On April 14, 1935, known as “Black Sunday,” a dark cloud roiled the Great Plains. The dust storm carried 300 million tons of Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas east to the Atlantic Ocean. A decade-long drought, overgrazing and poor farming practices dried up 100 million acres of prairie, rendered a half million people homeless and ultimately displaced two and a half million people. It was the largest migration in American history. The New Deal’s response—stabilizing crop prices, making loans to help farmers pay their bills, planting trees as wind breaks, teaching farming methods to conserve soil and water—and eventually, rain—brought relief to the land and hope to those who stayed.
WATCH: Woody Guthrie, Dust Bowl Blues
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By Bryce Jones
Dalhart, Texas was hard hit by the Dust Bowl. Things began to turn around when the USDA’s Soil Conservation Service chose the city for one of the nation's first erosion-control demonstration projects—the first to focus solely on wind erosion. READ MORE
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By Kurt Feichtmeir
Descendants of FDR and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt have advised and supported the Living New Deal from the start. We jumped at the chance to interview Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Seagraves, (Ellie). Ellie and her brother, Curtis (Buzz) lived at the White House from 1933 to 1935 with their mother, Anna, the eldest of the president’s five children. Now 96, Ellie lives in Bethesda, Maryland. She recently spoke to us about her famous grandparents and growing up during the New Deal. READ INTERVIEW |
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 FDR Library and Museum
Hyde Park, New York
“Black Americans, Civil Rights, and the Roosevelts, 1932-1962”
Saturday, June 3, 2023-December 31, 2024
The exhibition offers critical perspectives on the racism and discrimination in American politics and culture and recounts Black Americans organizing for social justice. The opening discussion will be live streamed on June 3, 3pm EDT, via the official FDR Library YouTube, Twitter and Facebook accounts. MORE INFO
 South Dakota Art Museum
Brookings, South Dakota
“Dakota Modern,” The Art of Oscar Howe”
Saturday, June 10, 2023-September 17, 2023
Opening Day Reception, June 10, 9am-8pm CDT
The exhibition features more than 60 works by Yanktonai Dakota artist. Howe’s public works, painted under the auspices of the WPA, are also touched upon in the exhibit. Free. MORE INFO
 American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress
Washington, DC
"Rewriting America: Reconsidering the Federal Writers' Project 80 Years Later"
Friday, June16, 2023, 8am-6pm EDT
The symposium will bring together the contemporary perspectives of public scholars, documentary producers and curators on the legacy of the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP). The free, public event focuses attention on the ways in which the Library’s extraordinary archival collection of FWP materials continues to inform and inspire public outreach and interdisciplinary scholarship.
MORE INFO AND REGISTRATION
 Henry Wallace Center at the FDR Presidential Library
Hyde Park, New York
Roosevelt Reading Festival and New Deal Book Award
Saturday, June 24, 2023, 9:45-5pm EDT
The day-long program will highlight the recently published work of fifteen authors and will include the presentation of the Living New Deal’s 2022 New Deal Book Award to Dr. Victoria Wolcott for her book “Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civl Rights Movement.” MORE INFO
 Oceanside Museum of Art
Oceanside, California
“WPA Contemporary Interpretations”
Saturday, June 24-November 5, 2023
A century after the establishment of the Works Progress Administration, our society faces similar challenges to those endured throughout the WPA-era. The works of five contemporary artists presented in this exhibition respond visually and thematically to specific historic paintings from the adjacent exhibition, “Art for the People: WPA-Era Paintings from the Dijkstra Collection.”
MORE INFO
 City of Dalhart, Texas and The Living New Deal
New Deal 90th Anniversary Celebration
Tuesday, June 27, 2023 6pm-8pm CDT
During the Dust Bowl, the City of Dalhart became the site of New Deal-sponsored soil restoration projects that fundamentally changed the agricultural industry of the Panhandle and across the globe. Speakers include historians Dr. Brenda Taylor Matthews (Texas Wesleyan University) and Alyssa Gerszewski (Texas Historical Commission); professor of agronomy Dr. Dennis Coker (Texas A&M University); and Dr. Annie Rothstein Segan (founder of the Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project). The program will be recorded and available on the City’s website. For more information and to RSVP for the free event: [email protected] or 806-244-5511.
 Utopia Film Festival
Greenbelt, Maryland
New Deal Spirit Award
Deadline for Entries: August 4, 2023
Greenbelt, Maryland’s 19th annual Utopia Film Festival, utopiafilmfestival.org, held October 20-22, will celebrate the 90th birthday of FDR’s New Deal with the New Deal Spirit Award. The festival and award recognize works “seeking to build a better world through film.” The award-winning film will be shown at the 2023 film festival at the city’s historic Old Greenbelt Theatre. SUBMISSION INFO.
Questions? Email the festival committee.
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Tell Us About Your Favorite New Deal Site
 Spectacularly Unpretentious
Charles S. Farnsworth County Park
Altadena, California
By Jess Berman
I discovered this beloved 15-acre park in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains soon after moving to Altadena eight years ago. I was struck by the hand-laid stonework installed by young men from the CCC camp at nearby Earl Canyon. Between 1933-34, they also built the ranger's residence, a garage, business office, picnic tables, stoves and barbecue pits. But it was when I came upon the stunning amphitheater—still in use—that I realized this place was really special. READ MORE
Send us a first-person story of 100 (or so) words about your favorite New Deal site and why you chose it. Send your submissions to [email protected]. Thanks!
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Some links may limit access for nonsubscribers. Please support local journalism, if you can.
Administration Announces Largest Investment in Rural Electrification Since the New Deal
With nearly $11 billion in grants and loan opportunities, this USDA program represents the single largest investment in rural electrification since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act into law in 1936.
The White House, May 17, 2023
People-Powered Movements Helped Our Grandfathers Push Through the New Deal. They Can Save Those Programs Now
Ninety years ago, the New Deal rescued America. Since then, the transformation it brought has only grown. But the New Deal is under assault as never before, and philanthropy must step up to save it. Philanthropy’s most critical role during these perilous times is to generously fund the people-powered movements leading crusades for change.
By James Roosevelt, Jr. and Henry Scott Wallace
Chronicle of Philanthropy, May 18, 2023
The Four Freedoms, According to Republicans
Republican-led legislatures are placing harsh limits on the Four Freedoms that were the guiding lights of FDR’s New Deal.
By Jamelle Bouie
New York Times, May 19, 2023
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“ Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men. ”
— FDR, January 24, 1935
YOUR DONATIONS KEEP THE NEW DEAL SPIRIT ALIVE.
The Living New Deal thanks you for your generous support!
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