy” Floyd, “Machine Gun” Kelly, and “Ma” Barker—no they’re not P. Diddy’s posse or gangsta’ rappers, they’re gangsters 1930’s style, and they were joined by John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and many more. An average of two banks were being robbed each day by these and other “public enemies.” It took the efforts of dedicated G-men like J. Edgar Hoover and Melvin Purvis to bring these bad boys (and girls) to justice. Decide for yourself whether they really “got their man” as you research 1932’s “Crime of the Century,” the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s infant son. Be careful out there.

DANCE
Join Martha Graham, Helen Tamiris, Isadora Duncan, and Ruth St. Denis at the Dance Repertory Theatre. Or grab your tutu and leap on over to the American Ballet Company. If you still have any energy left, join the hepcats doing the Jitterbug, Lindy Hop, or the Big Apple. All I can say is, “I can still get down; I just can’t get back up!”

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THE DUST BOWL
A prolonged drought and high winds produced dust storms that blotted out the sun from the skies of Kansas and Oklahoma and sent thousands of migrants on a miserable trek to California. John Steinbeck’s 1939 The Grapes of Wrath told the story of a fictional family of “Oakies” fleeing the black blizzards of the Great Plains. Investigate the real events behind the novel, and discover if California really was the “Land of Milk and Honey.”

EDUCATION
In the 1930’s W.E.B. DuBois castigated the “talented tenth” in an address to the graduating class of Howard University. The Depression would make his concerns then seem welcome by comparison. Teacher salaries fell to an average of $ 1,200.00 by 1934. Georgia closed 1318 schools, and Chicago paid its teachers in scrip. African Americans essentially had to create their own schools as public funds dried up or were distributed to white schools first. John Dewey’s progressive education dueled with social reconstruction for the hearts and minds of educators. The WPA launched the school lunch project, and Mary Mcleod Bethune helped guide the National Youth Administration’s efforts to keep kids in school.

ELECTIONS OF 1932 AND 1936
Someone wrote to Herbert Hoover before election day in 1932 to suggest that the incumbent President vote for Franklin Roosevelt and thus “make it unanimous.” But the lopsided Roosevelt victory in 1932 would be nothing when compared to the avalanche of 1936. Before his second inauguration, Roosevelt said of the American people, “You look happier than you did four years ago,” and they did. Find out how the Depression swept Hoover out of the office and how Alf’s “ Landon-slide “ buried Republican hopes in 1936. Happy Days Are Here Again.

FASHION
The end of the flapper, the return of the simple print dress, and a new elegance in men’s clothes--at least for people who could afford new clothes. At fashion shows and debutante balls, the latest looks could be seen: padded shoulders, “practical shoes,” v- neck sweaters, and double-breasted suits. As the Depression dried up disposable income, most folks couldn’t afford to wear the latest styles but could still see them--at the movies.

THE FIRST NEW DEAL AND THE HUNDRED DAYS
(March 9-June 16, 1933) In a campaign speech Franklin Roosevelt said, “the country needs and…demands bold, persistent, experimentation…But above all, try something.” The New Deal was that something. Find out about the bank holiday, the three R’s, and the alphabet soup of New Deal programs that Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins created. Find out why Frances Perkins was called the woman FDR kept “in labor for many years” and why Americans regained the right to buy liquor, but lost the right to own gold.

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FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
A 1933 New York Times article called FDR “the boss, the dynamo, the works.” The First Lady would prove to be equally dynamic. Together they were energetic and strong willed. He radiated confidence, and she radiated conviction. While he recast the role of government in the economy, she recast the role of a Presidential wife. It was a personal and political partnership that brought both accolades and attacks. They may just have been the right people at the right time in American history. At the very least, they were exciting to watch.

HARD TIMES
A janitor stood in the rain for two days pounding on the doors of a large New York bank that had closed down following the Stock Market Crash. When he realized that he would never see a dime of the $1,000.00 it took him forty years to save, he went back to his basement apartment and hanged himself. The Depression shattered lives, challenged families, and, more often than not, brought forth the best in America’s citizens. Research the effect of the Depression on ordinary men and women. Read about the “boys of the road,” the breadlines, soup kitchens, and the millionaire turned appleseller. See how people coped with America’s greatest economic calamity.

HERBERT HOOVER AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION 1930-1932
In 1928 Herbert Hoover told Americans that they were approaching the final triumph over poverty. Four years after his landslide victory, Americans were using words like Hooverville and Hoover blanket to describe their misery. As the Depression settled over America, a popular jingle ran, “Mellon pulled the whistle, Hoover rang the bell, Wall Street gave the signal, and the country went to hell.” Why was it that the man who led the effort to ease the suffering of Belgium after WWI failed to ease the suffering of his own people? March with the Bonus Army, and discover why people claimed that “Hard times were HOOVERing over us.”

HOLLYWOOD AND MOVIES
85 million people a week paid $.25 to escape the Depression and visit a celluloid paradise ruled by Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Mickey Mouse, and a cast of thousands. The National League of Decency cleaned up the screen and the backlots were patrolled by Louella Parsons and other powerful gossip columnists who could make and break careers. Theatergoers could travel “ Somewhere over the Rainbow “ or revisit a land of midnight and magnolias…a civilization Gone with the Wind.

INNOVATION, INVENTION, AND NEW PRODUCTS
Air conditioning, the automatic transmission, television, the Waring blender, the
Ford V-8, canned beer, Ritz crackers, Windex, Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup, Bridgestone Tires, Revlon, Fritos, Alka-Seltzer, Wonder Bread, and I’m just getting started. Hey, aren’t we in a Depression? Who’s buying this stuff?

