 American workers made tremendous gains in the 1930s. Thanks to a surge in collective action and union organizing and the support of the Roosevelt Administration, New Deal legislation strengthened workers’ rights in many ways. The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 for the first time guaranteed the right to form unions and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 further strengthened workers’ rights to collectively bargain, with the National Labor Relations Board providing oversight. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 instituted a federal minimum wage and overtime pay and abolished child labor. But conservatives and business interests steadily weakened these reforms. Since the 1980s, workers rights have been whittled down. Union membership—over 30 percent of the private sector workforce in the 1950s—has fallen to just over 6 percent today. Yet, American labor is again on the rise—something to celebrate this Labor Day.
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By John Kreidler
The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, signed into law in 1973, enabled a new generation to carry forward the legacy of the WPA art programs, providing jobs that saved artists and served the public in hard times. READ MORE |
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By Brooke L. Blower
Franklin D. Roosevelt was, famously, the first U.S. president to travel by plane for official White House business. Tens of thousands more would soon travel along the airline’s Pacific, Latin American and African routes. As war loomed, Roosevelt used secret presidential funds to fortify and expand Pan Am’s network of bases. READ MORE
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Living New Deal Webinars - Via Zoom
"Americans in a World at War: Intimate Histories from the Crash of Pan Am’s Yankee Clipper”
with Brooke L. Blower
Thursday, September 12, 2024, 5pm PDT
On February 21, 1943, Pan American Airways’ celebrated seaplane, the Yankee Clipper, took off from New York’s Marine Air Terminal and island-hopped its way across the Atlantic Ocean. Arriving at Lisbon the following evening, it crashed in the Tagus River, killing twenty-four of its thirty-nine passengers and crew. Brooke L. Blower talks about her work, reconstructing the backstories of seven worldly Americans aboard that plane—their personal histories, their diverse New Deal-era politics and how their wartime movements shed new light on Americans’ road to World War II.
Brooke L. Blower is Associate Professor of History at Boston University and author of several publications including the award-winning Becoming Americans in Paris: Transatlantic Politics and Culture between the World Wars (2011). Her latest book is Americans in a World at War: Intimate Histories from the Crash of Pan Am’s Yankee Clipper (2023), which received the New Deal Book Award. FREE. REGISTER
 “CETA: Forgotten Federally Funded Artists”
October 3, 10, 17, 5pm PDT
Co-hosted by Living New Deal Assistant Director Dr. Mary Okin, who leads the Advocating for New Deal Art Initiative; photographer Blaise Tobia and sculptor Virginia Maksymowicz, educators and founders of the CETA Arts Legacy Project.
The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973, (CETA), became the largest federal jobs program since the New Deal and a major source of support for cultural workers in the US. This webinar series explores the origins of CETA funding for the arts and how it shaped a diverse generation of artists, many of whom continue to impact the visual and performing arts. FREE. Register for each of 3 webinars.
October 3, 5pm PDT: “Reshaping the WPA for the 1970s”
With John Kreidler, whose idea led to extending CETA funding for the arts in San Francisco; and George Koch, who supported CETA arts funding at the national level from Washington DC. FREE. REGISTER
October 10, 2024, 5pm PDT: “The Artist Experience”
With Colleen Hooper, historian of CETA-funded dance history; Judy Baca, professor of Chicano studies at UCLA, artist, founder of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) and director of “The Great Wall” project, a monumental mural by community artists depicting the story of Los Angeles through the lens of interracial harmony. FREE. REGISTER
October 17, 2024, 5pm PDT: “Impact on the Arts and Community”
With Ted Berger, longtime leader of nonprofits and art projects in New York City; and Lou Bellamy, founder and co-artistic director of Penumbra Theatre Company, dedicated to dramatic exploration of the African American experience. The speakers will discuss their use of CETA funds to build arts organizations and professional networks that continue to impact the visual and performing arts. FREE. REGISTER
 National Archives Museum, Washington DC
Exhibition: "Power & Light—Russell Lee’s Coal Survey"
Through July 6, 2025
Russell Lee was one of several photographers hired by the federal government’s Farm Security Administration in the 1930s to document the toll of the Great Depression and drought on rural Americans. Like his FSA contemporaries, including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein, Lee sought to inspire social change. This exhibition features more than 200 of Lee’s images of coal miners and their families from a survey conducted by the US Navy in 1946. Like his work during the New Deal, Lee's images document inhumane living and working conditions alongside the strength and resilience of families and communities. FREE.
