The Resettlement Administration (RA) was a New Deal U.S. federal agency created May 1, 1935. It relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government. On September 1, 1937, it was succeeded by the Farm Security Administration.

History

The RA was the brainchild of Rexford G. Tugwell, an economics professor at Columbia University who became an advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt during the latter's successful campaign for the presidency in 1932 and then held positions in the United States Department of Agriculture. Roosevelt established the RA under Executive Order 7027, Roosevelt transferred the Federal Emergency Relief Administration land program to the Resettlement Administration under Executive Order 7028 on May 1, 1935.

However, Tugwell's goal of moving 650,000 people from of agriculturally exhausted, worn-out land was unpopular among the majority in Congress. This goal seemed socialistic to some and threatened to deprive influential farm owners of their tenant workforce. with hopes of making the RA more effective, the Resettlement Administration was transferred to the Department of Agriculture through executive order 7530.

  • Palmerdale in Pinson, Alabama (parts built by the Works Progress Administration)
  • Jersey Homesteads (begun by the Division of Subsistence Homesteads)
  • Tillery, North Carolina
  • Ropesville, Texas

The Weedpatch Camp (also known as the Arvin Federal Government Camp and the Sunset Labor Camp), now on the National Register of Historic Places, was built in 1936 south of Bakersfield, California — not by the Resettlement Administration but by the Works Progress Administration. The camp inspired John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath.

Photography, film, and folk song projects

The RA also funded projects recording aspects of its work and context, including:

  • The Photography Project, which documented the rural poverty of the Great Depression and produced thousands of images that are now stored and available at the Library of Congress, was headed up by Roy Stryker.
  • The Film Project, which produced two documentaries directed by Pare Lorentz and scored by Virgil Thomson, The Plow That Broke the Plains and The River.
  • Sidney Robertson Cowell's recordings of folk songs, conducted during the summer of 1937, sponsored by the RA's Special Skills Division, and now stored at the University of Wisconsin.

See also

  • Dust Bowl
  • National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933
  • Subsistence Homesteads Division

References

;Citations

;Sources

  • Meriam; Lewis. Relief and Social Security The Brookings Institution. 1946 (analysis and statistical summary of all the New Deal relief programs)
  • Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937–1946. Presented by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center and Mills Music Library Special Collections .
  • Ohio History Central on Resettlement Administration
  • Oklahoma History on Resettlement Administration
  • Complete List of New Deal Communities, of the Resettlement Administration, the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, from the National New Deal Preservation Association
  • Pine Mountain Valley Resettlement Project historical marker in Pine Mountain, Georgia