Podcasts about new deal era

In today's episode of the The Explaining History podcast we revisit Gary Gerstle's Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Era. Here we explore the New Deal Era that preceded it and examine the philosophical underpinnings of the historic project of rebalancing American capitalism through state intervention. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it here Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  Most people know something about Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens. After all, he wrote his most famous books while living in Hartford, Connecticut. His 25-room house on Farmington Avenue cost over $40,000 in 1874 dollars. Raised as a child in Missouri, he became world famous for his wit and humor both in print and on stage. But what if the man who served as Twain's butler for 17 years had a story that was just as powerful and gripping as Twain's? In today's episode we are going to meet that man, George Griffin.   Twain scholar and collector Kevin MacDonnell's biographical sketch George Griffin: Meeting Mark Twain's Butler which provides the most comprehensive look into Griffin's life to date, and brings us face to face with the man who is said to have inspired Jim in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. George Griffin came to wash the windows in Mark Twain's new house in 1874 and stayed for seventeen years, taking on the position of butler, the highest-ranking employee in the household.   A photograph of Griffin was discovered recently. It is the only known picture of the man who was also a prominent leader in Hartford's Black community, serving as deacon of Hartford's Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.   The guests in this episode are Dr. Camesha Scruggs, professor of history at Central Connecticut State University and Twain scholar Kevin MacDonnell.    Dr. Scruggs received her PhD in history from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  Her current manuscript project is a further examination of how interventions from social, civic, government, secondary and higher education institutions impact the occupation of domestic service during the New Deal Era. She may be contacted at cscruggs@ccsu.edu   Kevin MacDonnell earned his MLS at the University of Texas and serves on the editorial board of the Mark Twain Journal.  He has contributed articles to the Mark Twain Encyclopedia (1993), co-edited Mark Twain and Youth, and has reviewed over fifty books for the Mark Twain Forum. His collection of more than 11,000 Mark Twain items--first editions, letters, photographs, archives, manuscripts, and artifacts--is the largest in private hands and is frequently shared with other scholars and museums. He gives frequent lectures on Twain and may be reached at info@macdonnellrarebooks.com   Copies of The Mark Twain Journal featuring Kevin MacDonnell's biographical sketch George Griffin: Meeting Mark Twain's Butler Face-to-Face may be purchased from the Mark Twain House Museum Store for $12.00. The link to the journal in the museum shop is here: https://marktwainhousestore.org/products/mark-twain-journal-volume-62-number-1   You can also take a special tour of the Twain House.   The George Griffin Living History Tour invites visitors to step back in time to the year 1885. The premise of the tour is that the Clemens family are looking to hire a new cook, and Mr. Griffin has been tasked with conducting the first round of interviews—after all, as the head of the domestic staff, he knows exactly the kind of temperament and skills needed to keep the house running. He leads visitors through each restored room of the house, and gives them his own experience of not only the domestic labor done in that space, but also the emotional labor that he must navigate daily as a formerly enslaved black man working in the house of a wealthy white family. And who is “G. G., Chief of Ordnance?” Find out for yourself when you take a Living History tour with George Griffin.   ------------------------------------------------------- Can you spare $10 a month to help support Grating the Nutmeg? It's easy to set up a monthly donation on the Connecticut Explored website at ctexplored.org   Click the donate button at the top and then look for the Grating the Nutmeg link.    Subscribe to get your copy of Connecticut Explored magazine delivered to your mailbox or your inbox-subscribe at ctexplored.org.   We've got issues coming up on food, celebrations and the environment with places you'll want to read about and visit.   This episode of Grating the Nutmeg was produced by Mary Donohue and engineered by Patrick O'Sullivan at www.highwattagemedia.com/   Follow GTN on our Facebook, Instagram and Threads pages.    You can find host and executive producer Mary Donohue on Facebook and Instagram: @WeHaSidewalkHistorian. Join us in two weeks for the next episode of Grating the Nutmeg, the podcast of Connecticut history.  

During the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt stabilised American capitalism using state power, regulation, the empowerment of organised labour and the regulation of finance in the New Deal. This compact lasted for the middle decades of the 20th Century and was finally destroyed by Ronald Reagan and his successors. This podcast explores the beginnings of the New Deal era and the power that this leant to the Democratic Party from the 1930s to the 1960s. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it here Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the 1930s, President Roosevelt's New Deal program revitalized Americans struggling during the Great Depression, including those working in the arts. One program, the U.S. Music Unit, sought to record and collect folk songs from all over America. The program collected over 800 songs over a two-year span before it was shut down for supposed socialistic sympathies. Author Sheryl Kaskowitz has written a new book about the history of the program, A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR's Hidden Music Unit Sought to Save America from the Great Depression―One Song at a Time, and she is with us to discuss her book and listen to archival recordings.*This segment is guest-hosted by Kousha Navidar

