In March 1933, within weeks of inauguration, President Franklin Roosevelt sent legislation to Congress aimed at providing relief for the one out of every four American workers who were unemployed. He proposed a Civilian Conservation Corps to provide jobs in natural resource conservation. Over the next decade, the CCC put more than three million young men to work in the nation’s forest, parks, and farms: planting trees, creating flood barriers, fighting fires, and building roads and trails. Corps workers lived in camps under quasi-military discipline and received a wage of $ 30 per month, $ 25 of which they were required to send home to their families. This American Experience film interweaves rich archival imagery wit the personal accounts of CCC veterans to tell the story of one of the boldest and most popular New Deal experiments, positioning it as a pivotal moment in the emergence of modern environmentalism and national service. (60 mins)
The Civilian Conservation Corps
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