Back in the early 20th Century, America faced its most severe economic crisis yet: the Great Depression. As any student of history knows, it was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal that built a new political order that instituted a more democratically controlled economy and led the country to new heights.
In Tennessee and the rest of the Southeast, the New Deal program that revitalized the regional economy, electrified rural areas and drastically improved the general quality of life was the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
At the TVA’s quarterly board meeting in August, the authority showed a video, depicting abject poverty in the Southeast, that encapsulated what life was like before its creation in 1933.
“Investor-owned utilities wouldn’t serve residents because they deemed the region unprofitable,” the narrator said. “TVA put people first, not profits.”
Today, after more than nine decades, TVA and its long-held commitment to public service is facing an unprecedented political assault.