Today's discussion came from our archives and was recorded in April of 2023. Our talk is hosted by Ed Dodson, who is joined by our guest, Dr. Christopher England. Dr. England is an Adjunct Lecturer at Georgetown University, and has also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Loyola University, Maryland, and Stanford University. His courses focus on US history, the history of economic thought, political media, and social movements in America. His most recent book, Henry George and the Crafting of Modern Liberalism, focuses on the influence Henry George had on American politics and public sentiment towards policy. Examining firsthand accounts of George's correspondences with his followers, Dr. England traces the legacy of George's influence from the Progressive Movement to the New Deal Era. With a particular focus on land, natural resources, and rent-seeking, Dr. England observes how Georgism influenced public policy during these times to create a more egalitarian and democratic society.   Liberalism has meant different things at different times. Classical liberalism stood for limited government, free trade, or individual liberty. But the Progressive and New Deal era changed that. Liberalism began to shift towards new ways of thinking, like having a welfare state or social safety net, an activist government towards social problems, or an administrative state with more regulation. Henry George played a key role in influencing this shift. For a while, these ideas dominated leftward circles and made a real difference in people's lives. This changed in the late 1970s and early 80s with the Reagan Revolution. This is when the term “neo-liberal” entered into the popular conscience. Suddenly, being a liberal reverted to small government, individual responsibility, and led to the hollowing out of the state and a vast reduction in social services. This is, in part, what explains some of the poverty and inequality we experience today in advanced economies. Today's episode is significant for a number of reasons, but most importantly, it brings to the fore some of the ideas and concepts that originated from the Gilded Age. With the rise of inequality and the growth of massive corporations like Amazon, Apple, or Meta, some have now argued that we've entered into a new Gilded Age. This time, the Robber Barons have a new look to them. America's economy is far less industrial than it used to be. If you're into stocks or business, you've probably heard of the “Magnificent Seven,” a group of tech behemoths that make up a large part of the stock market. But these firms aren't just important to markets. They play a huge role in our lives, and it is only growing by the day. Many ideas have been floated as to how we deal with these companies, and this is why some of George's ideas merit further examination. Dr. England received his bachelor's degree in history and rhetoric from UC Berkeley and his Ph.D. from Georgetown in history. He's also a former Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.   Dr. England joined the Henry George School to discuss land reforms during the New Deal, how George transformed liberalism in the US and around the world, and how land and land markets impact economic and social crises. To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/smart-talk-hgsss/support

Bonus crossover content!! I joined The Intervention to discuss a couple of pieces of culture from the New Deal Era.  We start by taking a look at the fascistic Gabriel Over the White House, brought to you by arch-reactionary and media oligarch, William Randolph Hearst.  We then move to the meat of the discussion on a decidedly better piece of culture, The Grapes of Wrath, in its various media manifestations. Listen to the full New Deal series from The Intervention: Subscribe Left of the Projector Links: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ // ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Podcast Stream Links ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ // ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch Store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ // ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ // ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ // ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok ⁠ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/leftoftheprojector/support

It's said that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. The State of California has repurposed this adage lately, finding ways to remake the country in its own progressive image through the food industry. The last time Professor Richard Epstein joined the show, we took up the “pig case” aka NPPC v. Ross. The Supreme Court is now deciding whether California can foist its values on the rest of the country through regulations that would impact pork producers nationwide. Based on oral arguments in October, it looks like it will be a close call. Meanwhile, a new battle has been brewing over fast food restaurants and other franchises in the Golden State. Governor Newsom signed the FAST Recovery Act (AB 257) into law on Labor Day, celebrating the bill's dramatic minimum increase from $15 to $22 for fast food and other franchise workers. Organized labor cheered, but the bill has now been put on hold until voters can weigh in by referendum in 2024. We can hope that voters will see through the bill's lofty promises for workers to the harms of minimum wage increases for workers, employers, and consumers alike. Even the Washington Post called the bill “ham-handed.” Professor Epstein joins me to review the economic case against the minimum wage. However, this is not like normal minimum wage legislation. The FAST Recovery Act also gives sweeping new powers to the state – and “Emperor Newsom” in particular – to regulate every aspect of thousands of businesses in California that qualify as large franchises. Such powers were unthinkable for the Founders, but Epstein points out that the courts have increasingly deferred to state authority since the New Deal Era. The FAST Act takes the administrative overreach that has become common and goes a step fruther – consolidating that power into the governor's hand. Beyond the possibility of overturning the law by citizen vote, Epstein sees a larger opportunity to challenge its constitutionality on equal protection grounds – setting a precedent for similar cases of power grabs by state executives. The battlelines have been drawn. To quote an old Union hymn, Which Side Are You On? Team Liberty or Team Newsom?

Featuring Gail Radford on her classic book Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. Radford tells the story of Catherine Bauer, the Labor Housing Conference, and the struggle to make the American housing system a radically social one. In place of the two-tier system that won out, Bauer and her allies proposed a massive federally-backed system of noncommercial housing that would appeal to and house the majority of Americans.Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDigCheck out Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917) by Eric Blanc haymarketbooks.org/books/1907-revolutionary-social-democracy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Featuring Gail Radford on her classic book Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. Radford tells the story of Catherine Bauer, the Labor Housing Conference, and the struggle to make the American housing system a radically social one. In place of the two-tier system that won out, Bauer and her allies proposed a massive federally-backed system of noncommercial housing that would appeal to and house the majority of Americans. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917) by Eric Blanc haymarketbooks.org/books/1907-revolutionary-social-democracy

John & Josh talk about potential coach options, and Josh references a Podcast he listened to (shocking).

The Supreme Court currently has a majority of conservative judges, and it's the most conservative court since the New Deal Era. The Court made more conservative decisions this term than at any time since 1931, according to statistics compiled by professors Lee Epstein of Washington University in St. Louis and Keven Quinn of the University of Michigan. The recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has caused some to speculate that this may be the beginning of a movement to overturn other landmark liberal decisions like Obergfell v. Hodges. Jamal Greene is the Dwight Professor Law at Columbia Law School and author of “How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart.” He joins WITHpod to discuss what methodology Supreme Court justices use to arrive at their decisions, whether there is political motivation, and just how strictly they interpret the Constitution.

