Camp Tera in Bear Mountain State Park, New York, August 19, 1933. Photo by the Associated Press.
She-She-She Camps
Between 1933 and 1937, the New Deal supported a nationwide program of resident camps for unemployed women affected by the Great Depression. A counterpart to the male-centric Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the “She-She-She” program, as it was derisively referred to in news accounts, aimed to meet women's immediate, basic needs, while offering educational and social opportunities for long-term welfare. The program was championed by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and several other female leaders in government.
My project spearheads an effort to research and document these New Deal-era camps for unemployed women, resulting in the first comprehensive inventory of known camp sites and a public website. The project was supported in part by PennPraxis, which sponsored a 2020 design fellowship for researcher and collaborator Elizabeth Sexton.