America 1939
As it was when I was born
Most of what we believe comes from something someone else told us. Maria Montessori described the mind of a child in the early years as “the absorbent mind.” In childhood, we soaked up vast amounts of information indiscriminately, like sponges. As we live our lives, we discover that not everything we were told was true and that those we had depended on did not know everything after all. Sometimes they were dead wrong. Sometimes we believed them for a long, long time only to discover that our own beliefs were wrong.
One of the things I have noticed as I grew up is that things were newer than I thought. I had assumed that what was here had been around long enough to work out all the glitches and that something near perfection had been achieved by the time I came along. It was a great disillusionment to discover that it was up to my generation to do the work left by the previous one. Now that I am an elder, I know that the world is always both ancient and new, that the work we find is always ours to do and that we are perfectly endowed to do just that in ways others never could and it could have been worse, were it not for those who came before.
For most of my life, I was told and I believed that I was born at a terrible time between the Great Depression and WWII, but it wasn’t all bad. I am not denying that there was a depression and a war, but coincidentally during that time there was new hope and new beginnings. Simply put, crises cause innovation. It’s how we evolve, or as they said then, “Every cloud has a silver lining.” By 1939, there were reasons to celebrate and people were conscious enough to know the necessity for doing just that — even though the depression had not yet ended and they knew the war was coming.
“In 1935, at the height of the Great Depression, a group of New York City businessmen decided to create an international exposition to lift the city and the country out of depression. Not long after, these men formed the New York World’s Fair Corporation, whose office was placed on one of the higher floors in the Empire State Building. ~Wikipedia
“In 1938 Europe was rearming militarily. Frank Buchman, who had been the driving force behind the Oxford Group, was convinced that military rearmament alone would not resolve the crisis. At a meeting of 3,000 in East Ham Town Hall, London, on 29 May 1938, he launched a campaign for Moral Re-Armament. “The crisis is fundamentally a moral one,” he said. “The nations must re-arm morally. Moral recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic recovery. Moral recovery creates not crisis but confidence and unity in every phase of life.”
The phrase caught the mood of the time, and many public figures in Britain spoke and wrote in support. British tennis star H. W. Austin edited the book Moral Rearmament (The Battle for Peace), which sold half a million copies.
There was a similar response in the United States. The Mayor of New York City declared 7–14 May to be “MRA week’, and 14,000 people came to Madison Square Garden on 14 May for the public launch. Three weeks later Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. was the site of another launch, to which 240 British Members of Parliament sent a message of support.[3]
The San Francisco- Oakland Bay Bridge had been built during that depression and opened in 1936. The Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937. Treasure Island was completed just in time to hold the Golden Gate International Exposition opening on February 18th, 1939.
During the opening ceremonies, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke on the radio:
“As the boundaries of human intercourse are widened by giant strides of trade and travel, it is of vital import that the bonds of human understanding be maintained, enlarged and strengthened rapidly. Unity of the Pacific nations is America’s concern and responsibility; their onward progress deserves now a recognition that will be a stimulus as well.
Washington is remote from the Pacific. San Francisco stands at the doorway to the sea that roars upon the shores of all these nations, and so to the Golden Gate International Exposition I gladly entrust a solemn duty. May this, America’s World’s Fair on the Pacific in 1939, truly serve all nations in symbolizing their destinies, one with every other, through the ages to come. — Wikipedia
In April, there were other reasons to celebrate. Although Eleanor Roosevelt had been a hero of mine for many years, it wasn’t until I was almost seventy years old that I learned the story of Marian Anderson. It had been omitted from my history books because neither black history nor women’s studies had even been imagined, much less made part of the curriculum, when I went to school. Nevertheless, it was certainly a reason to celebrate.
The simple story is that Marian Anderson, world famous singer, was banned from singing at Constitution Hall by the D.A.R. (the Daughters of the American Revolution) because she was black. The school board also refused her the use of an all white high school in Washington, D.C. for the same reason. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s response was to resign her own membership in the D.A.R. and to arrange for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial instead.
Videos of Anderson’s performance that Easter Sunday can now be seen by everyone on You Tube. Knowing the story and seeing her sing, still brings tears to my eyes. What is clear to me is that Marian Anderson and Eleanor Roosevelt, two women, one of them black, were there ahead of Martin Luther King and opened the way for the March on Washington twenty four years later.
John Steinbeck’s book The Grapes of Wrath was published in April.
“At the time of publication, Steinbeck’s novel “was a phenomenon on the scale of a national event. It was publicly banned and burned by citizens, it was debated on national talk radio; but above all, it was read.
