Skip to Main Content

From Dust They Came: Government Camps and the Religion of Reform in New Deal California

Online ISBN:
9781479823673
Print ISBN:
9781479823635
Publisher:
NYU Press
Book

From Dust They Came: Government Camps and the Religion of Reform in New Deal California

Jonathan H. Ebel
Jonathan H. Ebel
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Find on
Published online:
23 May 2024
Published in print:
24 October 2023
Online ISBN:
9781479823673
Print ISBN:
9781479823635
Publisher:
NYU Press

Abstract

This book tells the story of a New Deal program conceived to redeem Dust Bowl migrants from lives of desperation brought on and deepened by the Great Depression. But the focus of this account is on the religious dimensions of that program, both the submerged religiosity of the program of conversion itself and the overtly religious interactions between New Deal reformers and the migratory farm workers whom they sought to restore to civilized ways of living. From 1935 to 1943, the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration operated a series of camps for mostly white migratory workers in the agriculture of California. The camps provided migrants with safe, dry places to set up their tents, with flush toilets and hot showers, and with ways to gather for recreation and community activities. Woven into and around these apparently secular spaces were judgments and lessons about what modern American citizens should do and believe, how they should look, and what they should value. While some migrants followed these lessons and moved closer to reformers’ ideas of modern forms of religion and righteousness, others resisted, reasserting their belief in and attachment to the ideas, values, and practices that had structured their lives on the Great Plains and to the revivalistic Protestantism that had been so central to so many.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close