The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project is a university-chartered research center associated with the Department of History of The George Washington University |
She-She-She Camps
Frances Perkins
did support ER and helped establish one camp for
women, Camp Tera. Progress was initially slow
getting Camp
Tera running as there were different requirements
for joining for the women than for the CCC men.
ER
was instrumental in changing the requirements so
that more women were admitted, raising the standards
of
the camps, and forcing the creation of new camps.
It was not until after ER convened the White House
Conference for Unemployed Women on April 30, 1934,
that she began to see her idea for a nationwide
jobless
women's camp achieved. Although much smaller in size
than the CCC men's camps, by 1936 ninety residential
camps served 5,000 women yearly. In all, 8,500 women
benefitted from working at a residential camp
in a
program that ER was instrumental in creating. Sources:Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume Two, 1933-1938. New York: Viking Press, 1999, 88-91. Kennedy, David. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 144. |