"Emphasizes the unique participation of African Americans in the CCC and their efforts to negate racism. . . . Extremely useful."--Charles Johnson, Jr., Morgan State University Between 1933 and 1942, nearly 200,000 young African Americans participated in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of Roosevelt's most successful New Deal agencies. In an effort to correct the lack of historical attention paid to the African-American contribution to the CCC, Olen Cole, Jr.,  examines their participation in the corps as well as its impact on them.   Though federal legislation establishing the CCC held that no bias of "race, color, or creed" was to be tolerated, Cole demonstrates that the very presence of African Americans in the CCC, as well as the placement of the segregated CCC work camps in predominantly white California communities, became significant sources of controversy. Cole assesses community resistance to all black camps, as well as the conditions of the state park camps, national forest camps, and national park camps where African-American work companies in California were stationed. He also evaluates the educational and recreational experiences of African-American CCC participants, their efforts to combat racism, and their contributions to the protection and maintenance of California's national forest and parts.   Perhaps most important, Cole's use of oral histories gives voice to individual experiences: former Corps members discuss the benefits of employment, vocational training, and character development as well as their experiences of community reaction to all-black CCC camps. An important and much neglected chapter in American history, Cole's study should interest students of New Deal politics, state and national park history, and the African-American experience in the 20th century. Olen Cole, Jr., is associate professor of history at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina.

"The Civilian Conservation Corps was one of the most popular programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Over the nine years of the program, from 1933 to 1942, over two and one-half million unemployed young men found work on conservation projects across Depression-stricken America. "Roosevelt's Tree Army," as the CCC men were sometimes called, planted billions of trees, fought forest fires, did historic preservation work, and constructed recreational facilities in state and national parks. At Work in Penn's Woods offers a rich and compelling portrait of Pennsylvania's CCC program. In Pennsylvania the CCC had one of its largest and most successful programs. The state recruited the second-highest number of workers and had the second-highest number of work camps in the country. Gifford Pinchot, perhaps the most famed conservationist of the first half of the twentieth century, was governor of the state in 1933, and his state foresters were well prepared to make use of the abundant labor the CCC made available to them. The Pennsylvania CCC men planted over 60 million trees in a state that had been scarred by clear-cut logging, rampant forest fires, and destructive tree diseases. They also worked at creating and upgrading state park recreational facilities; some of the camps did historic preservation work at Gettysburg, Hopewell Village, and Fort Necessity. A dozen camps provided assistance to farmers on soil conservation projects. Aside from conservation work, the CCC program also played another important role in providing relief assistance to Pennsylvania's families in need. The men were paid $30 a month, but usually $22-25 of that was sent home to their families, who were often on relief and in need of the extra money their sons earned. In their free time the men were given the opportunity to take courses in a variety of academic and vocational subjects to train them for life after the CCC. At Work in Penn's Woods, the first comprehensive study of Pennsylvania's CCC program, combines administrative history with portraits of many of the men who worked in the camps. Speakman draws on archival research in primary sources, including some source collections never used before, and on interviews with former CCC men."

"When Franklin Delano Roosevelt founded the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933, newspapers relating to the organization were launched almost immediately. Happy Days, the semi-official newspaper of the CCC, and other such publications served as soundings boards for opinions among the CCC enrollees, encouraged and instructed the men as they assumed their new roles, and generally supported the aims of Roosevelt's New Deal program. Happy Days also encouraged and instructed editors in the production of camp newspapers--well over 5,000 were published by almost 3,000 of the CCC companies from 1933 to 1942.This book considers all phases of life in the CCC throughout its existence from various perspectives, and analyzes the history of CCC camp journalism. As the author points out, the CCC newspapers were and still are significant because they provide readers with a look at American life--socially, politically, culturally and militarily--during the Great Depression. It also focuses on how Happy Days and other newspapers were created and distributed, who wrote for them, and what they contained."

"The Great Depression coincided with a wave of natural disasters, including the Dust Bowl and devastating floods of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Recovering from these calamities--and preventing their reoccurrence--was a major goal of the New Deal. In Nature's New Deal, Neil M. Maher examines the history of one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's boldest and most successful experiments, the Civilian Conservation Corps, describing it as a turning point both in national politics and in theemergence of modern environmentalism. Indeed, Roosevelt addressed both the economic and environmental crises by putting Americans to work at conserving natural resources, through the Soil Conservation Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (or CCC). The CCC created public landscapes--natural terrain altered by federal work projects--that helped environmentalism blossom after World War II, Maher notes. Millions of Americans devoted themselves to a new vision of conservation, one that went beyond the old model of simply maximizing the efficient use of natural resources, to include the promotion of human health through outdoor recreation, wilderness preservation, and ecological balance. And yet, as Maher explores the rise and development of the CCC, he also shows how the critique of its campgrounds, picnic areas, hiking trails, and motor roads frames the debate over environmentalism to this day. From the colorful life at CCC camps, to political discussions in the White House and the philosophical debates dating back to John Muir and Frederick Law Olmsted, Nature's New Deal captures a key moment in the emergence of modern environmentalism."