Acting to Shape Their Own Lives: African Americans in Civilian Conservation Corps Junior Company 1520-C, Southern Ohio, 1933–1935

22 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Acting to Shape Their Own Lives African Americans in Civilian Conservation Corps Junior Company 1520-C, Southern Ohio, 1933-1935 William W. Giffin T om Sharp, a young black resident of Cleveland, was interviewed during the winter of 1936-1937 about his participation in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the emergency relief program formed early in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Sharp’s mother, a widow with two children, made a living from her boarding house and his father had worked as a carpenter. Pursuing his ambitions, Sharp had enrolled in a “Negro college” where he majored in sociology and edited the college magazine. By 1934 the twenty-two-year old had worked his way through three years of college, but the family’s fortunes worsened during the Great Depression, and when financial circumstances prevented Sharp from entering his fourth year, he enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps. At the time of the interview Sharp’s mother had lost the boarding house and worked as a housekeeper, his younger brother lived with other members of the Sharps’ extended family, and Sharp was staying with the family of a friend.1 African American CCC camp. CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER WILLIAM W. GIFFIN SPRING 2013 23 Sharp worked and lived two years at an unidentified “for Negroes only” CCC camp in Ohio. According to a report of the interview published in 1938, he took many CCC educational courses and participated actively in organized camp life: He was editor of the camp newspaper, organized and was a member of a musical club and social club for the enrollees.…[A]s the camp was quite near a small town and many of the enrollees spent a good deal of time there, he organized a choral club and a discussion group in connection with the church [in town] which he and number of other enrollees attended.…He had also enjoyed being active in church affairs in the town, and mentioned a girl friend whom he had met there. Sharp eventually rose through the camp ranks to “the position of assistant educational adviser with a rating as an assistant leader.” A close reading of the report reveals the nature of African American life in his CCC camp and the agency of recruits during their leisure hours. Like Sharp, many black recruits initiated organized activities at the camps and made their own decisions about how to use their free time. Enrollees also visited nearby towns in their spare time, establishing connections between themselves and African American residents. Sharp and his peers attended a local black church, but the nearby town held additional attractions and “most of the boys went there in their hours off duty.” Like Sharp, many black recruits visited the town for female companionship or participated in group activities with town residents that coalesced around common religious or musical interests.2 Historians of the New Deal and the CCC have largely ignored African American life and agency in the camps. John A. Salmon offered short national overviews of African Americans and the CCC in 1965 and 1967. In 1976, Calvin W. Gower examined the national effort to persuade federal authorities to include African Americans in CCC leadership positions. Harvard Sitkoff’s classic 1978 study, A New Deal for Blacks, discusses the CCC in the context of the rising significance of civil rights issues in the 1930s, and Olen Cole Jr. detailed the management of camp life by white supervisors in his 1999 study of African Americans and the CCC in California. In 2001, Thomas W. Patton explored the reaction of white authorities to a brief but notable protest by black corpsmen at a CCC camp in New York State, while Joseph M. Speakman’s 2006 study of African Americans and the CCC in Pennsylvania focuses on New Deal administrative issues, the selection of recruits, racial discrimination, camp discipline, and work projects. These sources share a common perspective rooted in the politics of the Depression decade. To Civilian Conservation Corps logo. THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY ACTING TO SHAPE THEIR OWN LIVES 24 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY varying degrees, they examine the CCC through the prism of New Deal policies, federal bureaucracies, and...