Hello Interactors,This week kicks off the fall series on economic geography. My introduction to economics started with a room full of giggling girls. Its founding began by exploring a common moral sympathy, but it has become anything but. This evolution has been relatively fast; occurring throughout the lives of a rural postman pioneer and his pioneering punch card punching son.As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…STUFF ITAs I walked in the door, the girls awkwardly spun around and grinned with a tinge of embarrassment. And then back to their friends as giggles percolated across the room. I tried to play it cool as the teacher welcomed me and led me to a special desk against the wall. She sat down next to me, maybe a little too eager, and helped me to get started.It was 1984 and Claus Oldenburg had recently finished a civic sculpture, Crusoe Umbrella, for what was then called Nollan plaza in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. My friend’s dad, Charles “Chick” Herbert, designed the concrete plaza featuring a shallow pool across from his angular stark white Civic Center. The sculpture is an homage to the umbrella Robinson Crusoe built from sticks and plants. Oldenburg thought the plaza looked like an oasis amidst the high-rise buildings in a state that felt like an island in the middle of a continent that most people only see while flying over on their way to New York or Los Angeles.The neon red animating Travelers Insurance logo atop one of the buildings also served as an inspiration – an umbrella. The curved handle of the base also reminded Oldenburg of a backhoe sometimes seen on the ubiquitous tractors grooming the fields of Iowa. And the long skinny shaft that connected the umbrella to the handle reminded him of the road through downtown Des Moines where he saw High School kids cruise on Saturday nights as they ‘scooped the loop’. I was one of them.Come Monday it was back to school. For the senior art project we got to choose our own medium for our entries into the spring art show. I had Claus on the brain. In addition to large public sculptures, Claus was also known for his oversized stuffed everyday objects. The Des Moines Art Center collection had one; a massive three-way plug made out of blue vinyl that lazily drooped from the ceiling partially stuffed with filler. I decided I was going to do a giant soft sculpture of my own for the spring show. I choose to make a wall mounted hand-cranked pencil sharpener – a staple of every classroom in those days and a farewell homage to my final year in the Norwalk School District.Des Moines was home to more than just insurance companies. It’s still a major center for insurance and financial services. And publishing. If you’ve ever flipped through a magazine in America, it was most likely printed by the Meredith Corporation. Growing up it was also home to the farm equipment manufacturer, Massey Ferguson. Through the 1970s their factory made mostly lawn tractors and snowmobiles, but it was also a center for the company’s legal, financial, and marketing departments. My Dad worked there for twenty five years.You can’t really make a soft sculpture in most art rooms. Their set up for drawing, painting, printing, and ceramics. So during art period, I’d grab my cheap beige muslin fabric from my art locker and walk down the hall by shop class where guys would point at me and laugh as they tinkered with an old clunker locals would donate to the school. I’d proceed through the black double doors, hang a left down a long empty hallway, pause at the door, peek through the relight, and slowly open the door. I’d walk through a class full of giggling girls, sit down to the sewing machine against the wall, and start sewing. The only dude in my four years to ever to set foot in a high school home economics class.THE ORIENT EXPRESSThe word economics in English-speaking worlds was born out of home economics. There are still hangers-on, like ‘economy sized’ goods at big-box stores or ‘economy-sized’ rental cars. Economizing in this context means to be miserly or frugal. That was certainly what I grew up learning. Both of my parents came from humble beginnings.My Mom’s mother is the daughter of German immigrants and her father the son of Irish immigrants. Both farming families had to scrape to get by. My Grandmother survived the Spanish Flu; even after caring for parents who both had it.My Dad was born into the depression in his mother’s bed in 1933. He was the second youngest of twelve. His dad served in both World Wars and was the town postman; he started out delivering mail by horse.They both lived in a small town in southern Iowa called, Orient. They were born into an era and area dominated by a small scale farming economy. There wasn’t a lot of need to think beyond the economics of the household. Having a large family meant that many more hands for labor. The area was settled by farmers with homesteaded land offered by the government. Orient was mostly there to support the local farmers.This small Iowa town was founded in 1882 during the great swell of America’s industrial age. It’s marquee feature and primary reason for existence was a grain elevator in the center of town. It was part of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. Also known simply as the Burlington. This company started as the Aurora Branch Railroad and was created by the Illinois state government in 1848. It grew to dominate tracks through western Illinois, southern Iowa, northern Missouri, across Nebraska, and extended its reach far north and west into Montana.Eight years later, in 1900, the American federal government had traded, stolen, or bought enough land and offered incentives to corporations like Burlington to run trains coast to coast. Their tracks divided herds of buffalo, countless Indigenous communities, and were built on the backs of mostly by low-wage Chinese immigrant laborers.In 1882, the year Orient was founded, the U.S. government thanked these people by instituting the Chinese Exclusion Act which banned further Chinese immigration and blocked naturalization. It is what started the so-called Yellow Peril – an anti-Asian sentiment that has resurfaced in recent years in the form of racist hate crime.MORAL UTILITYBy the late 1800s the Western world had been putting theories of division of labor to practice for over one hundred years. It’s what fueled the Industrial Revolution. It all began the same year the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 and the publishing of A Wealth of Nations. This highly influential book was written by a Scottish professor of moral philosophy, Adam Smith.He was an awkward and absent minded man who is said to have "had a large nose, bulging eyes, a protruding lower lip, a nervous twitch, and a speech impediment." Smith himself agreed he was no looker saying, "I am a beau in nothing but my books." Despite his speech impediment and awkwardness, he found success lecturing. He began writing and lecturing on economic topics in 1748, but from a moralistic standpoint. He expanded on what he deemed obvious and simple principles of natural liberty. An idea that had been around since the Greeks; and likely the Zoroastrians before that; one of the longest running religions in the world out of Persia that espouses three core