Roosevelt's New Deal tried to provide not only jobs but also homes for down-on-their-luck Americans. The Subsistence Homesteads division of the Department of the Interior, created in July 1933 under the National Industrial Recovery Act, was one of the most controversial New Deal undertakings. It attempted to relocate poor rural families into government-funded planned communities where they enjoy much better housing and, in some cases, have gardens to help them produce their own food.
The Resettlement Administration, headed by controversial figure Rexford Tugwell, carried on work on the communities until finally being taken over by Farm Security Administration in 1937. The FSA also incorporated the Resettlement Administration and also helped tenant farmers buy their own land.
To help combat criticism from legislators and press, the FSA created the Information Division. Tugwell appointed Roy Stryker as its director and the Information Divison was soon sending photographers out all across the nation to record both the need for FSA programs, and their effects. John Vachon and Arthur Rothstein spent a day in Norfolk and Paul Carter traveled to the Newport News Homesteads, capturing images of the homesteaders and the conditions of blacks in the area. About 100 subsistence homesteads were built across the nation and two were built in Virginia. One was the Newport News Homesteads, and the other provided homes for the men and women who were dispossessed from their homes when the Shenandoah National Park was created. One of the more famous subsistence homesteads was built in Greenbelt, Md.
Introduction/
The FSA and Subsistence Homesteads/
Blacks in Virginia/
Proposal/
"For blacks, by blacks"/
Resistance/
Architecture/
Building Community/
Aberdeen Gardens Today/
Bibliography and Suggested Readings
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