Tennessee Valley Authority. Established in May 1933 during the frenzied first one hundred days of the New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) sought to revitalize one of America's poorest regions.At the time, the farms and small towns in the seven states that bordered the nearly impassable Tennessee River and its tributaries presented a bleak checkerboard of weather‐beaten shacks lacking electricity, crumbling churches, and one‐room schools.
President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt was not the first public official who sought to harness the Tennessee River's power and address the valley's crippling
poverty, but his vision surpassed anything previously imagined. Proposing the TVA to Congress, Roosevelt declared: “It is time [for] national planning for a complete river watershed involving many States and the future lives and welfare of millions.” Under agency heads Arthur E. Morgan (1878–1976) and then the Chicago lawyer David E. Lilienthal (1899–1981), the TVA built sixteen
dams to prevent spring floods and limit soil erosion, supplied the valley with cheap electricity and recreational facilities, provided farmers with inexpensive fertilizer, and established a model community of neatly placed modern homes. Like most TVA programs and, indeed, most New Deal programs, this model community was racially segregated. Indeed, the TVA's insistence on local control, or “grassroots democracy,” meant that discriminatory political and social structures often remained in place, even while the agency fought to eradicate poverty.
For supporters and critics, TVA symbolized the best and worst of the New Deal. Roosevelt's opponents saw it as a frightening instance of government excess; some even denounced it as “creeping
socialism.” New Dealers, however, pointed to the project as a shining example of government action at its best. For the first time, thanks to TVA, recalled one enthusiast, “the poor and dispossessed of America could imagine a new kind of world, a life based on brotherhood and mutuality.” A particularly strong supporter was Senator George W. Norris (1861–1944) of Nebraska, a long‐time advocate of public power development. TVA's massive Norris Dam near Knoxville was named in his honor.
The TVA's legacy proved mixed. Within a decade the agency transformed an unpredictable river into a manageable waterway providing vast amounts of
hydroelectric power to thousands of isolated rural homes.
Malaria, once endemic in the area, was virtually eliminated. The TVA's accomplishments, moreover, eventually including
nuclear power, laid the groundwork for industrial development and economic expansion in the Tennessee Valley. But that progress did not end economic inequities or
racism or redistribute political power. As the twentieth century ended, the TVA survived, its spectacular dams a major tourist destination. But it survived simply as another big power company, no longer as a model of visionary government planning.
See also
Electrical Industry;
Electricity and Electrification;
New Deal Era, The;
South, The.
Bibliography
Thomas McCraw , TVA and the Power Fight, 1933–1939, 1971.
Erwin C. Hargrove and Paul K. Conkin, eds., TVA: Fifty Years of Grassroots Bureaucracy, 1983.
Bryant Simon
