The Land That Never Has Been Yet

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

This is season four of sen on radio, episode six in our series exploring democracy in the us. We call the series the land that never has been yet. This time out, the new deal. What was its impact ondemocracy in the us? How did it change the role of government and the ability of regular people to have a say in their lives as citizens or especially as workers? And what hid the new deal not achieve, democracy wise?"

The Great Depression presented a crisis not only for the U.S. economy, but for American democracy. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to save the nation’s system of government, and its economic system, while reforming both. What did the New Deal achieve, and not achieve?

Reported and produced by John Biewen, with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Eric Rauchway and Cybelle Fox. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

Music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.

Photo: Men fighting during a strike at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, 1937. Image courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

As mentioned in the episode, an article by public historian Larry DeWitt examining the widespread assertion that the exclusion of some occupations from the original Social Security old-age pension program was insisted on by southern segregationists: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html