Film Festival to Present New Deal Spirit Award

July 25, 2023

Old Greenbelt Theater
The theater opened on September 21, 1938, with Little Miss Broadway, a film starring Shirley Temple. Admission was 30 cents for adults and 15 cents for children. Photo Courtesy, Maryland Humanities.

Greenbelt, Maryland will celebrate the 90th anniversary of FDR’s New Deal (1933-1942) at the19th Utopia Film Festival to be held October 20-22 at the city’s historic Old Greenbelt Theatre. This year’s festival will include a presentation of the “New Deal Spirit Award.” The award recognizes independent films that reflect New Deal ideals.

Since 2005, the annual festival has showcased films about community building, cultural diversity, social and economic concerns and environmental issues. Projects eligible for the New Deal Spirit Award fall into three categories: full-length documentary or feature films (no longer than 90 minutes); short documentary or feature films (no longer than 30 minutes); and animation. Festival planners invite filmmakers and animators to submit their work for consideration by August 4, 2023.

Plaque at the Greenbelt Theater
The theater embodies the community values of safe, healthy, affordable housing for all citizens. Photo by Susan Ives.

The festival takes its name from the “utopian” origins of so-called green towns, planned and built by the federal government to provide affordable housing for families during the Great Depression. The towns, inspired by the garden city theory of urban planning, were ringed by forests and farms and designed to foster healthy living and community solidarity by incorporating walking paths, playgrounds and common areas.

Greenbelt, twelve miles northeast of Washington, DC, was built by WPA workers in 1937. Its residents were screened for their willingness to engage in the community. Greenbelt residents established cooperatives—community-run enterprises. The Greenbelt grocery and the newspaper, originally named “The Greenbelt Cooperator,” remain co-ops to this day.

Rexford Tugwell, the head of the New Deal Resettlement Administration, had envisioned hundreds of green towns. But critics derided them as “utopian.” Tugwell was dubbed “Rex the Red,” by some in Congress for his egalitarian views. Only three green towns were built—Greenbelt, Maryland; Greendale, Wisconsin and Greenhills, Ohio.

Compared with its sister towns, Greenbelt has endured with few alterations.

The town’s center, Old Greenbelt, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997. Today, it’s considered a planning landmark and attracts visitors from around the world.

Chris Haley is the executive director of the volunteer-run Utopian Film Festival.

The Utopia Film Festival is run entirely by volunteers. Chris Haley, the executive director, also is director of the Study of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland at the Maryland State Archives (and is the nephew of Alex Haley, author of “Roots”). Chris shared his thoughts on the New Deal at 90, the New Deal Spirit Award and the racial segregation in Greenbelt’s past.

“I think, especially given where we are as a nation right now, this award will remind us of what the New Deal represented—better ways to live if we act together as one community. Granted, the (New Deal’s) initial implementation, highly segregated, didn’t create that reality. However, the ideal is one we should always strive to achieve. The Utopia Film Festival wants to remind and recognize that spirit in film.”

The Utopia Film Festival is a project of the nonprofit Greenbelt Access Television, the festival’s primary sponsor. For information about the New Deal Spirit Award, contact the festival committee: [email protected].

Susan Gervasi is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in the Washington, D.C. area. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, the New York Daily News and numerous other publications. Her films include Defending Utopia: the Greenbelt News Review at 80; Psychedelic Mysticism: The Good Friday Experiment & Beyond; On the Trail of Jack Thorp; and Mary Surratt: Mystery Woman of the Lincoln Assassination.

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A Greenbelt Town Fights for Press Freedom

January 30, 2023

Shopping at Greenbelt Cooperative Grocery Store
Cooperatives remain central to life in Greenbelt today. Photo by Russell Lee, 1938. Courtesy, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

In 1937, Theodora and John Murray were among 850 families selected to reside in an experimental city built and owned by the federal government.

About a half-hour’s drive from Washington, DC., Greenbelt, Maryland is one of three planned residential communities conceived and developed by the New Deal’s Resettlement Administration (RA), which relocated displaced and low-income families during the Great Depression. These Greenbelt towns, described as “utopian” by both adherents and detractors alike, offered affordable rents in suburban villages meant to deliver families from blighted urban housing.