principles I think we can all get behind: Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds.Natural liberty, or natural law, was a feature in many Enlightenment thinkers of Smith’s era and is ensconced in the U.S. Declaration of Independence – "all men are … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". His lectures also concerned the increasing opulence in England during this period. It led him to write his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759 that explored “moral sympathy” or what today we might call empathy – the capacity of an individual to express sympathy for other members of society.It was after this that he turned toward more explicitly toward economics and the inclusion, exclusion, and overlap of natural law with manmade legal laws that were beginning to be written by Western societies and nations. He theorized it was the legal power of the state to control labor that brought about wealth, dominance, and control and not the accumulation of silver and gold. It led to An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. A book who’s name has shortened over time to the Wealth of Nations.  That book became his most famous and leads many to call Adam Smith the father of the field of Economics. In it he reveals how the division of labor in scaled up industrial enterprises leads to growth and wealth accumulation. By having teams of specialized skilled workers conducting interdependent tasks, industries could scale production more efficiently and profitably – in large part through slave or low-wage labor.This mechanized view of labor divisions echoed scientific theories and discoveries in biology and physics that would have been swirling around Smith during the Age of Enlightenment. The influence is evident today by looking at the language of economists and business professionals. Money flows through economies; especially when there are waves of prosperity. Economics is a mechanism that uses the gravitational pull of consumers and sellers. Unless, of course, there is friction from far away resources or customers. Markets seek equilibrium. So long as we avoid inflation.Economics can even be described in farming and biological terms. A market can be fertile. Every day on the radio, tv, and social media you hear about the health and growth of the economy. Goods can be in circulation, products can be reproduced; come Black Friday in November consumers will be triggered by herd instincts. In the end, economies are a function of natural selection. Only the fittest companies and strongest governments will survive.By the late 1800s scientists were on a roll. They had discovered an underlying uniting principle of physics that also unified the discipline: all matter in the universe is connected by a unifying force – energy. The burgeoning field of economics, eager to model itself off science and math, sought their own unifying principle and settled on an economizing word – utility.ECON ONE-BY-ONEPrior to the industrial age, the production of goods required the labor of an individual farmer, merchant, blacksmith, baker, carpenter, or cobbler which was harder, slower, and more expensive to scale when demand became greater than supply. To maximize profits, firms had to maximize the utility of their workers. And they did that by creating specialized divisions of labor.But that quaint image of a farmer and merchant, could be recognized in Orient even when I visited my Grandparents as a kid in the 70s and 80s. It had a single tiny grocery store, a hardware store, and assorted repair shops. Nearly everyone in town had a garden and the city was surrounded by fields and farms of corn, beans, hogs, and heifers. And running straight down the heart of town was a railroad.Nestled next to it was a grain elevator five stories high that would get filled with area corn and soybeans waiting for the next train to come to haul it away; a cog in a nationwide industrialized economic machine in the middle of small-town Iowa on an island of a state within a vast continental land mass that stretches from sea to shining sea.The wealth of this nation, in keeping with Smith’s theory, grew from the federal and state laws that, in cooperation and sometimes collusion with private firms, controlled the price of land and labor to build the nation’s largest industries; including the railroads that ran through Orient, the steel used to make the trains, tracks, and railcars that were fueled by what seemed like endless supplies of coal, oil, and gas. Industries also controlled the seed the farmers bought, the fertilizers and pesticides they spread, and the equipment they used to till, plow, plant, and harvest – like Massey Ferguson.My Dad was a Computer Audit Analyst at Massey Ferguson. He exceled in math, majored in it, taught for awhile, got married to my Mom, and then landed a job in 1969 writing COBOL programs for a small financial software firm in Des Moines. He soon moved to Massey Ferguson where he wrote more COBOL on punch cards. He’d bring them home for me to play with and draw on as a small boy. I can still see them stacked under the piano bench in my room on Jackson street that looked out to the elementary school across the street.My Mom and Dad and their Mom and Dad bridged generations of economies. My Grandpa Weed was born in 1889. The Ford Motor company was still a twinkle in Henry Ford’s eye. My Mom and Dad were born in the thirties into Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Era; when Democrats were the party of protecting people over banks and not the party of protecting banks over people. FDR must be rolling in his grave. He famously quipped, "I took economics courses in college for four years, and everything I was taught was wrong."By the time I was born, my family had entered the ranks of the middle class FDR had imagined. My parents experienced old-fashioned agrarian economies that even Adam Smith would have recognized. They rose with the White educated middle class and settled into the comfortable suburban sprawl of the post World War boom to raise a family. They witnessed the growth of American industries that cranked out planes, trains, automobiles, and rockets. And, yes, Massey Ferguson tractors, snowmobiles, and riding lawnmowers too.But my Dad also bridged the industrial economy and the knowledge economy by becoming one of the first software professionals in 1969 as part of a newly burgeoning high-tech industry. Within my lifetime, the lives of my parents, and of theirs the formal discipline of Economics was born overseas, grew larger in America, and has metastasized into a global economic instrument void of any of the moral foundations its founding father, Adam Smith, envisioned. Where’s the empathy? Where is the capacity of an individual to express sympathy for other members of society?Our world economy has come to resemble the soft sculptures of Claus Oldenburg. A parody of mass production and mass culture that has ballooned to comedic scale and is sagging mournfully from the gravitational pull of its own weight.Maybe what we need is to step away from our classes, march into the void, open a new door, endure the ridicule and laughter, and sit down to sew us a new moral economy that can be stuffed with good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. Subscribe at interplace.io

