History of the United States II / Unit 11 USH2 1524 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Tennessee Valley Authority
The idea
The Tennessee Valley Authority Act, signed on May eighteenth, nineteen thirty-three, created a federal corporation to build dams in the Tennessee River basin, controlling floods, improving navigation and producing cheap electric power, the National Archives records. Under David Lilienthal the Authority's workers raised a chain of dams, and the anchor's table credits it with bringing electricity to the valley.
In practice
Concrete dams across the Tennessee, and power reaching a chronically depressed region, as the Yawp describes it.
Where people slip
Two facts belong together. Digital History calls the Act the first direct government involvement in energy production, and the Yawp calls it a comprehensive programme to develop the region. The anchor adds the cost: the fifteen thousand families displaced by the construction were among its sharpest critics. Unit ten showed the land failing people on the Plains; here government reshapes a landscape, and the people living in its way pay first.
Your place on the trail
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