Series 2618: Civilian Conservation Corps Procurement Files. 1935-1941.

Welfare, Department of Public (RG 52).

      Papers of George Norman Sadka (1909-1990), a Meridian native who served as the official in charge of selecting men for enrollment in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in Mississippi from 1935 until 1942, when the national program was discontinued. Materials in this series include Sadka’s personnel form (containing his job history and description of duties, as well as other personal information), his correspondence, a rough draft of his Master’s thesis on the CCC selection process in Mississippi, and various manuals, handbooks, bulletins, circulars, and other government documents concerning the selection process of the CCC. In particular, Sadka’s thesis and his correspondence with the Commissioner of the State Department of Public Welfare provide a wealth of information on the Civilian Conservation Corps in Mississippi: its origins, the structure of the program, its costs and its benefits, the rates of pay and terms of service for enrollees, and other facts. Box 27846 contains Sadka’s personal information, his correspondence, and his thesis. Box 27845 contains handbooks, manuals, circulars, bulletins, and other such materials.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was one of several programs established by the United States government to alleviate joblessness caused by the Great Depression. Originally established in 1933 as the Emergency Conservation Work Program, it did not gain its title of Civilian Conservation Corps until 1937. The CCC was a quasi-military organization that employed jobless young men to perform conservation work such as planting trees, fighting wildfires, controlling erosion, erecting dams, and other such activities. The men lived in camps, and a majority of their pay was sent directly to their families each month for their support, while the CCC provided the men with food, clothing and medical care, as well as limited job training and educational opportunities.

In Mississippi, the Emergency Relief Administration was in charge of selecting applicants for the program from 1933 until 1936, when the Works Progress Administration (WPA) took over as the selecting agency. On May 1, 1937, Mississippi’s State Department of Public Welfare assumed the selection duties for the CCC. County welfare agents were responsible for CCC selection duties in their counties. The state supervisor (in the case of Mississippi, George N. Sadka), a Department of Public Welfare employee, served as the county agents’ supervisor as well as a coordinator with other Federal agencies that worked with the CCC. Roughly 3,000,000 Americans enrolled in the CCC program during its nine years of existence. More than 40,000 of them were Mississippians.