BETWEEN 1933 and 1942, nearly 200,000 young African-Americans participated in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's most successful New Deal agencies. In an effort to correct the lack of historical attention paid to the African-American contribution to the CCC, Olen Cole, Jr., examines their participation in the Corps as well as its impact on them. Though federal legislation establishing the CCC held that no bias of "race, color, or creed" was to be tolerated, Cole demonstrates that the very presence of African-Americans in the CCC, as well as the placement of the segregated CCC work camps in predominantly white California communities, became significant sources of controversy. Cole assesses community resistance to all-black camps, as well as the conditions of the state park camps, national forest camps, and national park camps where African-American work companies in California were stationed. He also evaluates the educational and recreational experiences of African-American CCC participants, their efforts to combat racism, and their contributions to the protection and maintenance of California's national forests and parks. Perhaps most important, Cole's use of oral histories gives voice to individual experiences: former Corps members discuss the benefits of employment, vocational training, and character development as well as their experiences of community reaction to all-black CCC camps. An important and much neglected chapter in American history, Cole's study should interest students of New Deal politics, state and national park history, and the African-American experience in the twentieth century.

From Palo Duro Canyon in the Panhandle to Lake Corpus Christi on the coast, from Balmorhea in far West Texas to Caddo Lake near the Louisiana border, the state parks of Texas are home not only to breathtaking natural beauty, but also to historic buildings and other structures built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the 1930s. In Texas State Parks and the CCC: The Legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps, Cynthia Brandimarte has mined the organization’s archives, as well as those of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the Texas Department of Transportation, to compile a rich visual record of how this New Deal program left an indelible stamp on many of the parks we still enjoy today. Some fifty thousand men were enrolled in the CCC in Texas. Between 1933 and 1942, they constructed trails, cabins, concession buildings, bathhouses, dance pavilions, a hotel, and a motor court. Before they arrived, the state’s parklands consisted of fourteen parks on about 800 acres, but by the end of World War II, CCC workers had helped create a system of forty-eight parks on almost 60,000 acres throughout Texas. Accompanied by many never-published images that reveal all aspects of the CCC in Texas, from architectural plans to camp life, Texas State Parks and the CCC covers the formation and development of the CCC and its design philosophy; the building of the parks and the daily experiences of the workers; the completion and management of the parks in the first decades after the war; and the ongoing process of maintaining and preserving the iconic structures that define the rustic, handcrafted look of the CCC. With a call for greater appreciation of these historical resources, especially in light of the recent Bastrop fire, which threatened one of the state’s most popular CCC-era destinations, Brandimarte profiles twenty-nine parks, providing a descriptive history of each and information on its CCC company, the dates of CCC activity, and the CCC-built structures still existing within the park.

Neil M. Maher examines the history of one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's boldest and most successful experiments, the Civilian Conservation Corps, describing it as a turning point both in national politics and in the emergence of modern environmentalism.