News
Glory-June Greiff writes us from Indiana: We all know that the New Deal changed the landscape. It also preserved it, celebrating America’s history even as it was making history. Taking office in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt pledged a… read more
Over at Jacobin Magazine, R. H. Lossin has a scathing takedown of recent attempts to sell off an important piece of our democratic heritage. “Why the Post Office Matters” presents the myth of USPS debt for what it is: A myth, “manufactured” by special interests… read more
Last week, we reported on a Works Progress Administration (WPA) mural unearthed from a post office basement. This week, courtesy of Diane Bell and the San Diego Union-Tribune, we bring news of WPA art “hidden in plain sight.” Last… read more
Last year, Melinda McCrary, Director of the Richmond (CA) Museum of History, heard tell of a legendary, seemingly lost mural. Richmond: The Industrial City, was painted in 1941 by Victor Arnautoff, displayed in the city’s main post office until 1976,… read more
Five days before Pearl Harbor, and anticipating American involvement in a world war, Franklin Roosevelt forced the Tenth Mountain Division to abandon a $25 million training site in Henry’s Lake, Idaho–because the site was also a breeding ground for trumpeter swans…. read more
Ron Partridge was still working in his Berkeley, California, dark room well into his 90s. This brought his life full circle. Ron began his career in the darkroom, assisting his mother, photographer Imogen Cunningham. Ron went on to assist both… read more
Nothing brings to life the countless ways the New Deal saved millions from bleak poverty while catapulting the nation into the 20th century like the movies its agencies produced. The Living New Deal’s Berkeley Associate John Elrick compiled a list… read more
It was September 1935. A WPA project was underway to drain and dredge a muck-filled pond on Charing Cross Road in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a leafy suburb Detroit, a city hard hit by the Great Depression. Suddenly, a steam shovel… read more
On August 4 the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service named Colorado’s Mount Morrison CCC Camp and Red Rocks Amphitheatre—both built by the CCC— as National Historic Landmarks. They are the first New Deal-era historic sites to… read more
On August 14, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, declaring: “If the Senate and the House of Representatives … had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time.” Nonetheless,… read more
