In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Greater Good: Media, Family Removal, and TVA Dam Construction in North Alabama by Laura Beth Daws, Susan L. Brinson
  • Charles Kenneth Roberts
The Greater Good: Media, Family Removal, and TVA Dam Construction in North Alabama. By Laura Beth Daws and Susan L. Brinson. The Modern South. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019. Pp. xvi, 184. $54.95, ISBN 978-0-8173-2008-9.)

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has had a tremendous impact on north Alabama since 1933. Most visibly, its dam building brought all kinds of benefits, including jobs, flood control, and electrification. But it had costs, too, especially for the more than 2,500 Alabama families forced to relocate when the TVA took their land. Laura Beth Daws and Susan L. Brinson focus on the TVA’s efforts to shape public opinion in north Alabama, particularly regarding the construction of the Wheeler, Guntersville, and Pickwick Dams, and on the experiences of those most affected—the relocated families. They argue that the TVA successfully used media, especially local print media, to create an almost entirely positive image; in doing so, the TVA and the media ignored the harsher reality for many relocated families. [End Page 216]

The first two chapters provide a familiar overview of the poverty, isolation, and inequality of north Alabama and of the origins of the TVA. The rest of the book lays out the authors’ arguments. For all its apparent power, the TVA needed public and political support to survive. Whether local residents used TVA electricity and viewed its efforts positively determined its success. Through a blitz of press releases, speeches, photographs, and carefully cultivated relationships with reporters and editors, the TVA ensured “overwhelmingly positive” media coverage (p. 94). Thanks to these efforts, the media, especially local papers, told the stories and used the interpretative frameworks that the TVA wanted. As a result, Daws and Brinson note, “Two potentially contentious issues were noticeably absent from press releases: the removal of families and displacement of graves from the reservoir areas” (p. 105).

Relocated families by and large left without much protest, even though relocation was often so “emotionally difficult” that families “mourned the loss of the land like they would a death in the family” (p. 112). Families may not have wanted to move, but they believed that the TVA’s power and ability to condemn land gave them no choice. The sense of helplessness in the face of concentrated government power was matched by a widespread belief that opponents of the TVA were a small minority selfishly resisting the desires and best interests of the majority. While relocation was by no means a disaster for every family, overall “the TVA failed to adequately plan for the long-term needs of displaced families” (p. 118). Relocation was the hardest on the most marginalized members of society, the poorest tenants and squatters who had essentially no rights and who were disproportionately black. Their experiences in particular did not match the rosy narrative of unbridled progress that the TVA told, and local media “essentially failed their watchdog function as an objective source of information” (p. 111).

Using newspapers, TVA records and publications, and interviews with those affected by relocation, Daws and Brinson make convincing arguments. The effective use of individual examples throughout the book gives a sense of vivid immediacy to what could have been a dry story. There are a few minor nits to pick: It seems basically correct that newspapers were considered “an authoritative source of credible information” in spite of relatively low literacy rates, compared with hearsay and gossip, but the authors provide more theory about why that was true than proof that it was (p. 90). But The Greater Good: Media, Family Removal, and TVA Dam Construction in North Alabama is overall a strong book that will prove useful for scholars looking at the TVA or at media, southern and rural poverty, and social change in the New Deal era.

Charles Kenneth Roberts
Andrew College
...

pdf

Share