Chapter 22 Quiz: The New Deal in the Mountains — TVA, the CCC, and Federal Transformation

Multiple Choice

1. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was created in 1933 primarily to:

a) Provide employment to unemployed miners in the coalfields b) Address a range of interconnected regional problems — including flood control, power generation, malaria, soil erosion, and agricultural modernization — through unified development c) Build a single dam on the Tennessee River for hydroelectric power d) Create a system of national parks in the Tennessee Valley

2. Arthur E. Morgan's concept of "unified development" meant:

a) All TVA projects would be located in a single county b) The region's problems were interconnected and had to be solved together — flood control, power, agriculture, health, and conservation as parts of a single plan c) Only one type of development project would be pursued at a time d) Federal and state governments would share control equally over all programs

3. The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) distributed electricity to rural areas primarily through:

a) Government-owned power plants that sold electricity directly to consumers b) Private utility companies that were forced to extend service to rural areas c) Rural electric cooperatives — locally organized, member-owned entities that built lines and purchased wholesale power d) The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

4. Before rural electrification, the private utility companies refused to serve mountain communities because:

a) The technology to generate electricity did not yet exist b) The terrain was impossible to build power lines across c) Mountain residents had publicly opposed electricity on religious grounds d) It was not profitable — the cost of stringing lines to scattered rural customers exceeded the revenue they would generate

5. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) primarily enrolled:

a) Unemployed women over the age of thirty b) Unemployed young men between eighteen and twenty-five who lived in camps and worked on conservation projects c) Retired military officers who supervised infrastructure construction d) College-educated agricultural experts who trained local farmers

6. The creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park required the displacement of approximately:

a) 50 families b) 200 families c) 1,200 families (between 5,000 and 6,000 people) d) 10,000 families

7. The displacement of families from Shenandoah National Park was justified by state officials using the argument that:

a) The families had no legal title to the land b) The mountain residents were culturally backward — "hollow folk" too ignorant to manage their own land c) The families had requested relocation to urban areas d) A natural disaster had already destroyed their homes

8. The Blue Ridge Parkway is best described as:

a) A high-speed interstate highway connecting Virginia to North Carolina b) A 469-mile scenic drive that presented a curated vision of mountain beauty while displacing families and bisecting communities along its route c) A mining road built to transport coal from the mountains to the coast d) A railroad corridor converted to a highway in the 1950s

9. The subsistence homestead community at Arthurdale, West Virginia, was personally championed by:

a) President Herbert Hoover b) Senator George Norris c) First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who was moved by the poverty she witnessed in the Scotts Run coal camps d) TVA Chairman David Lilienthal

10. The chapter argues that the New Deal in Appalachia was characterized by a fundamental contradiction, which was:

a) Federal programs were too small to have any meaningful impact b) Programs simultaneously improved lives and imposed outside values — offering genuine help while also disrupting communities, displacing families, and assuming that outsiders knew best c) The New Deal only benefited wealthy landowners d) All New Deal programs were rejected by mountain communities

Short Answer

11. Describe how TVA's approach to malaria eradication worked. Why does the chapter suggest this was one of TVA's most important achievements, despite being less famous than the dams?

12. The chapter describes the arrival of electricity as a transformative event for women in particular. Explain why electrification had a disproportionate impact on women's daily lives, with specific examples of tasks that were transformed.

13. Explain how the CCC functioned as both a conservation program and a "safety valve" for social discontent during the Depression. What does the chapter mean by this second function?

14. Compare the displacement of families for Great Smoky Mountains National Park with the displacement for Shenandoah National Park. How were the two processes similar? How were they different, particularly in the ideology used to justify removal?

Essay

15. The chapter presents the New Deal in Appalachia as simultaneously transformative and paternalistic. Write a well-organized essay (500-750 words) that:

• Identifies at least three specific New Deal programs and describes their concrete benefits
• Identifies the paternalistic or harmful dimensions of at least two of those programs
• Evaluates whether the benefits outweighed the costs, or whether this is the wrong question to ask
• Considers who got to make the decisions about what counted as "help" and what counted as "improvement"

16. The chapter identifies a pattern in which outsiders decide that Appalachian people are not using their land "properly" and then take the land — from the Cherokee removal to the national park displacements. In a brief essay (400-600 words):

• Describe this pattern using at least two examples from different time periods
• Analyze what ideology or assumptions justify the taking of land in each case
• Consider whether this pattern continues in any form today

Document Analysis

17. Read the following excerpt from TVA Chairman David Lilienthal's book TVA: Democracy on the March (1944):

"TVA is a demonstration that the resources of a region can be developed for the benefit of the people of that region through the application of science, planning, and democratic participation. The dams, the power, the improved agriculture, the health programs — these are not gifts from a paternal government to a passive people. They are the product of a partnership between the federal government and the people of the Valley."

a) According to Lilienthal, TVA is a "partnership" rather than "paternal government." Is this characterization accurate, based on the evidence presented in this chapter?

b) The displaced families who were removed from the reservoir areas did not choose to participate in this "partnership." How does their experience challenge Lilienthal's framing?

c) Can a program be both democratic and displacing? Can it genuinely serve "the benefit of the people of the region" while also removing some of those people from their homes? Write a 300-word response addressing these questions.