The Civilian Conservation Corps was Roosevelt's first recovery attempt to help the "forgotten man" after the Great Depression. It did exactly that. Hundreds of thousands of young men between the ages of 18 and 25, both black and white, were employed to do conservation work around the country for $30 a month. They completed work tasks such as: improving national parks, building roads and telephone poles, digging ditches and planting trees. Even though blacks and whites were doing the same job, segregation remained constant throughout the CCC for many years. .
African-Americans were often overlooked at when the CCC first began. Qualified blacks were passed up to enlist the whites. Blacks also had to face unfriendly and unwelcoming communities, sometimes even in places where camp was set up. Robert Fechner the CCC director, was a firm believer that the blacks actually wanted to be segregated and as segregated as they were, according to Fechner, it was not defined as discrimination. Although he seemed to sound sincere in his letter to Thomas L. Griffith, Jr., he was merely sedating the issue at hand, segregated groups. The government at the time had provided these jobs through the CCC with the hopes of helping the unemployed and their families during the depression, not to further consent segregation. .
The CCC was not entirely bad. The CCC did provide a steady income for the African-American workers through various jobs, a variety of recreational activities, schooling and training, safety, sleeping barracks, medical services, and a chance to move up the ladder to become someone of higher stature within the CCC. .
Although there was segregation within the CCC, blacks and whites both earned money to be sent to their families. To them, that was more important than being segregated. Without the CCC, many American's and their families would have suffered extremely more than they did.