“They wanted to try an experiment that provided something healthy, with lots of green grass and trees,” says Greenbelt journalist Mary Lou Williamson, a 60-year city resident of the town. “There was plenty of fresh air and children could spend time outside in a safe community.”

Mary Lou Williamson, a 60-year resident of the town, reported on the public hearings that led real estate developer Charles Bresler to sue the Greenbelt News Review for criminal libel. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Photo by Susan Ives, 2022.

Prospective tenants were screened not only on the basis of income, but on their prospective suitability for starting a cooperative community. “They wanted people who would take care of things,” Williamson explains.

The Murrays and other Greenbelt townsfolk decided to start with a town newspaper. Churned out on a mimeograph machine, “The Cooperator,” became a vital part of promulgating “the Greenbelt philosophy.” Besides guiding new residents through a maze of organizational meetings, its editors and reporters encouraged readers to view themselves as “pioneers” of a new way of life, and promoted the city as a “model for future Greenbelts.”

Organized as a cooperative, the newspaper ushered in a proliferation of other co-ops. A credit union, grocery store, nursery school and babysitting co-op remain active today. The New Deal Café, a hive of activism, is cooperatively managed by town residents.

Mrs. Hoover reading the Greenbelt Cooperator in her living room.
The paper, published by the Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Association, Inc., was established in 1937 shortly after the federal government’s construction of Greenbelt. It has been published weekly without interruption ever since and is delivered free to most Greenbelt residents. Photo by Marjory Collins, 1942. Courtesy, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

Critics of FDR’s Administration denounced the so-called “green towns” as a socialist boondoggle. But it wasn’t until after WWII that Greenbelt and its newspaper met with an existential threat, when Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy proposed selling the three green towns to private interests. Greenbelt tenants narrowly voted to purchase the homes collectively and established a cooperative, Greenbelt Homes, Inc., in 1954.

McCarthy’s scrutiny had bred fear and distrust. Not long after Greenbelt was targeted during televised hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee, The Cooperator changed its name to the Greenbelt News Review.

In 1965, real estate developer Charles Bresler and the city became embroiled in a zoning dispute.

At a heated city council meeting, a Greenbelt resident accused Bresler of trying to “blackmail” the city into a decision Bresler sought. News Review reporter Mary Lou Williamson, who would later become the paper’s editor, reported on the controversy and criticisms leveled at Bresler. He sued the News Review for criminal libel in what became a precedent-setting lawsuit.

Sally Meredith, reporter for the Greenbelt Cooperator
Photo by Marjory Collins, 1942. Courtesy, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

In 1970 the Supreme Court unanimously decided in the News Review’s favor, holding that reporting the news is protected by the First Amendment, and that the paper was not libelous for accurately reporting such “rhetorical hyperbole” at a lively public meeting,” but rather “was performing its wholly legitimate function as a community newspaper when it published full reports of these public debates in its news columns.”

Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing v Bresler (1970), “is a very important case,” says Washington D.C. attorney Lee Levine, who has argued libel cases before the Supreme Court. “Both for what it decided…and for the influence it’s had on the law since.”

Volunteer staff at The Cooperator
The weekly paper was renamed the Greenbelt News Review in 1954. In 1970, The News Review successfully defended the freedom of the press before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Photographer unknown.

The precedent established by Greenbelt’s hometown paper continues to guarantee freedom of the press. In a 1990 case, Milkovich v The Lorraine Journal, the Court reiterated its finding in the Greenbelt case of “rhetorical hyperbole” as protected speech under the First Amendment and expanded press protection against frivolous, but costly, lawsuits.

Watch: PBS segment about Greenbelt in “Ten Towns That Changed America”
(5 minutes)

Watch: “Defending Utopia, The Greenbelt News Review at 80,” a film by Susan Gervasi
Film: https://vimeo.com/285905039. (48 minutes)
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/257268409

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A Forest at Your Doorstep

August 1, 2022

FDR speaks at Greenbelt
The president visited the partially completed town on November 13, 1936. “I have reviewed the plans but the reality exceeds my expectation,” he said. Pictured L-R: Rex Tugwell, head of the Resettlement Administration; President Roosevelt; and Wallace Richards, Executive Officer, Greenbelt Project. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

Joblessness and homelessness during the Great Depression led the federal government in 1935 to demonstrate how modest, well-built homes could improve the lives of ordinary Americans if these homes were located, designed and managed to promote “family and community life.” The plan was described in a 1937 pamphlet, Greenbelt Towns, published by the New Deal’s Resettlement Administration.

