On
March 21, 1933 President
Roosevelt sent Congress a request for legislation
aimed at unemployment relief, in which he proposed
the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and ten days
later FDR signed the CCC into law. The CCC was
one
of the most popular New Deal programs and employed
a quarter of a million young men each year in
forestry,
flood control, and beautification projects throughout
America until the program expired in 1942. ER
was
excited by the concept of employing urban youth between
the ages of eighteen to twenty-five in outdoor
activities
that included education and a respect for the environment.
Troubled by CCC's male-only focus, ER campaigned
for
a parallel organization to the CCC for young women,
which would be comprised of residential worker
schools
and camps for jobless women. Despite her best efforts,
the idea of "She-She-She Camps" was largely scorned
by the Roosevelt administration and most New
Dealers.
Frances Perkins
did support ER and helped establish one camp for
women, Camp Tera. Progress was initially slow
getting Camp
Tera running as there were different requirements
for joining for the women than for the CCC men.
ER
was instrumental in changing the requirements so
that more women were admitted, raising the standards
of
the camps, and forcing the creation of new camps.
It was not until after ER convened the White House
Conference for Unemployed Women on April 30, 1934,
that she began to see her idea for a nationwide
jobless
women's camp achieved. Although much smaller in size
than the CCC men's camps, by 1936 ninety residential
camps served 5,000 women yearly. In all, 8,500 women
benefitted from working at a residential camp
in a
program that ER was instrumental in creating.
Sources:
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume
Two, 1933-1938. New York: Viking Press, 1999,
88-91.
Kennedy, David. Freedom From Fear: The American
People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 144.