 FDR was 39 years old when he was stricken with polio in 1921. Back then, people with disabilities were considered weak and unemployable. FDR’s opponents sought to exploit his inability to walk as a political vulnerability. He was rarely seen or photographed using a wheelchair. Yet, many believe that FDR’s disability shaped him as a person and as president. He made conquering polio a national cause. By his own indomitable spirit and his advancement of federal policies, FDR helped to dismantle the societal barriers that, more than disability itself, can limit one’s ability to achieve. READ MORE
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By Brent McKee
Over fifty years before the Americans with Disabilities Act, the New Deal undertook the first major federal effort to aid citizens with physical and mental challenges. Mainly through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), thousands of New Deal works projects were directed at expanding, improving and staffing disabled services around the country. READ MORE |
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Remembrance
 Ruth Gottstein, 1922-2022
A lifelong activist and champion of New Deal art, Ruth Gottstein, daughter of New Deal artist Bernard Zakheim, died on August 30 at age 100. Ruth advocated for the restoration of the long-neglected Coit Tower murals. She and her son, Adam, recently saved the Zakheim frescoes at the UCSF medical school from demolition. READ MORE Ying Lee, 1932-2022
Activist Ying Lee, an early member of the Living New Deal, died on September 10 at age 90.
"She was an indomitable presence around Berkeley for decades, active in every good cause," said Richard Walker, director of the Living New Deal. READ MORE
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 The Moya Library-Ross Historical Society at the Marin Art & Garden Center, Ross, CA
"The Civilian Conservation Corps In Marin"
with MMWD Park Ranger Matt Cerkel
Friday, October 7, 11:00am
Join Marin Municipal Water District Senior Park Ranger Matt Cerkel to learn about the Civilian Conservation Corps’s lasting legacy in Marin. Location: The Barn Theater at Marin Art & Garden Center, Ross. $10 donation requested. Visit moya-rhs.org for details or call 415-250-3611.
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 Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, New York, NY
"Becoming FDR: The Personal Crisis That Made a President"
with Jonathan Darman and Jonathan Alter
Wednesday, October 12, 2022, 6pm EDT (3pm PDT), In person and via Zoom.
In an interview with historian Jonathan Alter, Jonathan Darman will discuss Darman's new book, Becoming FDR, The Personal Crisis That Made a President, the story of how Roosevelt’s struggle with polio forged his character and precipitated his political ascent.
In person and via Zoom. Location: Roosevelt House, 47-49 East 65th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues), New York, NY. REGISTER
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 Treasure Island Museum, San Francisco, CA
"You Are Here: The Story of Treasure Island”
The first exhibit in the new and expanded space in legendary Building One, site of the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939-1940), “You Are Here” tells the story of Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island through the museum’s rich collection of historical artifacts and photographs. Free. INFORMATION
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Living New Deal Webinars
via Zoom
 The Federal Theatre: Revisiting the Dream
Tuesday, October 11, 2022, 5pm-6pm PDT (8pm EDT)
with Susan Quinn and Dan Jacobs
The Federal Theater Project put starving unemployed actors, directors, set designers, stagehands and writers back to work. Susan Quinn and Dan Jacobs retell the story in their play called Enter Hallie, which intertwines Federal Theater Director Hallie Flanagan’s private struggles with her public quest to create innovative theater for hundreds of thousands. Susan and Dan will mix readings from the play with a discussion of Federal Theater history, as told in Quinn’s book, Furious Improvisation. Free. REGISTER
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Painting the Mail: Post Office Art of the New Deal
Tuesday, November 15, 2022 5pm-6pm PST (8pm EST)
with Barbara Bernstein
The New Deal didn’t just decorate post offices. It celebrated them. Murals, bas reliefs and sculptures depict letters being written, mailed, sorted, transported, delivered, read and shared. These artworks are increasingly imperiled as post offices are sold and repurposed. Barbara Bernstein, the Living New Deal's Public Art Specialist and founder of the New Deal Art Registry, offers a vision for the reuse of these buildings that preserves both the artworks and the sense of community that post offices can provide. Free. REGISTER
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Reality Makes Them Dream: Revisiting New Deal-Era Photography
with Josie Johnson and Emilia Mickevicius
Tuesday, December 6, 2022, 5pm-6pm PST
Photography from the New Deal-era is often associated with mirroring the bleak realities of the Great Depression. Yet, the photography is remarkably varied, using the raw material of the visible world as a point of departure for viewers’ imaginations, venturing into the poetic and surreal. Join us as we examine how the works of WPA photographers like Sybil Anikeef, Sonya Noskowiak, Edward Weston and others complicate and add dimension to understanding art and culture in the US in the 1930s.
