Home

About the Project

 

This project provides teachers and students with primary sources and instructional strategies for teaching the history of the Great Depression in Virginia, using public schools as a case-study of how policy makers, parents, children, and educators responded to crisis conditions.

The five Educational Modules available on this website are:

  1. The Impact of the Depression on Virginia Public Schools
  2. Who Should Bear the Burden? Public Opinion and School Policy in the Depression
  3. Virginia Schools in Black and White: Enforcing Racial Lines in 1930s
  4. Who Should Teach? Prohibitions on Married Women Teachers during the Depression
  5. Teaching Civics in an Era of Crisis: Virginia’s Curriculum during the Great Depression

The Virginia Schools in the Great Depression project also has a Race & Education archive of primary source materials on segregated schools in the 1930s.

The Educational Modules are hosted by the Department of History at Virginia Tech. Additional funding has been provided by the Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.

This project is made possible by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, as part of its African American Heritage Program, which includes activities designed to increase public understanding and appreciation of African American history in Virginia. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not necessarily represent those of Virginia Tech or the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. For more information about the VFH, please visit the website: www.virginiafoundation.org. 

Please contact us with any comments, suggestions, or recommendations for this project: vaschools@vt.edu

Project Directors:
Tom Ewing, Associate Professor, Department of History, Virginia Tech
Jane Lehr, Assistant Professor, Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies Programs, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo

Assistant Project Directors:
David Hicks
Melissa Lisanti

Advisory Faculty:
Peter Wallenstein

Research Assistants:
Robert Murray
Paul Lee

Transcribers:
Emily Bibby
Thomas Casey
Xiaolan Qiu

Graphic Designer:
Jesse Sherman

Bookkeeper:
Susan Archer

Junior Editor:
Claire Ewing-Nelson