Dixie - 1940

Series

Series Name

The March of Time 5th Year

Issue

Issue No.

13

Date Released

Jun 1940

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1Dixie - 1940

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 1

Summary

The March of Time synopsis: Although the American Civil War ended over 70 years ago, the Southern States today are still suffering from its effects, and it is to the great problems of the 36,000,000 people of the South that the March of Time devotes its latest issue, "Dixie - 1940". To countless thousands of U.S. citizens, Dixie is a land of pleasure and year-round sunshine and more and more visitors are discovering that it is also a land rich in history, holding more of the beauty and tragedy of an age long passed than any other part of the United States. It was in 1861 that the solders of the Confederacy took up their arms to fight for a cause that was to be lost - four terrible years of war resulted in the impoverishment and exhaustion of the once rich Southern States. In New Deal Washington President Roosevelt has commissioned the National Emergency Council to make a study of social and economic conditions in the South. Basing its facts on the findings of this Council, the March of Time shows Dixie as it is today. Cotton, which is still the most important crop, brings to Southern planters about $600,000,000 a year, and timber and tobacco follow not far behind. The natural resources are enormous, yet thousands of Dixie’s people are living in dire want. Two and a half million families are tenant farmers or sharecroppers, dependent on the price fluctuations of a single crop, their plight made worse by the exhaustion and erosion of large areas of the soil. With income down and health facilities are inadequate. Housing conditions are notably bad, and undernourishment - particularly among rural children - is pushing up the South’s death rate.

Little realised outside of the South, however, is the new fighting spirit of the people of Dixie themselves, who prefer to deal with their own problems without outside interference. The South, its defenders assert is no the Nation’s No.1 economic problem, but its No.1 economic hope. The March of Time shows how agricultural research is leading to crop diversification, and how new industries, like the flourishing pulp paper industry, are being developed by Southerners to make use of the abundant natural resources of waterpower, timber, minerals and seaports. Oldest problem of the South is the Negro, living on the lowest economic level. But today his lot is improving. His health has become a concern of the community; illiteracy is being wiped out; and with 80 Negro colleges in the South, thousands of young coloured people are being trained to lead in the work of helping their race.

The problems of the whites are likewise on the way to solution, and perhaps the greatest resource of Dixie is its native American manpower. The March of Time tells the story of the most important single work of conservation in this field - the work of Miss Martha Berry of Atlanta, Georgia, head of the famous Berry Schools. Here sons and daughters of the poorest families are being given an education to fit them for a constructive place in the New South. Working their way through school, they learn by doing - how to use the South’s soil intelligently and productively, how to make cattle and poultry pay. By actually erecting their own school buildings, even making the bricks used in them, they learn the construction trades. Martha Berry has spent her family fortune to carry on this work which she commenced forty years ago. And from her school every year hundreds of well-read, well-trained youngsters go back to their communities with a new and sharpened point of view - ready to help in bringing the South back to the great and powerful place in the American nation which was formerly hers.

Researcher Comments

This story was included in Vol.5 No.10 of the US edition.

Keywords

Education and training; Politics and government; Economics; Agriculture; Social conditions; War damage; Religion and belief; Race relations

Written sources

Documentary News Letter   Vol.1 No.6 June 1940, p8.
Fielding, Raymond. The March of Time 1935-1951 (New York, 1978)   p240.
The March of Time Promotional Material   Lobby Card, Used for synopsis