University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2005 A River for War, a Watershed to Change: The Tennessee Valley Authority During World War II William Wade Drumright University of Tennessee, Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Drumright, William Wade, "A River for War, a Watershed to Change: The Tennessee Valley Authority During World War II. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2005. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/4321 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by William Wade Drumright entitled "A River for War, a Watershed to Change: The Tennessee Valley Authority During World War II." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. Robert J. Norrell, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: William Bruce Wheeler, Kurt Piehler, Charles S. Aiken Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by William Wade Drumright entitled "A River for War, a Watershed to Change: The Tennessee Valley Authority During World War II." I have examined the finalpaper copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillmentof the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Acceptance for the Council: � .. Graduate Studies A RIVER FOR WAR, A WATERSHED TO CHANGE: THE TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY DURING WORLD WAR II A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville William Wade Drumright May 2005 Copyright © 2005 by William Wade Drumright All rights reserved ii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Helen A. and the late Claude E. "Bud" Drumright, and to my sister and brother, Tamara J. and Elliott E. Drumright. A part of all of them is contained in this work. Lastly, this dissertation is especially dedicated to my spouse, Patricia "Patti" Drumright. Through her steadfast love, support, and encouragement, this work is as much hers as it is mine. 111 Acknowledgements I wish to thank all of those who helped me complete my Doctor of Philosophy degree in History. I would like to thank Dr. Robert Norrell forhis professional guidance and support and thanks to Drs. William Bruce Wheeler, Kurt Piehler, and Charles Aiken forserving on my committee, and fortheir helpfulcomments and ideas. Special thanks are due to Dr. Paul Bergeron, Professor Emeritus of History, The University of Tennessee, for both his insights and encouragement during my graduate school tenure, and to Dr. Benjamin Severance, professorof History at AuburnUniversity/Montgomery and the finestfriend and colleague a fellowhistorian could ever have. I especially wish to thank Dr. Margaret Ripley Wolfe, Professorof History at East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee. Largely because of her mentorship and generous sharing of her professionalexpertise, I daily experience the infinitegood fortuneof working as a professionalhistorian. IV Abstract This dissertation examines how the Tennessee Valley Authority responded to, and was affectedby, the demands placed upon this agency by America's participation in the Second World War. Established by Congress in May 1933 at the behest of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Authority was charged with the physical alteration and rehabilitation, and the economic revitalization of the Tennessee River basin and watershed. These tasks included making the river suitable forship and barge navigation; achieving floodcontrol through a system of dams on the main river and its tributaries; and producing, transmitting, and selling electric power. During the period covered in this study, fromautumn of 1938 through the end of the war, TVA played a vital role in the war effort. In doing this, the Authority accomplished most of its inaugural mandate while protecting itself fromcongressional proscription and abolition. As one of the three main Allied nations, the United States became the primary supplier of the munitions, armaments, and materiel necessary to defeatthe Axis Powers. To achieve this, the United States needed electrical power on an unprecedented scale and the Authority, by expanding its existing system, was well­ placed to help provide this output. Between 1940 and 1945, TVA built seven dams and a steam-generating plant, and installed eleven hydroelectric units at various existing dams. With this increased capacity, the Authority generated 46.7 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, with 75 percent of this total going to such war production and products as making aluminum, manufacturingaircraft, and creating the specialized uranium forthe atomic bomb. V When it came to socioeconomic matters, however, the Authority had a mixed record. Wartime realities spurred the growth of a movement for racial justice in a region based upon the cornerstonesof white supremacy and segregation. TVA, consequently, continued to acquiesce to the South's racial mores and customs-a choice that had both practical and moral ramifications. Massive federalspending, meanwhile, aided the South's wartime and postwar economic rise. Externalfactors and internalrealities, however, constrained the Authority's attempts to shape both the nature and direction of this growth. vi Table of Contents Chapter One Introduction 1 Chapter Two Preparing for War 23 Chapter Three TVA 's Contributions to the War Effort 66 Chapter Four TheDouglas Dam Controversy 89 Chapter Five Resisting Wartime Opposition 116 Chapter Six Racial and Socioeconomic Realities 144 Chapter Seven Planning for the Postwar Period 179 Chapter Eight Conclusion 202 Bibliography 218 Vita 230 Vll Chapter One Introduction May 2003 marked the seventieth anniversary of the Tennessee Valley Authority. 1 Formed by Congress during the firstone hundred days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, this public corporation was charged with the physical alteration and rehabilitation and the economic revitalization of the Tennessee River basin and watershed. This area, four-fifths the size of England, covered parts of seven states and contained some of the poorest sections of a nation laid low by the Great Depression.2 During a trip to Alabama in January 1933, President-elect Roosevelt visited Wilson Dam, a federalproject built during World War I at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, on the Tennessee River. The historian David M. Kennedy notes that Roosevelt ''was struck by the sight and sound of the foaming waters roaring unused over its massive spillways. In the vast surrounding valley of the Tennessee, families nightly lit their cabins with kerosene lamps and cooked on wood stoves. To Roosevelt, the contrast was intolerable."3 TV A's formative years, 1933 to 1945, occurred amid the crises of the Depression and the Second World War. Of these events, historians' and non- 1 Throughout this work, the terms TVA and the Authority refer to the Tennessee Valley Authority. 2George B. Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913-1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967), 446-47. See also Don McBride, 1VA and the National Defense (Knoxville: Tennessee Valley Authority, 1975), I: ''The Tennessee River watershed is a 40,910- square-mile area encompassing parts of seven states-Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky." Richard Lowitt refers to the plight of such areas as east Tennessee, southwest Virginia, western North Carolina, northwest Georgia, north Alabama, and northwest Mississippi in "The TVA, 1933-45," in Erwin C. Hargrove and Paul K. Conkin, eds., 1VA: Fifty Years of Grass-Roots Bureaucracy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 35-65. As Lowitt notes on page 37, this area "was possibly the poorest part of the poorest region in the nation at that time." 3 David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 147-48. historians' interest in World War II burgeoned in the 1990s. The fiftiethanniversary in 1995 of the war's end and the release of archival records that forcedreassessment of various wartime events and issues are two factorsswelling the tide of this topic. Just as important is the urgency to capture the remembrances of members of the wartime generation before they die. 4 In the current decade, meanwhile, December 7, 2001, marked the sixtieth anniversary of Japan's attack upon Pearl Harbor. Its importance was further embellished in relation to the September 11, 2001, bombings in New York City and Washington, D.C. In explaining these attacks upon American soil, politicians, journalists, commentators, and historians compared the terrorists' assaults to the event