Art in America was forever altered by the New Deal, and its sweeping significance is palpable throughout infrastructure, public art, photography, and cultural institutions. In recent years, new initiatives to preserve and study the New Deal have emerged, as have new conversations as to how the United States should nurture the arts. This episode considers the longevity and exemplariness of the New Deal in its cultural and social influence. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

The WPA (Works Progress Administration) was designed as an open relief roll, operating without discrimination based on sex or race and only mandating that participants fall below a specific income threshold. While advancing equity, however, the WPA still faced hurdles from systemic sexism and racism, and it also ran into issues of support for laborers. Beyond the projects' inner workings, FSA (Farm Securities Administration) Information Division photographers grappled with documenting poverty and social unrest across the nation, which the artists themselves faced in their travels and in presenting their work. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

The Archives' debut podcast episode focuses on the New Deal arts initiatives, providing an overview of their major features and a wide perspective on their histories and legacies. Drawing from the Archives' first and most ambitious oral history collecting drive, the words and experiences of the artists and administrators who made the New Deal happen convey the stakes of these enormous national undertakings, while insight from contemporary experts provides context for the ongoing importance of those initiatives. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

The diversity, breadth, and ubiquity of New Deal arts projects reveal both the country's sense of what art was and how it should shape the American people. This episode examines cultural democracy, or the role of the arts in civic life and what art means for a nation. While the momentum and volume of New Deal production laid the foundation for a distinct artistic culture in the United States, questions remain as to the distinctiveness of a national arts tradition and Americanness Itself. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

"...Such an America could not have played a major role in world history. The key to this significant role lies in two events: the New Deal and the Second World War... If you only treat this phenomenon as a dichotomy of the left and the right,  you haven't grasped its full depth. The correct understanding is that it is in essence a Roman imperial nature..."