Josie Johnson, PhD. is the Capital Group Foundation Curatorial Fellow for Photography at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, where she is currently preparing her exhibition "Reality Makes Them Dream: Photography 1929-1941." Emilia Mickevicius, PhD. is a photography historian and curator in the Photography department of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has contributed to numerous exhibitions at SFMOMA, including "A Living for Us All: Artists and the WPA" in 2022. Free. REGISTER
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Some links may limit access for nonsubscribers. Please support local journalism, if you can.
Jewish advisers to FDR told him not to publicly speak out against Hitler
According to "The U.S. and the Holocaust," a new PBS documentary by Ken Burns, FDR appointed more Jewish officials to his administration than any president before him, but some advised him not to publicly denounce the Nazis, arguing it could hurt German Jews.
By Sarah Al-Arshani
Insider, September 21, 2022
‘The God-Damnedest Thing’: The Antisemitic Plot to Thwart U.S. Aid to Europe’s Jews and the Man Who Exposed It
Eleanor Roosevelt called Henry Morgenthau “FDR’s conscience.” Morgenthau’s crusade against antisemitism in the State Department serves as a poignant reminder of what can happen when government officials stand up to the misdeeds of their own administration.
By Andrew Meir
Politico, September 23, 2022
The Civilian Climate Corps was dropped from the climate bill. Now what?
President Biden took office with grand plans to launch the first-ever Civilian Climate Corps. Those plans face an uncertain future on Capitol Hill.
By Maxine Joselow
The Washington Post, September 8, 2022
On Trees and Democracy: An Arborist's Open Letter
You may remember that old saw, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Time for an update: those who don’t know history are unable to repeat its successes.
By Joe Lamb
Common Dreams, September 7, 2022
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The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937
The federal government began taxing marijuana in 1937 after Harry Anslinger, commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, testified to a Congressional committee that smoking marijuana “produces in it users insanity, criminality and death.” H.R. 6385, The Marihuana Tax Act regulated the importation, cultivation, possession and/or distribution of cannabis and placed a tax on its sale. Moses Baca and Samuel Caldwell, arrested in Denver for possession and dealing, respectively, were the first in the nation to be convicted for failure pay the tax. During WWII, the US Department of Agriculture and the Army urged farmers to grow hemp for fiber and issued tax stamps to sellers to limit access to the drug. States sold their own tax stamps, some of which are highly sought after by philatelists. In 1969 in Timothy Leary v. United States, part of the Marihuana Tax Act was ruled unconstitutional as a violation of the Fifth Amendment, since a person seeking the tax stamp would have to self incriminate. In response, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, which repealed the 1937 drug tax. Marijuana today is still treated as an illegal substance under federal law, but illegal drugs are no longer taxable.
With thanks to Roger Catlin, Smithsonian Magazine.
View the trailer of the 1936 film, Reefer Madness (1:30 minutes)
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Tell Us About Your Favorite New Deal Site
Send us a first-person story of 100 (or so) words describing the site and why you chose it. Submissions will appear in future issues of The Fireside! Be sure to include a photo (with photo credit). Send to [email protected]. Thanks!
An Outhouse for the Ages
After reading about the “Million Dollar Privy” in Guernsey State Park, I had to see it for myself. The park surrounds the Guernsey Reservoir on the North Platte River in southeast Wyoming and is part of an extensive National Historic Landmark District for its design history and construction. The CCC labored at the park from 1934-1937. Its work includes hiking trails, campgrounds and stone buildings considered some of the best CCC structures in the West. My favorite is a massive stone outhouse that received its nickname because it took a long time to build and cost a lot of money...for an outhouse. Stone buttresses outside look like they could withstand a major tornado and huge timbers frame the stalls inside.
— Pete Tannen, San Francisco
YOUR DONATIONS KEEP THE NEW DEAL SPIRIT ALIVE.
The Living New Deal thanks you for your generous support!
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“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
 
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