“Part of its impact stemmed from its passionate depiction of the plight of the poor, and in fact, many of Steinbeck’s contemporaries attacked his social and political views. Bryan Cordyack writes, ‘Steinbeck was attacked as a propagandist and a socialist from both the left and the right of the political spectrum. The most fervent of these attacks came from the Associated Farmers of California; they were displeased with the book’s depiction of California farmers’ attitudes and conduct toward the migrants. They denounced the book as a ‘pack of lies’ and labeled it ‘communist propaganda’. Some accused Steinbeck of exaggerating camp conditions to make a political point. Steinbeck had visited the camps well before publication of the novel and argued their inhumane nature destroyed the settlers’ spirit.”~ Wikipedia
In May the first national Food Stamp program began. It was based on the simple idea of building a bridge between masses of unemployed hungry people and farm surpluses going to waste. It was supposed to continue until widespread unemployment no longer existed.
Prohibition ended in 1933. By 1939, thousands had found a way to recover from alcoholism through AA. Bill W., one of the founders of AA published the “Big Book” on April 10th. It has served as the basis for twelve step programs to treat addictions ever since.
“The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, William “Bill W.” and Robert “Dr. Bob” Smith were both active members in the Oxford Group and believed that the principles of the Oxford Group were the key to overcoming alcoholism.
The New York World’s fair opened on April 30, 1939.
The 1939–40 New York World’s Fair diverged from the original focus of the world’s fair expositions. From then on, world’s fairs adopted specific cultural themes; they forecasted a better future for society. Technological innovations were no longer the primary exhibits at fairs. The theme of the 1939 fair was “Building the World of Tomorrow”
The opening slogan was “Dawn of a New Day”, and it allowed all visitors to take a look at “the world of tomorrow”. According to the official New York World’s Fair pamphlet:
‘The eyes of the Fair are on the future — not in the sense of peering toward the unknown nor attempting to foretell the events of tomorrow and the shape of things to come, but in the sense of presenting a new and clearer view of today in preparation for tomorrow; a view of the forces and ideas that prevail as well as the machines.
To its visitors the Fair will say: “Here are the materials, ideas, and forces at work in our world. These are the tools with which the World of Tomorrow must be made. They are all interesting and much effort has been expended to lay them before you in an interesting way. Familiarity with today is the best preparation for the future.”
Within six months of the Fair’s opening, World War II would begin a war that lasted six years and resulted in the deaths of 50–85 million people. “ ~ Wikipedia
“The Queens Museum, formerly the Queens Museum of Art, is an art museum and educational center located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in the borough of Queens in New York City, United States. The museum is housed in the New York City Building, which was built for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and which then hosted the United Nations General Assembly from 1946 to 1950.”
“And on 19 July 1939, 30,000 people attended the launch of Moral Re-Armament in the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles.[4]”
Eileen Caddy, one of the founders of Findhorn, an eco community in Scotland was involved with the MRA according to Wikipedia
The movie” The Wizard of Oz,” called the first American Fairy Tale, premiered on August 15th in Technicolor. Both the movie and the song written for it have been valued ever since.
Somewhere over the rainbow way up high
There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true
Someday I’ll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That’s where you’ll find me
Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh, why can’t I?
If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow why, oh, why can’t I?”
In September, Sigmund Freud died. He had suffered enough from cancer of the jaw and asked that his life be ended. He was assisted with lethal doses of morphine by his doctors.
On October 17th the black and white movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” premiered in Washington, D.C.
“… the decent common man is surrounded by a venal, petty and thuggish group of crooks. Everyone in the film — except for Jefferson Smith and his tiny cadre of believers — is either in the pay of the political machine run by Edward Arnold’s James Taylor or complicit in Taylor’s corruption through their silence, and they all sit by as innocent people, including children, are brutalized and intimidated, rights are violated, and the government is brought to a halt”.
Nevertheless, Smith’s filibuster and the tacit encouragement of the Senate President are both emblematic of the director’s belief in the difference that one individual can make. “~ Wikipedia
President Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. on November 15th. The memorial, along with the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol completed a cross with the Washington Monument at its center.
In the midst of his beautiful words is the lie of slavery in Jefferson’s life and in the US Constitution, a lie that would continue to plague our nation for many years to come.
These few events give only the barest hint of the way things were in America in 1939. Someone else probably would have chosen other events, but these are the ones that attracted my attention while I was skimming over the history of 1939 on the Internet. I can see how they were part of my life, the work of my generation and the next to come.