Adam Lee Cilli's book Canaan, Dim and Far: Black Reformers and the Pursuit of Citizenship in Pittsburgh, 1915-1945 (U Georgia Press, 2021) is an assiduously researched book about the activism of African American reformers and migrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1915 to 1945. Adam Cilli argues that Pittsburgh is central to the story of the Black freedom struggle in the North and the nation as a whole. “Pittsburgh represents a crucial site for illuminating how reformers maneuvered within a political culture driven by industrial capitalism and informed by white supremacist rhetorics,” states Cilli in the opening section of his narrative. Migrants also played a significant role in this story and they made up “two-thirds of all African Americans in Pittsburgh by 1930.” Cilli further argues that although the middle-class reformers defined the “major social justice campaigns of the day,” it was the Black migrants who gave these initiatives “shape and force.” In this text, the author illustrates how a host of journalists, trade unionists, workers, lawyers, scholars and medical professionals advanced the struggle for Black equality in an urban setting. With an “Introduction,” more than thirty illustrations, seven chapters, and a “Conclusion” section, Cilli traces the social, intellectual and cultural history of Black Pittsburgh.  The first two chapters “The Ugliest, Deadest Town: Migrants and Reformers in the Steel City, 1915-1929” and “A Healthy and Prosperous Race: The Urban League of Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Jobs, Housing, and Health, 1915-1929” cover the Great Migration to Pittsburgh, housing and settlement patterns of the Black community in Pittsburgh, and the role of the National Urban League in Black middle-class reform. Cilli introduces a cast of characters and associations in these first two chapters key to his narrative including Reverend James Simmons, Bartow Tipper, and Robert L. Vann. Pittsburgh's Urban League was critical in supporting the social needs of the new Black migrants as assessed in Chapter Two. Chapter Three “The Weapons of Legal Defense: The Pittsburgh NAACP and the Criminal Justice System, 1924-1934” and Chapter Four “The Ranks of the New Army: The Pittsburgh Courier and the Fight for Political Power and National Recognition, 1929-1933” focus on the strategy of legal defense as espoused by the NAACP and the work of newspaperman Robert L. Vann respectively. Chapter Three opens with a discussion of the mass arrest of Black migrants at a house party. These migrants were asked to pay a sum of $2.50 per person to the police but some like Joe Williams and his wife Mildred did not pay and were carted off to jail. These were the type of cases that interested the Pittsburgh NAACP. While in Chapter Four, Cilli concentrates on the key role of Vann in using the Pittsburgh Courier to advance Black social justice claims. The final three chapters focus on educational reform, the labor movement, and Black equality in the New Deal Era. Pittsburgh's Urban League continued to play a role in providing “educational outreach services” for African American students in city schools as detailed in Chapter Five. Black trade unionists began to organize in earnest during the 1930s and began to meet and strategize in Pittsburgh as Cilli notes in Chapter Six. While in Chapter Seven, the assessment of African Americans and their quest for equal employment equity is further analyzed. In Canaan, Dim and Far, Cilli presents his readers with a comprehensive survey of the centrality of Pittsburgh in the Black freedom struggle while offering a more nuanced interpretation of the Black elite and racial uplift ideology in the process. This text is an important historical intervention in African American history in terms of the author's coverage of key associations such as the NAACP and Urban League, labor activism, and Black newspaper history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Adam Lee Cilli's book Canaan, Dim and Far: Black Reformers and the Pursuit of Citizenship in Pittsburgh, 1915-1945 (U Georgia Press, 2021) is an assiduously researched book about the activism of African American reformers and migrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1915 to 1945. Adam Cilli argues that Pittsburgh is central to the story of the Black freedom struggle in the North and the nation as a whole. “Pittsburgh represents a crucial site for illuminating how reformers maneuvered within a political culture driven by industrial capitalism and informed by white supremacist rhetorics,” states Cilli in the opening section of his narrative. Migrants also played a significant role in this story and they made up “two-thirds of all African Americans in Pittsburgh by 1930.” Cilli further argues that although the middle-class reformers defined the “major social justice campaigns of the day,” it was the Black migrants who gave these initiatives “shape and force.” In this text, the author illustrates how a host of journalists, trade unionists, workers, lawyers, scholars and medical professionals advanced the struggle for Black equality in an urban setting. With an “Introduction,” more than thirty illustrations, seven chapters, and a “Conclusion” section, Cilli traces the social, intellectual and cultural history of Black Pittsburgh.  The first two chapters “The Ugliest, Deadest Town: Migrants and Reformers in the Steel City, 1915-1929” and “A Healthy and Prosperous Race: The Urban League of Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Jobs, Housing, and Health, 1915-1929” cover the Great Migration to Pittsburgh, housing and settlement patterns of the Black community in Pittsburgh, and the role of the National Urban League in Black middle-class reform. Cilli introduces a cast of characters and associations in these first two chapters key to his narrative including Reverend James Simmons, Bartow Tipper, and Robert L. Vann. Pittsburgh's Urban League was critical in supporting the social needs of the new Black migrants as assessed in Chapter Two. Chapter Three “The Weapons of Legal Defense: The Pittsburgh NAACP and the Criminal Justice System, 1924-1934” and Chapter Four “The Ranks of the New Army: The Pittsburgh Courier and the Fight for Political Power and National Recognition, 1929-1933” focus on the strategy of legal defense as espoused by the NAACP and the work of newspaperman Robert L. Vann respectively. Chapter Three opens with a discussion of the mass arrest of Black migrants at a house party. These migrants were asked to pay a sum of $2.50 per person to the police but some like Joe Williams and his wife Mildred did not pay and were carted off to jail. These were the type of cases that interested the Pittsburgh NAACP. While in Chapter Four, Cilli concentrates on the key role of Vann in using the Pittsburgh Courier to advance Black social justice claims. The final three chapters focus on educational reform, the labor movement, and Black equality in the New Deal Era. Pittsburgh's Urban League continued to play a role in providing “educational outreach services” for African American students in city schools as detailed in Chapter Five. Black trade unionists began to organize in earnest during the 1930s and began to meet and strategize in Pittsburgh as Cilli notes in Chapter Six. While in Chapter Seven, the assessment of African Americans and their quest for equal employment equity is further analyzed. In Canaan, Dim and Far, Cilli presents his readers with a comprehensive survey of the centrality of Pittsburgh in the Black freedom struggle while offering a more nuanced interpretation of the Black elite and racial uplift ideology in the process. This text is an important historical intervention in African American history in terms of the author's coverage of key associations such as the NAACP and Urban League, labor activism, and Black newspaper history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Adam Lee Cilli's book Canaan, Dim and Far: Black Reformers and the Pursuit of Citizenship in Pittsburgh, 1915-1945 (U Georgia Press, 2021) is