National Archives Celebrates New Deal's 75th Anniversary in March
Press Release · Friday, February 8, 2008

Press Release
February 8, 2008

National Archives Celebrates New Deal’s 75th Anniversary in March

Washington, DC…In commemoration of the 75th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the National Archives Experience, in collaboration with the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center, is pleased to present programs in remembrance of the New Deal and its enduring legacy. These events are free and open to the public. National Archives events will be held in the William G. McGowan Theater of the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, which is located on the National Mall at Constitution Avenue and 7th Street, NW, and is fully accessible.

Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932
Thursday, March 13, at 7 p.m., William G. McGowan Theater
Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein moderates a panel discussing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” Its innovations were so warmly embraced by voters that later conservative presidents recognized their importance. The panel features Donald Ritchie, Senate historian and author of Electing FDR:  The New Deal Campaign of 1932, Jonathan Alter, Newsweek editor and author of The Defining Moment (on FDR’s first hundred days), and Allida Black, Director and Editor, The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers. Electing FDR is the first book in seventy years to examine in its entirety the 1932 presidential election that ushered in the historic New Deal; to analyze Roosevelt’s campaign strategies; and to consider how candidates responded to the nation’s economic crisis.

For a Better America: The New Deal on Film - All-Day Film Festival
Saturday, March 15, William G. McGowan Theater
The Charles Guggenheim Center for the Documentary Film at the National Archives presents a one-day festival of U.S. Government-produced films from the motion picture holdings of the National Archives related to the Depression era and the New Deal. Drawn from the motion picture holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, For a Better America:  the New Deal on Film presents many newly-struck prints of just a sampling of these films.

10AM—Urban Life and Culture
The Road is Open Again (1933, 5 minutes.)
Hands (1934, silent, 5 minutes)
Dawn Strikes the Capitol Dome (1936, 10 minutes)
We Work Again (1937, 16 minutes)
The Fight for Life (1940, 70 minutes)

1PM—The Land and Environment
This program is presented in participation with the 2008 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital.
The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936, 29 minutes)
The River (1937, 32 minutes)
Power and the Land (1940, 39 minutes)
The Land (released in 1942, 45 minutes)

4:30PM—The Projects
Work Pays America (1936, 36 minutes)
The City (1939, 33 minutes)
Valley of the Tennessee (released in 1944, 30 minutes)
The Columbia (released in 1949, 30 minutes)

Library of Congress Symposium - Art, Culture, and Government: The New Deal at 75
Thursday, March 13, and Friday, March 14
The Library of Congress will hold a symposium featuring contemporary scholarship and recent discoveries inspired by the Library's collections of documentary materials from the New Deal era. It will highlight the lasting impact this federal initiative has had on culture, documentation, and conservation. View the symposium schedule and registration information. Admission to the symposium and related events is free, but seating is limited. Reservations for attendance will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

National Archives New Deal Records

The National Archives holds the vast majority of administrative records on the creation and operation of New Deal programs, including records from the National Recovery Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, Works Projects Administration, National Youth Administration, Public Works Administration, and the Federal Works Agency. These collections include over 14,000 cubic feet of textual records, over 40,000 maps, charts, plans and drawings, and about 175,000 photographs and negatives. In addition to the temporary programs which ended in 1943, the National Archives also houses the records of many permanent Federal agencies that were responsible for planning and directing the work of these temporary agencies.

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For Press information, contact the National Archives Public Affairs staff at (202) 357-5300.

To verify the date and times of the programs, the public should call the Public Programs Line at: (202) 357-5000, or view the Calendar of Events online. To contact the National Archives, please call 1-866-272-6272 or 1-86-NARA-NARA (TDD) 301-837-0482.

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