LOCATION: National Archives Museum, Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery, 701 Constitution Ave NW, Washington DC
 Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, New York, NYWednesday, September 4, 2024, 6:30pm EDT
A benefit for the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, a nonprofit that supports the New York State park located on Roosevelt Island.
LOCATION: Rockefeller Center, Rooftop Garden, 620 5th Avenue, New York City
 Lincoln County Historical Society
"Celebrating Ninety Years of Newport’s Yaquina Bay Bridge"
Sunday, September 8, 2024, 2:00-3:30pm PDT
In 1934, construction began on the last five bridges designed to close the remaining watery gaps on Oregon’s Highway 101. The last one to open in summer of 1936, the Yaquina Bay Bridge was celebrated for both its beauty and its contribution to the coast’s accessibility for commerce and tourism. Three state experts explore the bridge’s significance as a Depression-era project: Oregon Department of Transportation Historian Robert W. Hadlow; State Bridge Engineer Ray Bottenberg and Moderator Judith Kenny, Living New Deal National Associate and producer of the short film, In Landscape Harmony: New Deal Bridges for the Oregon Coast. FREE.
LOCATION: Pacific Maritime Heritage Center. 333 SE Bay Blvd, Newport, OR. INFO: 541-265-7509
 The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC
Exhibition: "Southern/Modern: 1913 - 1955"
Through September 29, 2024
One hundred paintings, prints and drawings explore the wide range of artistic endeavors that thrived in a region undergoing profound societal, cultural and economic changes.
LOCATION: The Mint Museum Uptown, Levine Center for the Arts, 500 South Tryon Street, Charlotte, NC
 Pare Lorenz Center at the FDR Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY
Online: Newly Restored Films
Sourced from 11 digitally-restored home movies recently donated by the family of FDR’s longtime secretary, Missy LeHand, this footage offers a rare, intimate view of the private and social lives of both the President and Eleanor Roosevelt between 1932-1941, depicting a wide range of personal relationships and activities enjoyed by the Roosevelts’ large and dynamic group of friends, family and advisers. WATCH
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By Susan Ives
Since the US Presidency was established in 1789, forty-five men have served as POTUS. All but one had pets. READ MORE
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By Barbara Bernstein
I recently went back to the Washington Park Zoo with my young granddaughters. I was happy to find that the leafy WPA park remains largely intact and is filled with families. READ MORE
Tell us about your favorite New Deal site. 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.
Few national monuments honor women. Biden will create this new one.
The monument will honor Frances Perkins, the first female Cabinet secretary, who helped to establish Social Security and the federal minimum wage.
By Maxine Joselow
The Washington Post, August 8, 2024
What FDR could advise Biden about reforming the Supreme Court — tread lightly
If it’s true that as Mark Twain supposedly said, history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes, then we are about to embark on a poetry slam for the ages, with the Supreme Court as its theme.
By Michael Hiltzik
Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2024
Barbara Kingsolver on climate change: ‘Words are what I have to offer’
The novelist explains why she wrote a pledge for the American Climate Corps, President Joe Biden’s signature green jobs program. This summer, the first 9,000 members of the Climate Corps committed to Kingsolver’s oath:
I pledge to bring my skills, respect, and compassion to work every day, supporting environmental justice in all our communities.
I will honor nature’s beauty and abundance, on which we all depend, and commit to its protection from the climate crisis.
I will build a more resilient future, where every person can thrive.
I will take my place in history, working with shared purpose in the American Climate Corps on behalf of our nation and planet, its people, and all its species, for the better future we hold within our sight.
By Kate Yoder
Grist, July 8, 2023
What Kamala Harris Can Learn from FDR’s 1936 Speech
In a speech accepting his renomination in Philadelphia in the summer of 1936, FDR’s message that night — defending the economic mission of the New Deal and why its continuation was essential not just to improving Americans’ quality of life, but to a democratic system that was then under attack both at home and abroad by the rise of fascism — provides just as good a model for Vice President Kamala Harris this year.
By David M. Stone
The Philadelphia Citizen, August 12, 2024
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 The Living New Deal is always posting new content to our growing website.
On the Road with the WPA Guides: The Erie Canal
Produced by the WPA's Federal Writers’ Project, The American Guide Series offers driving routes along with essays on the nature, history, culture and people of each US state and several cities. Historian and photographer Fern Nesson is a collector of American Guides and uses them on her frequent road trips. Driving the backroads through upstate New York, she recently found herself on the banks of the Erie Canal. Here is her dispatch. |
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"A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted—in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs, who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and hands at the behest of his head."
— FDR, Radio Address to the New York Herald Tribune Forum
October 26, 1939
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