an assiduously researched book about the activism of African American reformers and migrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1915 to 1945. Adam Cilli argues that Pittsburgh is central to the story of the Black freedom struggle in the North and the nation as a whole. “Pittsburgh represents a crucial site for illuminating how reformers maneuvered within a political culture driven by industrial capitalism and informed by white supremacist rhetorics,” states Cilli in the opening section of his narrative. Migrants also played a significant role in this story and they made up “two-thirds of all African Americans in Pittsburgh by 1930.” Cilli further argues that although the middle-class reformers defined the “major social justice campaigns of the day,” it was the Black migrants who gave these initiatives “shape and force.” In this text, the author illustrates how a host of journalists, trade unionists, workers, lawyers, scholars and medical professionals advanced the struggle for Black equality in an urban setting. With an “Introduction,” more than thirty illustrations, seven chapters, and a “Conclusion” section, Cilli traces the social, intellectual and cultural history of Black Pittsburgh.  The first two chapters “The Ugliest, Deadest Town: Migrants and Reformers in the Steel City, 1915-1929” and “A Healthy and Prosperous Race: The Urban League of Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Jobs, Housing, and Health, 1915-1929” cover the Great Migration to Pittsburgh, housing and settlement patterns of the Black community in Pittsburgh, and the role of the National Urban League in Black middle-class reform. Cilli introduces a cast of characters and associations in these first two chapters key to his narrative including Reverend James Simmons, Bartow Tipper, and Robert L. Vann. Pittsburgh's Urban League was critical in supporting the social needs of the new Black migrants as assessed in Chapter Two. Chapter Three “The Weapons of Legal Defense: The Pittsburgh NAACP and the Criminal Justice System, 1924-1934” and Chapter Four “The Ranks of the New Army: The Pittsburgh Courier and the Fight for Political Power and National Recognition, 1929-1933” focus on the strategy of legal defense as espoused by the NAACP and the work of newspaperman Robert L. Vann respectively. Chapter Three opens with a discussion of the mass arrest of Black migrants at a house party. These migrants were asked to pay a sum of $2.50 per person to the police but some like Joe Williams and his wife Mildred did not pay and were carted off to jail. These were the type of cases that interested the Pittsburgh NAACP. While in Chapter Four, Cilli concentrates on the key role of Vann in using the Pittsburgh Courier to advance Black social justice claims. The final three chapters focus on educational reform, the labor movement, and Black equality in the New Deal Era. Pittsburgh's Urban League continued to play a role in providing “educational outreach services” for African American students in city schools as detailed in Chapter Five. Black trade unionists began to organize in earnest during the 1930s and began to meet and strategize in Pittsburgh as Cilli notes in Chapter Six. While in Chapter Seven, the assessment of African Americans and their quest for equal employment equity is further analyzed. In Canaan, Dim and Far, Cilli presents his readers with a comprehensive survey of the centrality of Pittsburgh in the Black freedom struggle while offering a more nuanced interpretation of the Black elite and racial uplift ideology in the process. This text is an important historical intervention in African American history in terms of the author's coverage of key associations such as the NAACP and Urban League, labor activism, and Black newspaper history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Adam Lee Cilli's book Canaan, Dim and Far: Black Reformers and the Pursuit of Citizenship in Pittsburgh, 1915-1945 (U Georgia Press, 2021) is an assiduously researched book about the activism of African American reformers and migrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1915 to 1945. Adam Cilli argues that Pittsburgh is central to the story of the Black freedom struggle in the North and the nation as a whole. “Pittsburgh represents a crucial site for illuminating how reformers maneuvered within a political culture driven by industrial capitalism and informed by white supremacist rhetorics,” states Cilli in the opening section of his narrative. Migrants also played a significant role in this story and they made up “two-thirds of all African Americans in Pittsburgh by 1930.” Cilli further argues that although the middle-class reformers defined the “major social justice campaigns of the day,” it was the Black migrants who gave these initiatives “shape and force.” In this text, the author illustrates how a host of journalists, trade unionists, workers, lawyers, scholars and medical professionals advanced the struggle for Black equality in an urban setting. With an “Introduction,” more than thirty illustrations, seven chapters, and a “Conclusion” section, Cilli traces the social, intellectual and cultural history of Black Pittsburgh.  The first two chapters “The Ugliest, Deadest Town: Migrants and Reformers in the Steel City, 1915-1929” and “A Healthy and Prosperous Race: The Urban League of Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Jobs, Housing, and Health, 1915-1929” cover the Great Migration to Pittsburgh, housing and settlement patterns of the Black community in Pittsburgh, and the role of the National Urban League in Black middle-class reform. Cilli introduces a cast of characters and associations in these first two chapters key to his narrative including Reverend James Simmons, Bartow Tipper, and Robert L. Vann. Pittsburgh's Urban League was critical in supporting the social needs of the new Black migrants as assessed in Chapter Two. Chapter Three “The Weapons of Legal Defense: The Pittsburgh NAACP and the Criminal Justice System, 1924-1934” and Chapter Four “The Ranks of the New Army: The Pittsburgh Courier and the Fight for Political Power and National Recognition, 1929-1933” focus on the strategy of legal defense as espoused by the NAACP and the work of newspaperman Robert L. Vann respectively. Chapter Three opens with a discussion of the mass arrest of Black migrants at a house party. These migrants were asked to pay a sum of $2.50 per person to the police but some like Joe Williams and his wife Mildred did not pay and were carted off to jail. These were the type of cases that interested the Pittsburgh NAACP. While in Chapter Four, Cilli concentrates on the key role of Vann in using the Pittsburgh Courier to advance Black social justice claims. The final three chapters focus on educational reform, the labor movement, and Black equality in the New Deal Era. Pittsburgh's Urban League continued to play a role in providing “educational outreach services” for African American students in city schools as detailed in Chapter Five. Black trade unionists began to organize in earnest during the 1930s and began to meet and strategize in Pittsburgh as Cilli notes in Chapter Six. While in Chapter Seven, the assessment of African Americans and their quest for equal employment equity is further analyzed. In Canaan, Dim and Far, Cilli presents his readers with a comprehensive survey of the centrality of Pittsburgh in the Black freedom struggle while offering a more nuanced interpretation of the Black elite and racial uplift ideology in the process. This text is an important historical intervention in African American history in terms of the author's coverage of key associations such as the NAACP and Urban League, labor activism, and Black newspaper history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In this episode we hear from Professor Jacob Faber of New York University about a federal government program called the Home Owners' Loan Corporation that started in the 1930s and how the decisions made in that program promoted residential segregation that is still with us today.