THE KINGFISH AND THE CRACKPOTS: RADICAL REMEDIES FOR HARD TIMES
Dangerous times often produce dangerous men. Hitler came to power in a Depression-wracked Germany, and there was no shortage of demagogues in America as well. Father Caughlin, Howard Scott, and Dr. Francis E. Townsend had schemes to fight the Depression that ran the gamet from harangue to hair brained. But, it was Huey P. Long, the U.S. Senator from Louisiana , who FDR called “the most dangerous man in America.” Arguably the dictator of his home state, Long intended to “Share the Wealth” and “Make Every Man a King.” But first he had to beat Roosevelt in 1936. Who knows? Your research might lead you to the “Deduct Box” and a fortune in cash.

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LABOR
“I’m takin’ what they’re givin’ cause I’m working for a livin’!” It’s John L. Lewis and the Reuther brothers versus Tom Girdler, Harry Bennett, and Henry Ford. The Wagner Act “emancipates” the working man, sit down strikes rattle the windows at G.M., and a massacre at Republic Steel shocks the nation. Find out why the head of the Pittsburgh Coal Company said as he placed machine guns at the coal pits, “You cannot run the mines without them.”

LITERATURE, MAGAZINES, COMICS
The 1936 and 1938 Nobel Prizes for Literature went to Americans (as it had in 1929). Gee, we must have been doing something write—I mean right! With William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Dashiell Hammett, Earle Stanley Gardner, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jack Conroy, Pearl Buck, Edna Ferber, Taylor Caldwell, and John Steinbeck cranking out the page turners and no pesky jobs to get in the way of your free time, the Depression was a bookworm’s dream come true! Too highbrow? How about paperbacks, Life and Look magazines, Superman comics, or Doc Savage? You better be a speed reader!

MEDICINE AND HEALTH
During the entire decade of the 1930’s, most Americans did not know that their President could not walk. However, they all knew the name of the illness that had struck him down. Polio and a host of other diseases, combined with the poverty and misery of the Depression, made this and other health problems more acute for America’s health care professionals. Read about the fight against tuberculosis and the development of x-ray machines and sulfa drugs. See Congress pass the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 along with laws sanctioning birth control. It’s an old saying that we can put a man on the moon, but can’t cure the common cold. Just don’t tell the doctor (Alphonse Raymond Dochez) who isolated the cold virus in 1935. He might wonder what’s taking so long.

MUSIC
“It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.” And by that I mean, if it ain’t got Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. Not hip to the hep cats? Don’t know the words to Flat Foot Floogee with the Floy Floy? Maybe you would prefer a little Roy Acuff or the Monroe Brothers? They’ve got a little thing going that some folks call bluegrass. If the blues are more to your taste, then Robert Johnson is your man. Woody Guthrie was singing for and about the common man, and Alan Lomax discovered “Lead belly” killing time in the Louisiana state pen. It’s all part of the soundtrack to the 1930’s where “Bob Wills is still the King.”

THE NEW DEAL AND THE SECOND HUNDRED DAYS
In his second inaugural address, Roosevelt said he could see “one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” In 1937 he began pushing Congress to enact the remaining reform measures of the New Deal and began to experiment with the ideas of a British economist named John Maynard Keynes. It came too late to avoid the “Roosevelt Recession” in 1937 as the economy began to nosedive again. Did the New Deal have any more cards up its sleeve?

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OLYMPICS 1932/1936
The 1932 Winter Games in Lake Placid were the first broadcast on radio and the first time that the most medals were won by athletes from the U.S. The Summer Games in Los Angeles proved this was no fluke. Babe Didrikson and the American women “owned” the field, and the men fared nearly as well. In 1936 all eyes turned to the games held in Germany and dubbed the “Nazi” Olympics. But it was not the Germans who won the day. The heroic efforts of the African-American athletes from the U.S. spoiled Hitler’s dreams of demonstrating the superiority at the Aryan race.

RADIO
Return to the land of fireside chats, invasions from Mars, the Hit Parade and the Chase and Sanborn Hour. A world where H.V. Kaltenborn, Orson Welles, and Charlie McCarthy shared the airways and the attentions of millions of Americans. Find out why radio was the one thing depression-weary Americans could not do without.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Black Holes, Radio telescopes, the speed of light, the discovery of Pluto, refrigeration, the Richter scale, F.M. radio, airplanes and dirigibles, synthetic rubber, nylon, coaxial cable and the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition. Still want to know more? Look it up yourself; I’m pooped!

SPORTS
Babe Didrikson, Lou Gehrig, Satchel Paige, and Joe DiMaggio helped fill the grandstands and lift the spirits of a nation in crisis. In a decade of sports thrills, there were few that could surpass seeing Jesse Owens and Joe Louis trample and pummel the myth of Nazi superiority. Just ask Max Schmeling…that is, after he comes to.

THE SUPREME COURT
Government regulation of business, Civil Rights, the Wagner Act, and Roosevelt’s “Court Packing” scheme were just a few of the issues that filled the court’s docket in the 1930’s. Find out about the “Switch in Time that Saved Nine” and why the press named May 27 “Black Monday.”

THE TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY
In April 1933, President Roosevelt asked Congress to create an agency to oversee the use, development, and conservation of the Tennessee River. East Tennessee has never been the same since. Investigate the utopian community of Norris, the diaspora of Tennessee families whose farms sank beneath the lakes, and the power struggle between Arthur Morgan and David Lilienthal for the “soul” of TVA. Soon you will understand why the locals say Roosevelt and the TVA were stronger than Moses, for they “parted the waters, raised the dead, and scattered the people.”

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