The Lasting Legacy of the New Deal

The New Deal left a lasting mark on Amrican History. The creation of the Works Project Administration (the WPA) played a major role in the country's activities at the time. The WPA created work for men and women who were previously unemployed. Not only did this give people a fighting chance of survival by finally allowing them to make an income and enabling them to provide for their families, but their jobs served the country well. The government tried to create positions for all types of workers to help them maintain the same skills they had before the Depression took away their jobs. Many men went into construction or improvment jobs for the country. They construced land marks and renovated the American society. Some people were employed through the arts. This let actors, directors, and all of those involved in the performing arts put on productions which both allowed them to make a living doing what they loved, and to provide entertainment for those struggling under the overwhelming challenges of everyday life in the Depression. A very important job, perhaps the most significant of all, was the job of historians and people who traveled the country recording the stories of different Americans. People's stories were recorded through written histories, oral histories, and photographs. Not only did this bring a greater awarness to the problems at the time, but it also gives people in modern day society an opportunity to hear and see what life was like during the Depression from people who actually endured the hardships first hand. Everyting from the architecture to the photography to the interviews from this period left a lasting mark on the United States. The New Deal made all of this possible, improving the lives of the Americans suffering in the Depression as well as providing future generations to understand the lives of Americans at the time.

Entry #1: C.P. Ellis and Vine Deloria

I was a little shocked by the turnaround in this story. C.P. Ellis was an ex-Klansman, and was not only a member of the Klu Klux Klan, but at one point in time, he was the president of the group. He was a low-income white man with pent up frustration and had been taught by his father to place the blame for all of the hardships in his life on blacks. This part of the story was not a surprise because that was the attitude and upbringing of many whites at this time in American history. The shocking part is how drastically he changed. He spent years fighting against African Americans, believing that they were the enemy and using all of his power to prevent them from moving up in society and gaining power. Then one day it struck him that the low income blacks and low income whites were actually being pinned against each other by the wealthy whites who wanted to prevent having their power threatened. When he realized that he was being used, he was furious and tried to make a change. Eventually he began to work with the black citizens and fight for common goals. He was shocked by how similar they really were and said that "this gave [him] another sense of belongin', a sense of pride. This helped this inferiority feelin' [he] had. A man who has stood up publicly and said he despised black people, all of a sudden he was willin' to work with 'em. Here's a chance for a low-income white man to be somethin'." (Terkel 70). This quote from Ellis shows that anybody can change and to any magnitude if they allow themselves to have an open mind and fight for what they know is right, whether it is the popular decision or not. This reminds me of even further back in history when whites were working with blacks to help them gain freedom and bring an end to slavery. It was not an easy statement for any whites to make, but they allowed themselves to look past their own popularity and see the bigger picture. This makes me wonder about our modern day issues such as gay marriage. Many people in America are still unwilling to grant these equal rights to a group of people simply because they do not follow tradition, but if they would listen with an open mind to gay marriage activists as Ellis did with black activists, would our country finally accept this change? Would more people vote for it because they see that it is fair even if it is not the popular vote for them to make?

I found Vine Deloria's story to be a new and interesting point of view for the reader because he does not fall under the category of the typical member of a minority group. Deloria was a middle aged, Native American man living in a modernized society. He saw the vast differences between the Indian's culture and the American's culture, and even saw an obvious difference between generations of Indians. He talked a lot about tradition and religion in the cultures of many Native American groups. There were pressures for Indians to conform to the ways of the white settlers but many Native Americans resisted the change. For example, Deloria's father was loyal to his upbringing and did not feel the need to conform to the pressures of society as "he held on to the two cultures without much conflict until the late sixties. The civil rights movement turned him off. The church put tremendous pressure on the Indians to integrate," (Terkel 36). I had always assumed that the minorities in this country would have all joined forces to try to bring equality to all, but Vine Deloria's story clearly shows that this was not always the case. Some minority groups were strongly opposed to the idea of the "melting pot" and wanted to preserve their own customs and cultures. This idea of going to extreme measures to preserve one's own culture brings up several intriguing questions. What groups are currently fighting to keep their independence in America but are being forced to conform to the expectations and behavior of American life? How has America forced people to surrender their own beliefs in order fit in? How would this country be different if some of the earlier groups had never been forced to conform to the settlers’ ways? These are just a few of many questions that this story brings to mind for me.