History in the Making Volume 13 Article 9 January 2020 Discovering a Purpose in a Listening Democracy: The People’s Voice in 1930s/40s America Celeste Nunez CSUSB Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/history-in-the-making Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Nunez, Celeste (2020) "Discovering a Purpose in a Listening Democracy: The People’s Voice in 1930s/40s America," History in the Making: Vol. 13 , Article 9. Available at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/history-in-the-making/vol13/iss1/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History at CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in History in the Making by an authorized editor of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Discovering a Purpose in a Listening Democracy: The People’s Voice in 1930s/40s America By Celeste Nunez Abstract: From the 1930s through the mid-1940s, the people of America witnessed two of the most traumatic events in American history, the Great Depression and Second World War. During these two decades, the people turned to radio as their form of “escape” allowing them to forget about the events happening around them. Radio culture in America began to explode with nearly twenty-eight million households owning a radio by the end of 1939. Franklin Delano Roosevelt utilized this technology to reach out to the American people and discuss the events occurring not only around the world but also in their bacKyards. Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.