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On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as the 32nd president of the United States. He had won in a landslide over the Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover. Millions tuned in to hear a live radio broadcast of FDR’s inaugural address. “So, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he assured the nation. “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work,” he proclaimed. “We must act and act quickly.” FDR’s first hundred days in office would bring a raft of relief programs, public work projects, financial reforms and regulations. The New Deal had begun.
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By Gray Brechin
Of all the controversies that New Deal art had provoked in San Francisco, few equaled that which swirled around what would have been the largest WPA sculpture in the country —sculptor Beniamino Bufano’s proposed 180-foot stainless steel statue of St. Francis for the summit of Twin Peaks. READ MORE |
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 Via Zoom
A Roundtable: Transforming the Nation’s Food System: Lessons from the New Deal and Strategies for Today
Thursday, March 2, 2023, 7pm EST
Hosts: The Living New Deal NYC Chapter and Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College
This discussion explores how federal policy initiatives can spur revitalization of regional agriculture, better conditions for farm and food-processing workers, more equitable food distribution and improved nutrition for all Americans—measures that recall successful New Deal programs. Featuring: Jeff Gold, New York City-based urbanist and editor, chair of the Metro NY Health Care for All Campaign; Kate MacKinzie, Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy; Jan Poppendieck, Professor Emerita and co-founder of the NYC Food Policy Center at Hunter College; Myron Thurston, Food Supply Chain Marketing Specialist for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Oneida County. Free. REGISTER
 Via Zoom
"The Life of Frances Perkins”
A Fireside Chat with Dr. Christopher N. Breiseth
Monday, March 6, 2023, 4:45pm EST, via Zoom
Host: National New Deal Preservation Association
Frances Perkins served as FDR’s Secretary of Labor. She was the force behind Social Security, a minimum wage, the 40-hour work week and abolishing child labor. Dr. Breiseth got to know Ms. Perkins while attending Cornell University. He is author of “The Frances Perkins I Knew.” Free. REGISTER
 Museum Exhibit
"Reality Makes Them Dream: American Photography, 1929–1941”
March 29, 2023–July 30, 2023
Host: Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University
This exhibition features the 1930s work of five artists, Ansel Adams, John Gutmann, Helen Levitt, Wright Morris and Edward Weston. Displayed among a diverse selection of photographs by their contemporaries, this material illuminates how American artists, including some employed by the New Deal’s art projects, used photography to spark the imagination. MORE INFO |
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 The Presidential Yacht Potomac
Launched in 1934, the Coast Guard cutter Electra was built for speed. FDR acquired the 165-foot submarine chaser in 1936, renamed her the Potomac and placed her under the command of the U.S. Navy. The “floating White House” provided a getaway for the president, who enjoyed fishing off the fantail and often invited advisors, politicians, statesmen and royalty aboard. Their signatures appear in the guest log, including those of New Dealers Harry Hopkins, who headed New Deal relief efforts, and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. The Prince of Wales signed his name in the log as simply “Edward.” READ MORE |
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Tell Us About Your Favorite New Deal Site
 “Ready for Take Off!”
By Harvey Smith
The old Albuquerque Municipal Airport takes me back the time in air travel when one would walk from a spartan passenger lounge onto the tarmac to board a waiting plane. Built in 1928, the passenger terminal was soon outgrown and in 1939 the Works Progress Administration constructed an adobe Pueblo Revival-style terminal to replace it. Millionaire aviator Howard Hughes took a personal interest in the decor, which features handcrafted vigas and latillas (timber beams and rafters), tin light fixtures and a kiva fireplace, produced by local artisans. 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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Joe Biden Is Embracing His Inner FDR
Biden has begun to deliver a critique of capitalism that, while hardly radical, carries unmistakable echoes of the 32nd president.
By John Nichols
The Nation, February 14, 2023
How Biden is 'echoing' FDR’s 'critique of capitalism'
Biden is making some of the points that FDR made in the 1930s during the Great Depression.
By Alex Henderson
Alternet, February 14, 2023
Republicans aren’t going to tell Americans the real cause of our $31.4tn debt
The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for
By Robert Reich
The Guardian, February 1, 2023
Why Biden is No FDR
New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore asserts that Biden’s recent successes do not make him the equivalent of FDR or LBJ, as some—the President among them—have suggested.
Interview with Evan Osnos
The New Yorker, September 1, 2022 |
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“The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933
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