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Conservation, Gender, and the Tennessee Valley Authority During the New Deal

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Conservation, Gender, and the Tennessee Valley Authority During the New Deal ABSTRACT BRADSHAW, LAURA HEPP. Naturalized Citizens: Conservation, Gender, and the Tennessee Valley Authority during the New Deal. (Under the direction of Katherine Mellen Charron and Matthew Morse Booker). Broadly, this thesis is an examination of the conservation movement and the Tennessee Valley Authority from the Progressive Era through the New Deal. The creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933 had been premised upon earlier efforts to capture the river’s power and harness it to meet social needs. Harnessing hydroelectricity to remedy social and economic conditions in the South required both environmental engineering techniques and social engineering methods. By placing women at the center of the story, both in terms of their activism in bringing a conservation plan in the Tennessee River Valley into fruition, and in terms of the gendered implications of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power policy, this thesis seeks to reexamine the invisible role that the construction of power politics had on the South, and the nation as a whole. Naturalized Citizens: Conservation, Gender, and the Tennessee Valley Authority during the New Deal by Laura Hepp Bradshaw A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts History Raleigh, North Carolina 2010 APPROVED BY: _______________________________ ______________________________ Matthew Morse Booker Katherine Mellen Charron Committee Co-Chair Committee Co-Chair ________________________________ David Gilmartin ii DEDICATION To my family, but especially to Karl Hepp Sr., whose own journey inspires me to open new doors, even when they appear locked. Papa, a dal van a lelkemben. And to Michael Bradshaw, who makes opening new doors fun. iii BIOGRAPHY Laura Hepp Bradshaw grew up in southwestern Ontario, Canada. She earned a BA in history with a minor in environmental science in 2008 from North Carolina State University, where she graduated summa cum laude. She will earn her MA in history from North Carolina State University in May of 2010. She plans to continue her studies of environmental and gender history as a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I was fortunate to stumble into the history department at North Carolina State University over four years ago as a transfer student completing a Bachelor’s degree, and even more lucky that they admitted me into their Master’s degree program. I have twice been a beneficiary of the quality education that Jonathan Ocko’s efforts make possible. I am doubly grateful, both to Jonathan and to the wonderful administrative staff in the history department who provide the glue that holds everything - and everyone – together. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Alexander De Grand, Craig Friend, Blair Kelley, Susanna Lee, and Lauren Nauta Minsky, who enhanced my experience as a graduate student. I owe a special thanks to Nancy Mitchell and Thomas Ort for helping me gain invaluable experience as a graduate teaching assistant. I am deeply indebted to Brent Sirota, who never failed to make time for me when I needed to talk abstractly or theoretically about my work. Our conversations never failed to inspire flashes of brilliance, even if the moment was fleeting on my end. David Gilmartin is a towering intellect and I am honored that he agreed to serve on this committee. Among other things, he helped me to see the possibility of transnational connections in this project. Though it was unorthodox, I am grateful to have had two amazing committee chairs, whom each lent their special gifts to this project. Matthew Morse Booker invested over three years v fostering my intellectual curiosity in environmental history and remained unfailingly interested in this research from its inception, no matter what form it took. I hope I have finally answered the “so what?” question he so frequently posed to me. Finally, all that is good on the following pages is because of Katherine Mellen Charron’s devotion. I could not have asked for a more wonderful guide through this process, or a better mentor. Katherine’s keen eye for detail forced me to take a better look at the leaves on the tree when my own inclination was to focus on the forest. She embodies all that I hope to one day become as a scholar and a woman in academia. Sometimes thank you seems an inadequate expression of gratitude; this, especially, is one of those instances. While researching this project, I spent a few weeks in New York at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. Shivender Singh, the best friend I could ever ask for, kept me fed and housed while I made the long trek to Hyde Park, New York, to do research. I know of no one else I would rather spend weeks at a time with, and few others who would have cheerfully put up with me for so long. When I returned to North Carolina, Shivender also spent his weekends procuring important archival documents