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Need-Based Aid, Racial Proportionality, and the College Work-Study Program of the National Youth Administration, 1934-1943
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2025
Abstract
Often overshadowed by the GI Bill, the National Youth Administration (NYA) supervised the first federal need-based financial aid program in the United States. Tracing the origin of federal aid back to the era of the NYA reveals that the rationale for need-based assistance rests closer to the core of the American policymaking tradition. This article contributes to previous histories of the NYA by demonstrating how its decentralized implementation empowered local college officials who jeopardized the program’s needs-based intent. Meanwhile, this localized administration also facilitated the NYA’s unusual and relatively successful support for Black college students.
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- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of History of Education Society.
References
1 Betty Lindley and Ernest Lindley, A New Deal for Youth: The Story of the National Youth Administration (Viking, 1938), 173-74.
2 “NYA Student Work Program,” 1940, folder 1, box 1, NYA Background Materials for a History of the Student Work Program, 1935-1943, NC-35 207 (hereafter NYA Background Materials), Records of the National Youth Administration, 1934-1945, RG 119 (hereafter NYA Records), National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
3 Aymer Hamilton to Anne Treadwell, March 18, 1936, folder: California, box 1, Testimonial Letters Received from Students Participating in the School Aid Program, 1936, NC-35 57 (hereafter NYA Testimonial Letters), NYA Records.
4 Christopher P. Loss, Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century (Princeton University Press, 2012), 75-79. The only significant discussions of the NYA prior to Between Citizens and the State were a survey of young people in the 1930s and three state-level portraits: Richard A. Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth: Ideas and Ideals in a Depression Decade (University of Georgia Press, 1992); Kevin P. Bower, “‘A Favored Child of the State’: Federal Student Aid at Ohio Colleges and Universities, 1934-1943,” History of Education Quarterly 44 (Autumn 2004), 364-87; Carol A. Weisenberger, Dollars and Dreams: The National Youth Administration in Texas (Peter Lang, 1994); Olen Cole Jr., “Black Youth in the National Youth Administration in California, 1935-1943,” Southern California Quarterly 73 (Winter 1991), 385-402.
5 Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in Debt (Harvard University Press, 2021), 39-62.
6 Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 58-59. In an otherwise very thorough examination of the GI Bill, Frydl mentions the NYA in passing. Kathleen J. Frydl, The GI Bill (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 341, 377. The NYA is not mentioned in Olson’s seminal account. Keith W. Olson, The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges (University of Kentucky Press, 1974).
7 For an example of the lack of attention to need-based aid before 1965, see Rupert Wilkinson, Aiding Students, Buying Students: Financial Aid in America (Vanderbilt University Press, 2005), 4.
8 Robert B. Archibald, Redesigning the Financial Aid System: Why Colleges and Universities Should Switch Roles with the Federal Government (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 22, 28.
9 Scott M. Gelber, Classrooms and Courtrooms: A Legal History of College Access, 1860−1960 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 125-27.
10 Arthur J. Klein, “Survey of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities,” United States Office of Education Bulletin, vol. 2 (US Government Printing Office [hereafter GPO], 1930), 485, 500.
11 This observation mirrors the findings of scholars who have examined how federal social welfare objectives can be distorted by local/state implementation. Suzanne Mettler, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Cornell University Press, 1998); John D. Donahue, Hazardous Crosscurrents: Confronting Inequality in an Era of Devolution (Century Foundation, 1999); Michael K. Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State (Cornell University Press, 1999); Christopher Howard, The Welfare State Nobody Knows: Debunking Myths about U.S. Social Policy (Princeton University Press, 2007).
12 Higher Education for American Democracy: A Report of The President’s Commission on Higher Education, vol. 2 (Harper and Brothers, 1947), 4.
13 Final Report of the NYA Division of Negro Affairs, 1943 (hereafter Final Report of the DNA), NC-35 118, folder: Final Report, box 1, NYA Records; Facing the Problems of Youth: The Work and Objectives of the National Youth Administration (Washington, DC: National Youth Administration, 1936), 6; Thomas D. Snyder, ed., 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait (National Center for Education Statistics, 1993), 7, 76.
