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Whether you’re mourning summer or happy to see it go, time marches on, and so does the Living with History Series. This month, we’ll be tackling two historical events that each happened to occur in Septembers long past. One is quite local, and the other is elsewhere in the state, but it is too good an example of living with the remnants of history to ignore it.
I remember when I was young and my mom was on one of her (now understandable) cleaning tirades, I would say, “It’s not like the President is coming!” But in the case of Denton circa September 1938, that wouldn’t have been a good excuse to slack, because the President was coming. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then in his third term of office, visited Denton on September 5th, Labor Day. He gave an address on a stage set up directly across the street from the Caroline County courthouse – a raised plaque now marks the spot where Roosevelt “stood”, which may be puzzling if you recall that standing was a sore subject for this President. On this particular date, recollectors say he was mainly using crutches to get around. Some accounts even suggest he could walk perfectly fine on his own. But regardless of historical conspiracies, FDR was able to deliver speeches standing up due to specialized podiums and his presumably large biceps.
Roosevelt was personally invited to Denton by Maryland State Representative T. Alan
Goldsborough, who lived on Gay Street. The Denton Journal newspaper printed a full itinerary of FDR’s travel plans alongside its advertisement of the President’s visit, including snippets of information about the bustling reaction of the town. Forget hotels — people’s private homes were already booking up. The fire company was organizing a parade, Chestertown’s marching band had been invited, and Denton was to be “elaborately decorated.” Finishing the front page spread was this message: “Mr. President, Denton awaits your visit with breathless anticipation.”
But much of the same political strain we are too familiar with today fueled his desire to visit, which he addressed in his speech, “You in the State of Maryland – and the people of other states – have in recent weeks been treated to a number of examples of this deliberate attempt to create prejudice and class feeling which can be charitably explained only as political hysteria. But it does not help the cause of Constitutional Government or effective democracy anywhere to laugh off such things in campaign time on the general theory that anything is fair in love and politics...That is why I have wanted to come here on Labor Day and preach a sermon, if you will, on that ancient text “We are all members one of another.””
And preach he did, for half an hour. He defended his New Deal policies, which were being relentlessly attacked in the media by Republicans (as FDR alluded to above). And he spoke specifically to the farmers of the rural Eastern Shore, assuring them of their worth in the face of enhanced class division during the Great Depression. Estimates peg the crowd that gathered on the courthouse green and beyond at 10,000 attendees (for scale, the total population of Denton according to the 1940 census was 1,572, and the population today is 5,049).
One of the aforementioned New Deal policies was the formation of Greenbelt towns, which were a series of government-sanctioned and funded communities. One such town is Greenbelt, Maryland, located about an hour and a half’s drive west of Denton. If his sermon in Denton was about reminding humans we are cut from the same cloth and therefore should work together to lift each other up, Greenbelt was the physical manifestation of that sermon.
The goal of the Greenbelt program was mainly to create jobs and affordable housing. Construction in (on?) Greenbelt, MD, began in the fall of 1935, and by 1937, “885 units were nearing completion,” according to the Greenbelt Museum’s website. But besides the fact that it was completely pre-planned and built by the government, there was something else a bit different about the Greenbelt towns: everything was a co-op.
Rexford Guy Tugwell, an economist who was highly revered by Roosevelt, suggested that every business in Greenbelt be a cooperatively owned one. One overarching company, Greenbelt Consumer Services, would oversee these businesses: the local grocery store, gas station, movie theater, beauty salon, valet, and more. If profits were made, they would either be “reinvested in the businesses themselves, or distributed evenly among the shareholders.” And so that’s what they did.
Nearly 90 years later, Greenbelt still operates in much the same way. Greenbelt Homes, Inc., the cooperative housing corporation, owns and manages 1,600 homes, common areas, and woodlands. The Roosevelt Center in town still features the original (and still functional) movie theatre and a co-op grocery store. Not only that, there’s the cooperative Greenbelt Federal Credit Union, the Greenbelt Cooperative Nursery School, the New Deal Café, the Greenbelt News Review newspaper, and a MakerSpace cooperative. So, if you’re like me and enjoy doing something a little different every day, I highly suggest moving to Greenbelt, where you can simultaneously be a writer, grocery store clerk, daycare provider, waitress, housing manager, and box office attendant.
History is obviously very important to the people of Greenbelt. It shapes how they live in every sense of the word. For us, the fancy historical marker that reminds us of where Roosevelt once stood probably just shapes our walking path to The Pub. But his visit was and is probably the most significant event Denton has ever seen in terms of people attracted. So we probably owe him a pumpkin spice latte.