for me to help fill in gaps in my research on the African American response to the TVA. Friends and fellow graduate students Robyn Adams, Shane Cruise, Matthew Hulbert, and Stephanie Schroeder encouraged me back at home and made my graduate student experience less lonely. vi I remain forever indebted to my family for their love and encouragement. My affection for the motley Hepp crew is enduring. I feel invincible with an army of aunts, uncles, and cousins cheering me on. My brother Matthew and his partner Chelsey made me an aunt, and my niece Harper is a joyful reminder of the kind of curiosity I hope to always retain. Though she would shun such recognition, my grandmother, Helen Schenning, who loves to bird-watch, saves gray-water for her house plants, and enjoys the simple pleasure of hanging her sheets out on sunny days, induced me to begin thinking about the role of women in conservation efforts. Though two of my amazing grandparents have passed away, each inspired my interest in history in different ways. In his many years on the Schenning family dairy farm, my grandfather, John Schenning, was careful steward of the earth. Wading in the clear waters of the creek on his farm remains one of my most fond childhood memories. But, I date my love of history back to my first, informal history lessons with Julia Hepp, sitting around her kitchen table as a young girl listening to her mesmerizing stories of the Old World. Though she could not write in English, she lives in the words on the following pages. My parents, Joan and Karl Hepp, have been my greatest champions. Among the many gifts they gave to me, the freedom to make my own mistakes was perhaps the greatest. Though I stumbled frequently and fell often, they were always there to pick me up and help me dust off. Their love and encouragement helped me to find my own voice and to trust in it. Their belief in me propelled me forward even when I felt like I could not take another vii step. My husband, Michael, encouraged me to go back to school and this encouragement opened up doors I never imagined existed. Though he may have regretted it on nights when he made dinner and ate alone while I stayed late at the library, Michael never wavered. Creative freedom frequently comes at a cost, and I fear Michael paid a higher price than I. I could not have asked for a better partner on this journey and I owe much of the fruits of this labor to him and his patient endurance as I carved out time and space to complete this thesis. Finally, I wish to thank Karl Hepp Sr., my grandfather, for beating to the tune of his own drum, and showing me that it was okay to beat to the tune of mine. Papa taught me that we all have a song inside us; though he has grown old and may not remember the words anymore, sharing his song has been his greatest gift to me. It may not be much, but this - my song - is my gift to him in return. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter One …………………………………………………………………………………15 Chapter Two …………………………………………………………………………………46 Chapter Three ………………………………………………………………………………..92 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………122 Selected Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………...131 1 INTRODUCTION Like many federally employed writers and artists of the New Deal period, Lorena Hickok’s job brought her face to face with poverty during the 1930s. Traveling across the country on special assignment, Hickok prepared written reports for Harry Hopkins, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s closest advisor, and the administrator charged with providing emergency relief during the Great Depression under the auspices of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Hickok had the ear of the most important advisor to the most powerful man in America in the 1930s, as well as the President’s wife. Traveling through the most afflicted regions of the United States to gauge FERA’s effectiveness, Hickok’s letters to Hopkins provided a glimpse into the destitute lives the Work Progress Administration most famously captured in photos. In her reports from the South, Hickok’s gloomy portraits captured the desperation of the moment, as well as the necessity of the federal government’s unprecedented intervention in the economy and lives of average American citizens in the South. From the coalfields of the Appalachia to the cotton fields of Mississippi, letter after letter to Hopkins reaffirmed the massive scale of problems– illiteracy, poverty, starvation and malnourishment, poor sanitation, unemployment – plaguing Southern people. Near the end of her trip, on June 6, 1934, Hickok stopped in the Alabama Tennessee Valley, where the newly christened Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) had begun a multifaceted project to put able-bodied men back to work through one of the 2 grandest federally planned modernization schemes ever designed.1 Having witnessed the human cost of casualties wrought by ecological destruction and the Great Depression, Hickok could not conceal her delight when she reached the Valley and relayed the positive news about the TVA.
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