Today in History: The New Deal
Today in History–June 16–the Library of Congress features the New Deal. On this date in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) signed the National Industrial Recovery Act, which created the Public Works Administration. FDR’s New Deal domestic agenda provided jobs through a series of public works programs. In fact, millions of Americans found work through programs such as the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Find out more by visiting the Today in History section, then click the links below to access related resources.
Primary source sets
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal American Memory timeline & related documents
- New Deal primary source set, includes teacher guide
- New Deal image set
- New Deal books, reports & other texts
- Works Progress Administration
- Civilian Conservation Corps
- Tennessee Valley Authority
Primary source collections
- America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI ca. 1935-1945
- By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943 collection highlights
- Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey 1933-Present
- Lomax Photo Collection
- American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project 1936-1940
- California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties
- Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections 1937-1942
- The New Deal Stage: Federal Theatre Project 1935-1939
- Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
- Voices from the Dust Bowl 1940-1941
- Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence 1940-1950
Teaching resources
Library blog posts
- The New Deal, 75 Years Later Timeless
- A New Deal Inside Adams
- New Deal in the New Year: WPA Posters on Flickr Picture This
- Gordon Parks and the New Deal: Life Documented in Photographs Teaching with the Library
More articles
- “Federal Theatre: Melodrama, Social Protest, and Genius” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress Volume 36 No. 1, Winter 1979
- “Amassing American ‘Stuff’: The Library of Congress and the Federal Art Projects of the 1930s“Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress Fall 1983
- “Posters for the People” from the April-May 1997 issue of Civilization
Related resources