Forests were essential to several New Deal initiatives, including this planned-community program. Of the three greenbelt towns the federal government built, Greenbelt, Maryland, most strongly expressed the idea of a “belt of green.” The surrounding forests, parks, farms and gardens were intended to prevent encroachment from outside development and

Photo taken from the Goodyear Blimp in May, 1936, shows the forests and fields surrounding the town. While much of the town’s original green space has since been developed, and the mix of tree species has changed, eighty years on, a “belt of green,” now preserved, still defines the town. Photo annotations by O. Kelley. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

strengthen the bonds of community by encouraging residents to spend their leisure time in town with the natural world a short walk from their front doors. Greenbelt was shaped by the Garden City ideals of Ebenezer Howard and Clarence Stein. Within a Garden City, a neighborhood was defined as having homes within a half-mile walk from a central cluster of public buildings to include an elementary school or community center. Buildings and footpaths were embedded in forest and grassy common areas where residents could connect with their neighbors. Stein wrote about this aspect of Greenbelt in Toward New Towns for America, and his struggle to make these ideas stick in the sometimes chaotic and rushed atmosphere of the New Deal.

FDR motorcade touring the Greenbelt Lake dam. The forested tract in the background has been owned by the town since the federal government sold the land in 1950–1954. It was added to the Greenbelt Forest Preserve in 2007. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

Foreshadowing Greenbelt’s future, FDR in his 1938 introduction to Public Papers and Addresses, described the pendulum of participatory democracy, whereby the wealthy few exercise the lion’s share of political power and then, a few decades later, popular movements would force the government to accommodate the people’s needs and desires. Broadly speaking, the pendulum swung toward participatory democracy during the Great Depression in the form of protests, labor organizing and federal legislation shaped by the demands of the grassroots.

The town’s iconic Mother and Child sculpture, by WPA artist Lenore Thomas, 1937. Footpaths wend through Greenbelt’s landscape, in keeping with Garden City planning principles of using green space to nurture a sense of community. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

The original plan for the Greenbelt envisioned cooperative ownership of community assets—and idea that lives on today. Cooperatives own Greenbelt’s New Deal-era townhomes and 87 acres of protected woodland, the grocery store and the town’s weekly newspaper, founded in 1937.

For decades, Greenbelt residents have fought to preserve their town’s namesake. From 1950–1954, the federal government carried out part of the greenbelt plan that called for selling much of the land to a housing cooperative and the town government. In the 1960s, with sprawl radiating from Washington DC, Greenbelt residents elected a conservation-minded city council and began buying back land the housing cooperative had sold to developers. By 1989, the city owned a contiguous 245-acre forested tract of the original green belt and designated it the Greenbelt Forest Preserve. It protects century-old trees and a variety of habitats—vernal pools, wetlands, oak-hickory stands and a heath ecosystem similar to New Jersey’s pine barrens.

In 1997, Greenbelt’s New Deal-era buildings and adjacent forests became a National Historic Landmark.

"Promote the General Welfare" by Lenore Thomas
Public artworks throughout Greenbelt reflect social and economic themes, an interest in the common man and the pursuit of democratic ideals. The Center School exterior features bas reliefs inspired by nature and the Preamble to the US Constitution. Photo by Arthur Rothstein, 1937. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

Inspired by their town’s founding ideals, Greenbelt’s residents continue to resist threats to their community and its greenbelt. Residents have organized to oppose a high-speed rail project that imperils the Forest Preserve and natural areas to the north, and are pushing elected officials to defeat the proposed plan. It’s the sort of citizen activism Greenbelt’s New Deal planners envisioned from the start.”

Learn more:
greenbeltmuseum.org

https://livingnewdeal.org/projects/city-of-greenbelt-greenbelt-md/

FDR and the Environment, Editors Henry L. Henderson and David B. Woolner (2005); Douglas Brinkley’s Rightful Heritage (2016). “Clarence Stein and the Greenbelt Towns,” Journal of the Am. Planning Assoc., (1990); and The New Deal in the Suburbs, a history of the Greenbelt town program, 1935-1954, by Tracy Augur.

