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TVA Opportunities for African Americans

Founded by Congress and approved by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was established to control flooding and navigation along the Tennessee River Valley. TVA provided tens of thousands of jobs for citizens of the Tennessee Valley, including African Americans.

Weblink address (URL):

Home Page- source

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives:

Students will analyze primary source photographs from the early to mid1900s.
Students will analyze texts and interview transcripts.

Essential and guiding questions:

How did African American TVA workers and their families benefit from employment through the New Deal program?
How did Jim Crow practices impact these workers and how did they respond?

Lesson Variations

Blooms taxonomy level:

Analyzing

Extension suggestions:

Students can explore the Trials and Triumphs Web site to learn more about Tennessee’s history between the end of the American Civil War and the end of World War II.
Students can examine the NAACP: 100 Years of History Web site and the Library of Congress exhibition, NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom, to learn more about the organization and its actions doing during this time period.
For a detailed timeline of the history of the TVA, students can explore the official Web site of the Tennessee Valley Authority. This timeline begins with President Roosevelt’s solutions to the New Deal through technological advances and ends with today, when TVA is the nation's largest public power provider and a corporation of the U.S. government.
Students may also analyze the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, which was passed by Congress on May 18, 1933. Using the index at the end of the document, students can choose research topics that influenced or were effected by TVA. Possible research topics include: Southern Tennessee Power Company, Clinch River, Muscle Shoals, Mississippi Power Company, patents granted to employees of TVA, etc.

Helpful Hints

MATERIALS AND RESOURCES:

Writing exercise: “Overcoming Challenges” worksheet

Primary Sources: Photographs

Negroes speed war work for Tennessee Valley Authority… [1942]
Defense housing. The second section of the experimental trailer-house is joined to the first section… [between 1940 and 1946]
Production. Steam power plant equipment… [1942]
Wilson Dam, Alabama (Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)). Workers at safety meeting [1942]
General planning. A graphic map used in conjunction with the river transport development program of the Authority [between 1933 and 1945]
Primary Source: Quilt
Uncle Sam's Helping Hand Quilt by Ruth Clement Bond and Rose Lee Cooper [1934] From: Trials and Triumphs: Tennesseans Search for Citizenship, Community, and Opportunity.

Primary Sources: Texts

Interview of Ruth Clement Bond by Jewell Fenzi, November 12, 1992
Davis, John. "The Plight of the Negro in the Tennessee Valley." The Crisis, October 1, 1935: 294-295, 314.