Eisenhower Betrays the TVA
The Progressive 'Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free' Volume 17 August, 1953 Number 8 Eisenhower Betrays the TVA IHE DAY before the 1952 election; Candidate Dwight ...
...32 By all odds the most hopeful, if least publicized development in Congress during the past month bore the unlikely designation of S. Con...
...How different were some of my experiences of yesteryear...
...Louis newspaper man...
...But by providing knowledge and inspiration, TVA has launched the seven states in the valley on a course of reforestation which is doing wonders for the economy and well-being of the entire region...
...Recently, Walton returned to St...
...Equally significant, the resolution would call on the President to "develop a plan for the transfer of resources and manpower now being used for arms to constructive ends at home and abroad, and recommend similar action to the United Nations and member states, such plans to give due consideration to the possibilities for vastly increased trade with other nations, and to the vital share the United States and other nations should undertake in helping to overcome hunger, disease, illiteracy, and despair which have been among the prime causes of past wars...
...His shocking somersault hours be^-fore the House was to vote on "the best natural resources program for America" is disturbing confirmation of the growing concern that the President has few convictions and even fewer impulses to fight for those he does have...
...If enough of them care enough to write their Senators and Congressmen, action would become a certainty...
...Ralph Flanders, Vermont Republican, and Sen...
...It will involve a partnership of the states and local communities, private citizens, and the federal government, all working together...
...Most notable was the action of Gov...
...Louis, stayed at one of the best hotels and enjoyed a ball game in the grandstand...
...Louis several weeks ago...
...He remembers the bitter days when he was directed to the freight elevator in St...
...It isn't the public development of power, for this is the rule rather than the exception abroad...
...The Englishman was Woodrow Wyatt, prominent Laborite Member of Parliament, formerly in the Att-lee Cabinet...
...But certainly the millenium has not yet arrived...
...Spoken at another time, Mr...
...it helped tip Tennessee into the Republican column...
...Not one unpleasant incident has been encountered...
...Here is national legislation for regional planning with state and local management and free individual participation that makes a shambles of the doctrinaire nonsense of Karl Marx and Adam Smith...
...Louis he went on to Texas...
...Countless experts from every country on earth have come to the Tennessee Valley to study TVA's extraordinary record of achievement...
...The very essence of the TVA idea is the partnership of the federal government with the people of a great river valley to plan the full development and use of their resources for the benefit of all the people...
...From St...
...The American, Lester A. Walton, former American minister to Liberia, is an old St...
...But the timing here was crucial...
...Louis hotels while on a story and was required to sit in a special bleacher section when attending a big league baseball game...
...John Sparkman, Alabama Democrat...
...The imposing array of sponsors this time brightens the hope for action, but the big hope rests with the people...
...The Negro is moving forward and knows it...
...S. Con...
...Two Travelers A colored American and a white Englishman, both seasoned students of race problems, recently traveled their separate ways through the South and returned with remarkably similar reports of progress...
...During the past year Negroes have been elected to the city councils of five cities in North Carolina and one in South Carolina...
...The action by the House brought no expression of concern from Mr...
...Perhaps it is understandable that the fighting qualities he displayed in warfare, a field he knew and understood, could not hold over for civil government, a field in which he is poorly informed, has no experience, and possesses no basic philosophy unless it be a wistful longing to return to the quiet days of his youth in Abilene...
...32, a resolution introduced by 34 Senators favoring universal disarmament...
...It isn't the dams that draw them, for there are bigger dams elsewhere...
...Candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower nervously shot a wire to friendly editors in Tennessee assuring them, and through them the people, that if elected he would support the Tennessee Valley Authority program and see to it that "TVA continues to serve and promote the prosperity of that great section of the United States...
...Civil Liberties In this field, marked mostly by reverses for some time, there were clear-cut gains—of a negative character...
...Seven hundred delegates gathered in the spacious, air-conditioned Kiel Auditorium, St...
...Symbolic of the gradual emancipation of the American Negro was the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in St...
...The heart of the resolution would put Congress on record as stating: "It is the declared purpose of the United States to obtain, within the United Nations, agreements by all nations for enforceable universal disarmament, down to those arms and forces needed for the maintenance of domestic order, under a continuing system of United Nations inspection, control, and international police protection...
...He was President Eisenhower...
...Louis, in 1935, 200 delegates assembled in a steaming little church in the Negro district...
...The TVA, he replied, was such an example...
...Dr...
...They not only voted to approve the slash in the power appropriation recommended by the White House, but they went on to cut the heart out of the whole TVA program...
...Meet Me in St...
