Beyond the New Deal? Egalitarian Dreams and Communist Schemes

Abstract

The student movement came to President Roosevelt’s doorstep on February 20, 1937, when some 3000 young demonstrators marched on the White House. The protesters, representing student and youth organizations from across the nation, sought to dramatize the economic hardships of youth in Depression America. Marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, they waved banners and chanted their demands. “Pass the American Youth Act—We want jobs;” “Scholarships not Battleships;” “Homes not barracks.” One group dressed in prison garb, carried a sign “We never had jobs.” Others costumed as pilgrims, miners, and farmers made the same point. The California delegation rode in oil a covered wagon bearing the battered sign “Go East Young Man.” To the tune of Yankee Doodle, the protesters—carrying signs that identified their college, school, religious group, or trade union affiliation— sarig “American youth is on the march for jobs and education.” This was, as the Washington Post observed “a line of marchers such as Washington has never seen before.” This march on the White House was part of a three day Youth Pilgrimage for Jobs and Education. The protesters did more than parade down Pennsylvania Avenue; they also lobbied Congress on behalf of greater federal assistance to the millions of young Americans hurt by the Great Depression. The pilgrimage attested that even though peace was the most popular cause on campus, the student movement of the 1930s was not merely an anti-war crusade. It was also a movement for social justice, whose leaders cared so much about the plight of low-income youth that they chose to make this, rather than war, the focus of the movement’s first sizable national march on Washington. The pilgrimage symbolized the student movement leadership’s commitment to building a more egalitarian America. The movement’s leaders envisioned a society where education would be a right rather than a privilege; they thought Washington should ensure that no one would be—as millions of Depression era youth had already been—forced to drop out of school because of insufficient funds. The student movement sought to make America a nation free of unemployment, poverty, and racism.