The Negro and TVA [Cover title]

New York: [NAACP], 1935. Very good -. Reproduction of typed 11" x 8½" leaves with handwritten inscription, string-tied in 11¾" x 8¾" wrappers. Pp. [6], 41, [6]. Very good minus due to lacking front wrap; rear moderately edge worn; inked notation to title; some light edge wear, creasing and toning.

This is a survey on the status and welfare of African American workers in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) written for the NAACP by a leader of its "Joint Committee on National Recovery" (JCNR), John P. Davis.

According to a 2025 article in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, Davis founded the JCNR as well as the Negro Industrial League, and "was the first person to recognize the race discrimination being written into federal law." His work "exposed and challenged" injustice within the National Recovery Administration and broader Jim Crow New Deal era, "underscored the constitutional necessity of federal intervention and pushed for a new New Deal that would combat the oligarchy and racial inequality that placed democracy in crisis."

This survey (per its full title, a Report of the Chief Social and Economic Problems of Negroes in the TVA) was the result of "two weeks investigation of actual conditions of Negro workers" in the TVA, which had been tasked by President Roosevelt in 1933 with improving quality of life in the seven-state region reeling from the Great Depression. It focused on racial discrimination "in the matter of employment and training" as well as segregation in "housing facilities." Rich with statistical data, the report analyzed injustice from interviewing to wages, working conditions and "high-handed methods" of white superiors. Various projects were described, and names and anecdotes given. It also ran the text of a letter from a labor union to a senator protesting "the employment of negro electricians" and an appendix with evidence of Davis' research.

Rare and vivid documentation of racial injustice in the New Deal era TVA. OCLC shows three holdings (at Howard, Harvard and Smith) and a copy on microfilm at Kent State University.