...Most of the resource development program, dealing with such vital problems as soil erosion, reforestation, mineral development, water conservation, industrial expansion, and recreation, is conducted on the spot by the states and localities, with TVA furnishing technical data and skills to point the way...
...This combined effort will advance the development of the great river valleys of our nation and the power they generate...
...Throughout the land, particularly south of the Mason and Dixon Line, there are unmistakable signs of an appreciable changing attitude for the better...
...Louis' largest municipal hall located in the downtown district...
...Said Walter White, the NAACP's executive secretary...
...II r No, the compelling appeal of TVA is much more than big dams or cheaper kilowatts...
...Not only did he veto the measure because he felt it was too wide-ranging in its impact, but he succeeded in throttling a second Broyles Bill which would have established a witch-hunting seditious activities committee with power to roam the state inquiring into citizens' beliefs...
...For instance, TVA does not actually conduct its own forestry program...
...Eisenhower although less than six months earlier the leader of his own party had held out this concept of a resources development program: "The best natural resources program for America will not result from exclusive dependence on federal bureaucracy...
...It only takes a two-penny postcard or a three-cent stamp, and a minute of your time, to tell each of your two Senators and your Congressman that you favor public hearings and early, favorable action on S. Con...
...The setting and the program were strikingly different this year...
...This evolutionary social transition, which makes for real democracy, human dignity, and a united United States, / have lived to see...
...Delegates checked into the largest and best hotels, ate in at least some downtown restaurants...
...The President's remarkable reversal has brought great cries of pain from the editors who had joyfully splashed his endorsement of TVA over their front pages...
...Back at the White House a week later, he was pressed by newsmen for examples of "creeping socialism...
...Writing in Tribune, the magazine of the Bevanites, Wyatt conceded that while he did not expect to find a "complete reign of terror in the South," he "did believe the Negroes lived in fear...
...The general impressions recorded by Walton and Wyatt are documented by specific developments in recent months: The University of the South, at Sewanee, at long last has opened its School of Theology to Negroes...
...Today we are being treated with respect...
...For on that very day, just a few hours after the press conference, the House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on the annual appropriation for TVA...
...But on my visit to the South I found, to my surprise, a great lifting process in the air...
...Rufus E. Clement was chosen to serve on the Atlanta, Ga., Board of Education—the first Negro to win citywide public office since Reconstruction Days...
...The little men with the big axes in the House took courage from the President's statement...
...The man who made this statement was describing the TVA in action...
...William Stratton, a hard-shelled Republican, in defying the Illinois Department of the American Legion by vetoing the infamous Broyles Bill which would have required loyalty oaths of state employes...
...A similar resolution was introduced two years ago but never emerged from committee...
...2, 1953...
...The occasion was his State of the Unjon message Feb...
...Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals alike joined fosses in proposing the resolution under the leadership of Sen...
...But far more important than the anguish of friends betrayed is the incalculable harm the President's off-the-cuff crack is doing to one of the celebrated achievements of modern America...
...To many Americans and foreigners searching for a middle way between the planless, tooth-ancL-claw life of the jungle and the intolerable regimentation of totalitarianism, TVA is an inspiring example of a free people pooling their skills and energies and research for the greater good of all —without surrendering a sliver of their freedom to an all-powerful bureaucracy...
...The telegram paid off handsomely...
...Another sign of sanity: the Wisconsin Senate killed, by inaction, an Assembly-approved bill to require special oaths from state employes and the faculties of the University of Wisconsin and the state teachers' colleges...
...Another Negro was elected to the Augiista, Ga., School Board...
...Last month, while barnstorming through the Middle West, President Eisenhower warned the country against the inroads of "creeping socialism...
...The Whites are conceding his right to progress—which is, in the long run, his most important right...
...It was precisely this aspect of the TVA program the House voted to destroy a few hours after the President had hammered at TVA as "creeping socialism...
...The only rooms open to them were in private homes and they got their meals in the restaurants of the black ghetto...
...Louis' In no area of the struggle for equality of opportunity is progress so marked today as it is in the field of race relations...
...Eisenhower's slurring characterization of TVA might have been put down as the thoughtless answer of a man fumbling for an example to justify his warning...
...Back in 1935 we were considered a small trouble-making outfit...
...This would seem to be the most kindly interpretation that could be placed on an otherwise inexcusable betrayal of his campaign pledge and the position he expressed in his message to Congress and the country...
...Hope Chest For an explanatory note on the launching of the "Hope Chest" please turn to the Office Memo on the inside front cover...
...Every mile traveled," he reported, "has been in the Pullman...
...When the NAACP last met in St...
Vol. 17 • August 1953 • No. 8
