The Resettlement Administration (RA) was the brainchild of Rexford G. Tugwell, an economics professor at Columbia University who became an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the latter's campaign for the presidency in 1932. Tugwell, who held positions in the United States Department of Agriculture, convinced Roosevelt to form an agency that would relocate struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government. Roosevelt established the RA with Executive Order 7027 in 1935 and became its first and only head. The RA operated through the end of 1936, when, due to Congressional criticism, it was folded into a new body, the Farm Securities Administration (FSA), which operated from 1937 to 1942.

The most lasting achievements of the Resettlement Administration, though it worked with nearly 200 communities, are the three green towns and the FSA photography project. The former were three new towns (Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; Greendale, Wisconsin) completely planned and constructed by the RA outside Washington, D.C.; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, respectively.

The photography project was a project documenting the rural poverty of the Great Depression, producing thousands and thousands of images now stored and available at the Library of Congress.

List of Resettlement Administration Projects:

• Greenbelt, Maryland
• Greenbrook, NJ (never built)
• Greendale, Wisconsin
• Greenhills, Ohio
• Jersey Homesteads - Later incorporated as Roosevelt, New Jersey, originally begun under the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, then transferred to the Resettlement Administration
• Hickory Ridge, VA (now Prince William Forest Park)

References

• Meriam; Lewis. Relief and Social Security The Brookings Institution. 1946. Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs; 900 pages

External links

• Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937-1946. Presented by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center and Mills Music Library Special Collections. The Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937-1946 contains Wisconsin field recordings, notes, and photographs made by UW-Madison faculty member Helene Stratman-Thomas as part of the Wisconsin Folk Music Recording Project, co-sponsored by the University of Wisconsin and the Library of Congress during the summers of 1940, 1941, and 1946; and recordings collected by song catcher Sidney Robertson Cowell during the summer of 1937 for the Special Skills Division of the Resettlement Administration.

1935 establishments | New Deal agencies | Defunct agencies of the United States government | United States Department of Agriculture