African Americans and the CCC #1

The Civilian Conservation Corps (or CCC) camps, set up under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, were designed to employ young men on conservation projects to alleviate the effects of unemployment in the Great Depression. A number of the structures built under the project still exist today. Arkansas initially excluded blacks from the CCC. A complaint from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People led to a federal investigation by the Department of Labor, which threatened to withhold funding for all CCC camps if blacks were not included. The threat convinced state relief director William A. Rooksberry to act and he began to enroll blacks into newly established segregated projects. The first such camp was built four miles east of Strong in October 1933.