The New Deal, I Think, Is a Great Man Theory of History

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A lot of the good things that happened in the new deal were really responses to ideas that came from radical movements, which had been struggling and pushing for those for years. It's a long history of radical struggle before roosevelt. And i want to be clear, roosevelt himself was not a radical, right? I mean, iwould i guess i would describe him as a capitalist, humanitarian. That seems about right? Ah, yes. But i know that he was hearing from more radical leaders, he wasknow quite directlyy. So he was kind of er, you know, he was taking ideas and moderated those proposals.

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