Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
NEW DEAL: RESCUING THE USA FROM ITS GREAT DEPRESSION
America reached its lowest point in history during the Great Depression. By 1932,
nearly one third of all American workers were unemployed. National output fell by
50%, hundreds of banks were shuttered, and great swaths of the country seemed
to disappear beneath enormous dust storms. Franklin Roosevelt easily won the
1932 election, and rather casually promised to give Americans a new deal. So
began one of America's most progressive eras in history, under the rule of one of
its most popular presidents.
Roosevelt wasted no time getting down to work. During his first 100 days, he
completed the rescue of the ailing banking system with the creation of deposit in-
surance. He sent $500 million to states for direct relief and saved a fifth of all
homeowners from foreclosure. He also sent people back to work on a grand scale.
He created the Civilian Conservation Corps, which gave jobs to 250,000 young
men to work in the parks and forests; they would go on to plant two billion trees. He
also created the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which put another
600,000 to work on major projects across the country - building bridges, tunnels,
dams, power plants, waterworks, highways, schools and town halls.
The New Deal wasn't just about infrastructure. Some 5000 artists (including
famed Mexican painter Diego Rivera) were employed painting murals and creating
sculptures in public buildings - many are still in existence today. Over 6000 writers
were put to work crisscrossing the country, recording oral histories and folktales
and compiling ethnographic studies.
The Red Scare, Civil Rights & Vietnam War
The US enjoyed unprecedented prosperity in the decades after WWII but little peace.
Formerly wartime allies, the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist USA soon en-
gaged in a running competition to dominate the globe. The superpowers engaged in
proxy wars - notably the Korean War (1950-53) and Vietnam War (1954-75) - with
only the mutual threat of nuclear annihilation preventing direct war.
Meanwhile, with its continent unscarred and its industry bulked up by WWII, the
American homeland entered an era of growing affluence. In the 1950s, a mass migration
left the inner cities for the suburbs, where affordable single-family homes sprang up.
Americans drove cheap cars using cheap gas over brand-new interstate highways. They
relaxed with the comforts of modern technology, swooned over TV, and got busy, giving
birth to a 'baby boom.' Middle-class whites did, anyway. African Americans remained
segregated, poor and generally unwelcome at the party. Echoing 19th-century abolitionist
Frederick Douglass, the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition (SCLC), led by African
American preacher Martin Luther King Jr, aimed to end segregation and 'save America's
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