Draft of Paper 3

The soaring unemployment rates during The Great Depression drove Americans hunting for work all over the nation. While their need to work was primarily for survival, it also reflected the cultural sentiment to feel one’s self a large sense of purpose and inclusion. Warren Susman argues in “Culture as History” that 1930s America “was the decade of participation and belonging” (172). Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal social welfare liberalism embraced the people’s will and desire to participate through offering them government assistance programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which employed them. Furthermore, the New Deal emphasized equal opportunity for all races. Two of the CCC photographs, Wilfred J. Mead’s Work Project and Negro Enrollee, Beltsville, MD 1940 illustrate that government assistance programs did enable Americans to participate in their communities through physical work, however the photos also suggest that whites and blacks do not participate nor belong in communities equally.

Roosevelt’s Commonwealth Club Address expresses his vision of national history, freedom, private property, the role of government and the mood of America in 1932. Roosevelt describes America during the Depression as having fallen under “the hand of discouragement” (Roosevelt 1). Yet the verbal phrase he uses to describe his sense of the landscape he has witnessed from Albany to the Golden Gate is that “America is new” and is in the process of change and development (Roosevelt 1). Roosevelt’s optimism expressed in the initial paragraphs of his Commonwealth Club Address speaks to the image of Americans wanting to participate, belong and to feel a larger sense of purpose by encouraging them to trust that his New Deal will get them out of the Depression. Roosevelt spoke to the notion of community and collective action in his Commonwealth Club Address by both acknowledging his appreciation to those who thought in terms “beyond the immediate present, beyond their own immediate tasks, beyond their own individual interests,” and by considering the relationships between government and the economic lives of individuals and corporations (Roosevelt 2).

His belief that the “function of government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens” (Roosevelt 4) paved the way for the New Deal social welfare liberalism which relied on government assistance to ensure that all citizens had the resources necessary for individual opportunity and self-development. This idea cultivated programs like the CCC which would encourage civic participation through employment and would help improve the economic situation individually and collectively.

The CCC, which employed almost three million young men over a 10 year period on projects such as soil conservation, disaster relief, reforestation, flood control, and building parks and park facilities created a sense of community and belonging amongst those who participated. Between 1933 and 1943, the CCC and other government agencies under the New Deal hired hundreds of photographers, artists, writers, musicians, and actors to create documents and images that would spread New Deal ideals throughout the country (Palmer 2/17/09). All of these artistic mediums could effectively disseminate cultural ideals of the time and served as a means for people to feel more connected, again reflecting the desire for participation and belonging. According to Susman, these mediums “created a novel kind of community, breaking down barriers, creating often new common experiences for millions,” (161). One of the ideals that the New Deal claimed and attempted to showcase in photographs was the idea that it would treat all races equally. While many of the photographs produced during this time did feature more diversity, two of the CCC photos, both of men (one white, the other black) working in what appears to be rural farmlands, presented the two races as being treated unequally.

The CCC photograph Work Project by Wilfred J. Mead presents a young, white man standing tall and erect with a tight grip of a sledge-hammer. The young man appears healthy, strong, and overall physically fit. This is illustrative of one of the main objectives of the CCC, building strong bodies (Mead). He is wearing pants that appear to be middle-class work pants and they are held up to his bellybutton tightly by a belt. He is not wearing a shirt; instead, the sunlight is radiating off of his chest and face. His skin is clean and glowing and his head is protected from the sun by a hat. He appears to be gazing at something in the distance, not making eye contact with the viewer. The sledge-hammer he is holding gives him authority, power, and control. He is holding the sledge-hammer right below his hips and its’ direct, sturdy placement on his legs create balance in the frame. The young man’s placement in the foreground of the photograph makes him dominate the scene. The only thing in the background is the edges of a tree; the lack of elements in the background of this photograph further emphasizes the subject as the dominating force. The frame itself is rather small which makes the young man appear even more gigantic and god-like than he actually is. His attitude appears to be serious and determined and the description below the photo says that another print has the caption “The slogan of the Civilian Conservation Corps is ‘We can take it!’” (Mead). The photograph is in black and white which further symbolizes the hard work, serious attitude, and no play this young enrollee in the CCC faces.

The CCC photograph Negro Enrollees portrays the black worker in a very different light than the white man from Work Project. This man appears overheated, sweating, and tired from the work he’s been doing. His face does not have the serious, determined, god-like look that the white man possesses; his face carries an expression of utter exhaustion. There is no sunlight radiating off of his face or his chest. Rather, he is fully dressed in clothes that look a bit more raggedy than the white man’s pants. His gloves, hat, and shoes all look dirty and as if they’ve been through hard, endless work. He’s sitting in some kind of machine which is helping him do the work, making him appear weak and dependent on technology. This is strikingly different from the white man in Work Project who is holding the sledge-hammer and is in control of the work he is doing. The machine controlling the black man’s work diminishes him and makes him appear inferior to the white man who is in control of his physical labor. Unlike the white man who appears gigantic and dominating in Work Project, the black man shares the foreground of the photograph with the machine, emphasizing that he is not the sole focus nor is he independent and strong. The only feature of the black man that is exaggerated is his hand; the fact that the viewer’s eyes immediately go to his hand before his face further de-humanizes him. The description next to the photograph says he is working on road surfacing; the road extends into the background, symbolizing the work he has already done and how much he has had to do to get to where he is in the photograph. One can interpret that the CCC included the long, surfaced road in the background to symbolize two things: 1.) that the black man could not have gotten to where he is in this photograph without the assistance of the CCC and 2.) the black man should be appreciative of what the CCC has provided him with.
Both photographs utilize hard work as a symbol of Americans’ participation in what American culture prides itself in – working hard to obtain the prized “American Dream.” Even though we don’t see the white man in Work Project physically working, we see him posed, and ready to work; we can infer that he’s gone through physical workouts to reach the level of fitness he is illustrated to have. Yet the fact that he is posed as opposed to working in the photograph emphasizes the notion that work will come relatively easy for him because of his race. It’s inferable that the black man in Black Enrollees has undergone significant mental and physical work to get to where he is in the photograph; we know from history that he will continue to have to go through much more work than the white man to reach the American dream.

While Roosevelt’s New Deal ensured equal opportunity for all races and programs such as the CCC were meant to employ Americans for individual and community benefits, the evidence from the CCC photographs say otherwise. The de-humanization and the hard physical labor the black man is undergoing in Black Enrollees as opposed to the glorification of the white man standing with a sledge-hammer in Work Project, illustrates that even though both men are presented as working under the CCC, they are not participating in nor are belonging to the American way of life of the 1930s equally.