22 research outputs found
The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics
Review of: The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics, by Jefferson Cowie
The Two Faces of Liberalism: How the Hoover-Roosevelt Debate Shapes the 21st Century
Review of: "The Two Faces of Liberalism: How the Hoover-Roosevelt Debate Shapes the 21st Century," by Gordon Lloyd
The South and the New Deal
When Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in as president, the South was unmistakably the most disadvantaged part of the nation. The region\u27s economy was the weakest, its educational level the lowest, its politics the most rigid, and its laws and social mores the most racially slanted. Moreover, the region was prostrate from the effects of the Great Depression.
Roosevelt\u27s New Deal effected significant changes on the southern landscape, challenging many traditions and laying the foundations for subsequent alterations in the southern way of life. At the same time, firmly entrenched values and institutions militated against change and blunted the impact of federal programs.
In The South and the New Deal, Roger Biles examines the New Deal\u27s impact on the rural and urban South, its black and white citizens, its poor, and its politics. He shows how southern leaders initially welcomed and supported the various New Deal measures but later opposed a continuation or expansion of these programs because they violated regional convictions and traditions. Nevertheless, Biles concludes, the New Deal, coupled with the domestic effects of World War II, set the stage for a remarkable postwar transformation in the affairs of the region.
The post-World War II Sunbelt boom has brought Dixie more fully into the national mainstream. To what degree did the New Deal disrupt southern distinctiveness? Biles answers this and other questions and explores the New Deal\u27s enduring legacy in the region.
Roger Biles, professor of history at Illinois State University, is the author of several books, including Richard J. Daley: Politics, Race, and the Governing of Chicago.
Should become the standard view of the New Deal\u27s legacy to the South. —American Historical Review
Biles offers a concise and well-crafted overview effectively demonstrating the importance of the New Deal as a catalyst for change in the American South during the Depression era. —Journal of Southern Historyhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/1101/thumbnail.jp
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Public Housing on the Reservation
In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt repudiated the federal government’s traditional noninvolvement with the private housing market in an effort to revitalize the moribund construction industry. Under the auspices of the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act, the Public Works Administration’s Housing Division purchased or condemned land and built a modest amount of low-income housing. With the passage of the Wagner-Steagall Act in 1937, the federal government assumed permanent responsibility for the construction of public housing by offering generous loans and grants to local housing authorities.
By the early 1960s, concern for the poor led reformers to look beyond the nation’s big cities and to consider the provision of low-income housing for Native Americans on isolated reservations. This new use for public housing was due to a fundamental change in federal Indian policy that called for a greater commitment to the development of reservation land. Rejecting the policy of termination, whereby the government sought to dissolve tribal allegiances and foster assimilation, federal authorities attempted to improve housing as a key component of the effort to revitalize reservation life. After a halting beginning, public housing proliferated on reservations so much so that federal assistance became a crucial component of Indian housing on tribal land. By the 1990s, with public housing projects being demolished nationwide and privatization schemes being developed for the nation’s poor, the greatest success of the ill-fated public housing experiment could arguably be found on Native American reservations. In addition, public housing became a highly visible manifestation of the federal government’s endorsement of Indian self-determination.
In the mid-twentieth century, reformers seeking to enlist government aid in the provision of low-income housing found some of the worst living conditions on Indian reservations. A Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) study conducted in 1962 placed the median annual income for Indians at $1,500- a figure several thousand dollars below the average in the United States- and the 360,000 Indians who lived on reservations at that time relied heavily on government support for their continued existence