A new exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum focuses on public art created in the Pacific Northwest during the 1930s and 1940s as a part of the New Deal. Margaret Bullock, the curator, has been working on this exhibit for more than a decade.

After giving a broad overview of the philosophical underpinnings of governments last week, Roger Pilon joins us again to discuss the U.S. Constitution in particular and how the Constitution has been interpreted over the years.Pilon recounts the original signing of the Constitution and the adoption of the Bill of Rights, how post-Civil War constitutional amendments fundamentally altered the structure of American federalism, the Slaughter-House Cases of the late-19th century, Lochner v. New York, the New Deal Era, and how judicial interpretations of the General Welfare and Commerce clauses changed over time.Why was there no Bill of Rights when the Constitution was drafted? Is an originalist view of the constitution a necessarily antiquated one? Shouldn’t government be given enough power to realistically address any new concerns affect the nation as a whole, possibly issues that the Founders couldn’t have thought of? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

George H. Nash is an independent scholar, historian, and lecturer. As a scholar of American conservative thought and biographer of Herbert Hoover, Nash edited The Crusade Years, 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover's Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and its Aftermath (Hoover Institution Press, 2013). Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, lost his bid for re-election in 1932 reaching the lowest point of a long productive life. Rather than retreat to a quiet private life, he spent the next three decades writing and speaking, promoting humanitarian projects, addressing the problem of government efficiency, and as a vocal critic of American intervention abroad. He left a voluminous and detailed memoir, which remained unpublished until recently. The Hoover Institution published the first volume Freedom Betrayed, also edited by Nash, in 2011. Nash has provided a thorough introduction of Hoover's life. The second volume of the memoir, The Crusade Years, covers some of Hoover's private life and lays out his views on the threat of collectivism. Hoover was a relentless crusader against Roosevelt's New Deal policies and a champion of a classic liberal philosophy of “properly regulated individualism”. He resisted the erosion of American liberty by an encroaching state. His political philosophy was not rooted in an unfettered laissez-faire but in his firm belief in American exceptionalism, ordered liberty, and the possibility of social progress. In contemporary American politics, as noted by Nash, Hoover is both too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals bringing out the American tension in striking a balance between free markets and government regulation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

George H. Nash is an independent scholar, historian, and lecturer. As a scholar of American conservative thought and biographer of Herbert Hoover, Nash edited The Crusade Years, 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and its Aftermath (Hoover Institution Press, 2013). Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, lost his bid for re-election in 1932 reaching the lowest point of a long productive life. Rather than retreat to a quiet private life, he spent the next three decades writing and speaking, promoting humanitarian projects, addressing the problem of government efficiency, and as a vocal critic of American intervention abroad. He left a voluminous and detailed memoir, which remained unpublished until recently. The Hoover Institution published the first volume Freedom Betrayed, also edited by Nash, in 2011. Nash has provided a thorough introduction of Hoover’s life. The second volume of the memoir, The Crusade Years, covers some of Hoover’s private life and lays out his views on the threat of collectivism. Hoover was a relentless crusader against Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and a champion of a classic liberal philosophy of “properly regulated individualism”. He resisted the erosion of American liberty by an encroaching state. His political philosophy was not rooted in an unfettered laissez-faire but in his firm belief in American exceptionalism, ordered liberty, and the possibility of social progress. In contemporary American politics, as noted by Nash, Hoover is both too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals bringing out the American tension in striking a balance between free markets and government regulation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

George H. Nash is an independent scholar, historian, and lecturer. As a scholar of American conservative thought and biographer of Herbert Hoover, Nash edited The Crusade Years, 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and its Aftermath (Hoover Institution Press, 2013). Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, lost his bid for re-election in 1932 reaching the lowest point of a long productive life. Rather than retreat to a quiet private life, he spent the next three decades writing and speaking, promoting humanitarian projects, addressing the problem of government efficiency, and as a vocal critic of American intervention abroad. He left a voluminous and detailed memoir, which remained unpublished until recently. The Hoover Institution published the first volume Freedom Betrayed, also edited by Nash, in 2011. Nash has provided a thorough introduction of Hoover’s life. The second volume of the memoir, The Crusade Years, covers some of Hoover’s private life and lays out his views on the threat of collectivism. Hoover was a relentless crusader against Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and a champion of a classic liberal philosophy of “properly regulated individualism”. He resisted the erosion of American liberty by an encroaching state. His political philosophy was not rooted in an unfettered laissez-faire but in his firm belief in American exceptionalism, ordered liberty, and the possibility of social progress. In contemporary American politics, as noted by Nash, Hoover is both too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals bringing out the American tension in striking a balance between free markets and government regulation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

George H. Nash is an independent scholar, historian, and lecturer. As a scholar of American conservative thought and biographer of Herbert Hoover, Nash edited The Crusade Years, 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and its Aftermath (Hoover Institution Press, 2013). Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, lost his bid for re-election in 1932 reaching the lowest point of a long productive life. Rather than retreat to a quiet private life, he spent the next three decades writing and speaking, promoting humanitarian projects, addressing the problem of government efficiency, and as a vocal critic of American intervention abroad. He left a voluminous and detailed memoir, which remained unpublished until recently. The Hoover Institution published the first volume Freedom Betrayed, also edited by Nash, in 2011. Nash has provided a thorough introduction of Hoover’s life. The second volume of the memoir, The Crusade Years, covers some of Hoover’s private life and lays out his views on the threat of collectivism. Hoover was a relentless crusader against Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and a champion of a classic liberal philosophy of “properly regulated individualism”. He resisted the erosion of American liberty by an encroaching state. His political philosophy was not rooted in an unfettered laissez-faire but in his firm belief in American exceptionalism, ordered liberty, and the possibility of social progress. In contemporary American politics, as noted by Nash, Hoover is both too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals bringing out the American tension in striking a balance between free markets and government regulation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did FDR’s New Deal policies help pull America out of the Great Depression, or were they in fact responsible for the high unemployment in the country until the beginning of World War II? Jim Powell joins us for a discussion on America’s great 20th century experiment with big government.Is the picture we have of the New Deal Era accurate? What was the state of the country leading up to the New Deal? Were these new social programs successful in their goals—and what were their goals in the first place? What are the lessons America learned from the New Deal? Which New Deal programs are still around today?Show Notes and Further ReadingJim Powell, FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (book) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.