Tourism, Conservation, and State Parks

2019 ◽  
pp. 33-53
Author(s):  
David J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
State Parks ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Park Service ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Depression Era

For Florida, conservation and tourism have always been linked. As many argued during the Great Depression era, we should conserve those elements that we can sell to visitors. This chapter looks at the development of both during the 1930s and how they led to the creation of the Florida Park Service.

How the New Deal Built Florida Tourism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
New Deal ◽  
The State ◽  
Civilian Conservation Corps ◽  
Environment Change ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Park Service ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Current Concerns ◽  
The New Deal

In How the New Deal Built Florida Tourism, David Nelson examines the creation of modern Florida tourism through the state and federal government during the Great Depression. And more specifically, with the Florida civic-elite’s use of the Federal New Deal to develop state parks in order to re-boot Florida’s depressed tourist industry. The Florida Park Service is financially, thematically, ideally, and literally a direct product of the New Deal, as the Civilian Conservation Corps funded, designed, and in large ran the state park program. And the same can be said for much of modern Florida tourism, as well. So many of our current concerns—environment change and overdevelopment, Florida’s ongoing north-south cultural and political divide, ideas of what constitutes the “Real Florida,” and the continued fascination with the mythical “Florida Cracker”—have their origins in the 1930s. With such a focus, this book addresses three previously underserved topics—the creation of the Florida Park Service, the development and work of the Civilian Conservation Corps in Florida, and a case study of the New Deal in Florida. Florida in the Great Depression has been largely ignored by historians when compared to other eras. But as this book will demonstrate, the New Deal era was in fact crucial to the creation of modern Florida.

Selling Historic Natchez to Depression-Era Pilgrims

2019 ◽  
pp. 153-210
Author(s):  
Susan T. Falck
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Cultural Image ◽  
The World ◽  
Depression Era

This chapter recounts the early years of the Natchez Pilgrimage, a heritage tourism enterprise created by the Natchez Garden Club at the height of the Great Depression. The Pilgrimage dramatized a mix of decades-old southern racial ideology and white historical memory that was repackaged for 1930s consumption. Pilgrimage founder Katherine Miller and other leading clubwomen defined their community’s cultural image, while also redefining the meaning of traditional southern womanhood. The Pilgrimage is also the story of how one southern community’s selective expression of historical memory captivated white tourists eager to immerse themselves in the world of the Old South so vividly portrayed by popular writers and entertainers of the 1930s. The widespread appeal of the Pilgrimage home tours and pageant suggests the power of popular culture to shape a tenacious historical memory that remained in force for much of the twentieth century and lingers even today.

The Sunshine State Emerges on the World Stage

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-197
Author(s):  
David J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Entire Population ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Tourist Industry ◽  
Tourist Attractions ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
New York World's Fair ◽  
The World ◽  
Park Service

Near the end of the Great Depression, Florida ends the decade with a triumphant tenure at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, dozens of thriving tourist attractions, and a newly built Florida Park Service. By 1940, Florida enjoyed a thriving tourist industry that attracted more than double the entire population of the Sunshine State.

West, Nathanael (1903–1940)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Meehan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
York City ◽  
Nathanael West ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
Miss Lonelyhearts ◽  
Title Character

Nathanael West was an author and screenwriter whose work spanned the decade of the 1930s. He was born Nathan Weinstein on 17 October 1903 in New York City; his decision to change his name at the age of twenty-two reflects a life-long ambivalence toward his Jewish ancestry. He is best known as a novelist whose work teems with characters suffering from psychological traumas stemming from the bleak atmosphere of Depression-era America. He died tragically and in relative obscurity with his wife Eileen in an automobile accident outside of El Centro, California in 1940. Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), his second novel, is widely considered his best work. Unlike his first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931) — which was influenced by French surrealism and was highly experimental in style — Miss Lonelyhearts is rooted in the everyday challenges of the Great Depression. The title character, whose actual name is never given, works as an advice columnist for a newspaper in New York City. Although he and others see the job as trivial, the desperate letters from readers begin to take a heavy emotional toll, leading him on an ill-fated search for meaning. Although the book’s plot is tragic, it also features elements of black comedy, a pervasive element of West’s work.

A New Deal for Florida

2019 ◽  
pp. 18-32
Author(s):  
David J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Civilian Conservation Corps ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The New Deal

Chapter 2 explores both the nation’s and Florida’s reaction to the Great Depression, resulting in the New Deal and the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

You Can’t Shoot All of Us

2019 ◽  
pp. 56-90
Author(s):  
Simon Balto
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The World ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
Political Radicalism

The book’s second chapter covers the decade of the Great Depression and the World War II years. One of its principal focuses is the rise of Chicago’s infamous Democratic machine, which emerged as the dominant force in Chicago machine politics after years of back-and-forth tussling with its Republican counterpart. Democratic leaders beginning in 1931 used the police force as a bludgeon against the Black community to try to force it to vote Democratic, and utilized it in other ways to control Black Chicago politically. This was seen most acutely within the context of the rising tide of political radicalism that shaped Black Chicago during this time, especially the labors of the Communist Party and, later, organizations with the Popular Front as they challenged Depression-era austerity and battled with the police as austerity’s frequent enforcers (as in the case of evictions). To check such radicalism, Democratic politicians unleashed the infamous Red Squad, which cracked down viciously on political dissidents, often violently and illegally, setting important precedents. The decade also saw the expansion of a practice known as “stop and seizure,” an antecedent to the infamous practice of “stop and frisk.”

Crack-Brained Professors and Baby Radicals

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Joel Zogry
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
The State ◽  
Classical Sense ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Evolution Teaching

This chapter chronicles the student newspaper’s evolution to an on-campus daily publication in the 1920s, and how it rapidly professionalized and became both a critical laboratory for aspiring journalists, and helped to push for the creation of a school of journalism at UNC. The chapter also discusses causes the paper fought for or against, including defeat of the 1925 anti-evolution teaching bill in the state legislature, promotion of labor unions and rights in North Carolina’s mills and factories, and freedom for the students to have speakers on campus of all political persuasions. The chapter examines the universities growing reputation as a liberal institution, both in the classical sense and politically, and the beginnings of state politicians and media to question these issues, most notably David Clark. The first attempt to racially integrate the school, by Pauli Murray, is examined. Other topics covered include the Great Depression, the major university cheating scandal of 1936, the burning of all issues of a campus humor magazine considered indecent in 1939, and the anti-war sentiment at UNC, 1939-1941.

‘We’re Only Kids Now, But Someday …’: Hollywood Musicals and the Great Depression ‘Youth Crisis’

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Eldridge
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Parental Authority ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Hollywood Musicals ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
Good Cause

A number of Hollywood social dramas had documented the ‘youth crisis’ of the Depression era – limited employment prospects, vagrancy, delinquency, deprival of normal childhood. MGM’s Babes in Arms (1939), made when the worst of the economic crisis seemed over, was the first to do so in musical form. It confronted audiences not only with visions of an angry army of youth, but with young Americans facing impoverishment, crumbling parental authority, the threat of being taken into care, and incipient delinquency. Its commercial success spawned three other musicals – Strike Up the Band (1940), Babes on Broadway (1941) and Girl Crazy (1943), each of which raised the spectre of the ‘youth crisis’ that perplexed politicians, educators and sociologists. All of them had a happy ending, however, through the utopian instrument of kds putting on a musical show that demonstrated their capacity for collective action in a good cause, for still having wholesome fun, and for demonstrating patriotism.

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