The Heart and the Fist: Civilian Service

Preface to "What Is the Social Impact of National Service?" (2011). In L. Gerdes (Ed.), Opposing Viewpoints. National Service. Detroit: Greenhaven Press

Studies show that national service cultivates an ethic of service. This social impact of service is one reason advocates claim that support of national service programs should continue. In Still Serving: Measuring the Eight-Year Impact of AmeriCorps on Alumni,1 the authors found that those who serve continue to do so long after their initial service commitment is completed. Read more

Peace Corps

What You Can Do for Your Country: An Oral History of the Peace Corps. (2004). In C. Rose (Ed.), American Decades Primary Sources (Vol. 7, pp. 379-384). Detroit: Gale
Roger Landrum, Lynda Edwards, Robert Marshall, and George McDaniel enteredthe Peace Corps with similar expectations and left with different perspectives on their experience. Read more

Coleman, D. G. (2003). Peace Corps. In S. I. Kutler (Ed.), Dictionary of American History (3rd ed., Vol. 6, pp. 265-266). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
The Peace Corps' inception was both a product of the Cold War struggle and a reaction to the growing spirit of humanitarian activism evident throughout the Western world by the beginning of the 1960s, a spirit that had manifested itself in volunteer humanitarian programs already implemented in Canada, Australia, Britain, France, and Japan. Read more

Lewis, M. C. (2012). Peace Corps. In D. Jacques & P. Kepos (Eds.), International Directory of Company Histories (Vol. 132, pp. 343-346). Detroit: St. James Press.
With remarkably efficient speed, the Peace Corps went from an idea expressed in a campaign speech in 1960 to becoming a federal agency a few months after President John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Few entities with such a broad mission of cross-cultural friendship, understanding, and service have negotiated the vertical and horizontal layers of the federal government and emerged with fully functioning operations in less than one year.Read more

Civilian Conservation Corps

Courtesy of Steve Tomaszewski

Brown, M. L. (2005). Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). In J. P. Resch (Ed.), Americans at War (Vol. 3, pp. 24-25). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. Tagged "Roosevelt's Tree Army," or "the Soil Soldiers," the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was not a military program, but it was modeled on military organization and incorporated the military spirit of public service. Established in 1933, the CCC was one of many programs in the New Deal's war against the economic depression. In his 1933 inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress for "broad Executive power to wage a war" against the Depression and for power "that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe. Read more

SALMOND, J. A. (2004). Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). In R. S. McElvaine (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Great Depression (Vol. 1, pp. 174-179). New York: Macmillan Reference USA
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was created in March 1933 during the first frantic "hundred days" of the New Deal. It was the first of a number of agencies created to cope with one of the most desperate and poignant of the social problems caused by the Depression—massive unemployment and economic deprivation amongst the nation's youth. Read more

"Educational Contribution of the Civilian Conservation Corps." American Decades Primary Sources. Ed. Cynthia Rose. Vol. 4: 1930-1939. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 186-189. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 10 July 2015
An estimated two million young people were unemployed in the early years of the Great Depression. At a time when only a minority of young adults went on to college, the majority could not find jobs, even when they had to quit school to support their families. Some became tramps and hobos, crisscrossing the country on the railroads in search of work. Read more