Owen A. Kelley is an atmospheric scientist at George Mason University, working with NASA's precipitation-measuring satellites. A resident of Greenbelt, he studies the natural world in his spare time. This story is adapted from his 2021 photo essay, BEING: Biota Ephemera In Greenbelt. He also wrote A Hundred Wild Things: a Field Guide to Plants in the Greenbelt North Woods. https://www.greenbeltonline.org/okelley/.

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A New Deal Town Fights for Its Future

March 15, 2018

Greenbelt sign, 1937
The Greenbelt housing project was seen as a social experiment
Photo Credit: Library of Congress

The first of three greenbelt towns built and owned by the federal government during the Great Depression, Greenbelt, Maryland, ten miles north of Washington, D.C. was considered “utopian” when it opened in 1937.

Greenbelt’s residents had to overcome many obstacles from the start, and today a new threat is bearing down on the New Deal town.

Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan, state legislators, and the private company Northeast MAGLEV, are hawking a public-private partnership to build a high-speed train, between D.C and New York that could impact this historic community.

FDR and Wallace Richards, 1936
Richards, coordinator for the Greenbelt project, shows plans to President Roosevelt
Photo Credit: Library of Congress

Home to 23,000 residents, Greenbelt is the legacy of Rexford Tugwell, a friend and advisor whom FDR appointed to head the short-lived Resettlement Administration (RA). Tugwell, inspired by England’s Garden City movement—a turning point in urban planning—envisioned hundreds of “greenbelt towns” around the country. Surrounded by greenbelts of forests and farms, they were meant to provide affordable homes with easy access to jobs in nearby cities.

The affordable houses, landscaping, parks, playgrounds, schools, and civic buildings were designed to nurture a sense of community. Applicants for residency were screened based on income, occupation, and a willingness to become involved in community activities. Much of the towns’ business was conducted through cooperatives, to the dismay of conservatives in Congress who nicknamed Tugwell “Rex the Red.”

Postcard, 1938
Greenbelt, Town Center

Congress soon pared plans for the greenbelt towns and delayed funding. Lacking the heavy construction equipment they needed to break ground, WPA workers used picks and shovels.

Ultimately just three towns, Greenhills, Ohio; Greendale, Wisconsin; and Greenbelt, Maryland were completed. A fourth town, planned for New Jersey, was summarily cancelled.

House and Garden, 1938
Greenbelt offers apartments and single-family homes like these English-style row houses with pitched slate roofs.
Photo Credit: Library of Congress

Over the years, Greenbelt, Maryland has suffered fewer alterations than its sister towns, but “progress” has taken a toll. Despite residents’ opposition to the Baltimore–Washington Parkway it was built through the greenbelt in 1954. The Capital Beltway also pushed through the middle of the greenbelt in the 1960s. Thanks to the Committee to Save the Green Belt and other advocates, the city reacquired 230 acres of the original greenbelt that had been sold to developers in the 1950s and established the Greenbelt Forest Preserve to permanently protect the land. In 1997 Greenbelt was designated a National Historic Landmark.

In 2017, plans emerged for a high-speed MAGLEV (magnetic-levitation) train. Two routes are under consideration. One is east of town and would tunnel under Eleanor Roosevelt High School and several neighborhoods. The other, on the west side of town, would mostly follow the Parkway, tunneling below the town to emerge in the Greenbelt Forest Preserve or possibly north of the town.

The proposed train would cut the 32-minute Amtrak ride from Baltimore to D.C by 17 minutes.

Greenbelt Pool, 1939
Parks, playgrounds and recreation facilities have been part of the community from the start.
Photo Credit: Marian Wolcott Post, Library of Congress

Opponents up and down the proposed corridor point to the project’s $10 billion price tag and the cost overruns that have plagued other high-speed rail projects, leaving taxpayers on the hook.

The federal government has provided $27.8 million for an Environmental Impact Study, scheduled for completion in January 2019.

Meanwhile, Northeast Maglev has acquired the ability to use eminent domain to build the track.

What you can do: Take Action.

The City also posted information on how to oppose.

“Mother and Child” by Lenore Thomas, 1938
WPA artists adorned the Commons and public buildings.
Photo Credit: Library of Congress

Greenbelt Elementary School, 1937
The art deco building became the community center after a new school was built in the 1990s.
Photo Credit: Library of Congress

Susan Ives is communications director for the Living New Deal and editor of the Living New Deal newsletter.

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