14 Snyder, 120 Years of American Education, 16.
15 Ira De Augustine Reid, In a Minor Key: Negro Youth in Story and Fact (American Council on Education, 1940), 41; Doxey A. Wilkerson, Special Problems on Negro Education (Advisory Committee on Education, 1939), 39.
16 G. F. Mellen, Popular Errors Concerning Higher Education in the United States and the Remedy (Gressner and Schramm, 1890), 46-47; John Aubrey Douglass, The Conditions for Admission: Access, Equity, and the Social Contract of Public Universities (Stanford University Press, 2007), 18-19; C. H. Thurber, “Fiscal Support of State Universities and State Colleges,” Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 11 (1925), 265-70; David O. Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 1915-1940 (Cornell University Press, 1986), 212.
17 “Youth on the Student Work Program,” 1940, folder 1, box 1, NYA Background Materials, NYA Records.
18 Malcolm M. Willey, Depression, Recovery, and Higher Education: A Report by Committee Y of the American Association of University Professors (McGraw-Hill, 1937), 281; Gelber, Classrooms and Courtrooms, 121; Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 212.
19 Lindley and Lindley, A New Deal for Youth, 158.
20 Willey, Depression, Recovery, and Higher Education, 294; Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 188.
21 Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 194; Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 72; Russell T. Sharpe, “College and the Poor Boy,” Atlantic Monthly (June 1933), 698; John H. McNeely, “Aid for the Toiling College Student,” New York Times, July 29, 1934, 4.
22 Hearings Before the Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate, Seventy-Seventh Congress, Second Session, on S. 2295, A Bill to Provide for the Termination of the NYA and the CCC (GPO, 1942) (hereafter NYA Hearings), 643.
23 Lindley and Lindley, A New Deal for Youth, 172.
24 NYA College and Graduate Aid at Forty-Two Michigan Institutions (University of Michigan, 1938), 68.
25 George Philip Rawick, “The New Deal and Youth: The Civilization Conservation Corps, the National Youth Administration, and the American Youth Congress” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1957), 173, 206; Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth, 69; Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 76; Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 196-97.
26 Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 76-77.
27 Jacob S. Hacker, The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
28 Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 215; Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth, 11.
29 Palmer O. Johnson and Oswald L. Harvey, The National Youth Administration (GPO, 1938), 2-4; Lindley and Lindley, A New Deal for Youth, 8, 12; Facing the Problems of Youth, 4; Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 201; Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 74.
30 “Statement of the National Advisory Committee of the NYA,” Nov. 9, 1940, folder 1344, FDR Speech File, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY; NYA Hearings, 439; Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 73; Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 196; Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth, 187.
31 Lindley and Lindley, A New Deal for Youth, 158.
32 NYA Hearings, 17.
33 Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth, 44, 183.
34 Johnson and Harvey, The National Youth Administration, 45; Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth, 61; Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 75; Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 196.
35 Howard, The Welfare State Nobody Knows, 95.
36 Federal Security War Manpower Commission, Final Report of the NYA: Fiscal Years 1936-1943 (GPO, 1944), 43, 46; Bruce Wayne Lyon, “The Federal Government and College Students During the Great Depression: A Study of the College Student Aid Programs of the FERA and the NYA” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1969).
37 Higher Education for American Democracy, vol. 2, 47; Lindley and Lindley, A New Deal for Youth, 160-62; Bower, “‘A Favored Child of the State,’” 365.
38 Walter J. Greenleaf, Self-Help for College Students (GPO, 1929), 23.
39 Johnson and Harvey, The National Youth Administration, 38-39.
40 Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth, 67-68; Johnson and Harvey, The National Youth Administration, 45. Regarding the tradition of favoring work-based social welfare programs, see Theda Skocpol, “Brother Can You Spare a Job? Work and Welfare in the United States,” in The Nature of Work: Sociological Perspectives, ed. Kai Erikson and Steven Peter Vallas (Yale University Press, 1990), 192-213.
41 Wilkinson, Aiding Students, Buying Students, 47. NYA officials did not consider a student loan program, because they predicted that lenders would be reluctant to invest in students who had little to no credit history, especially if they had unimpressive grades. Shermer, Indentured Students, 43.
42 Greenleaf, Self-Help for College Students, 39-44, 59; Wilkinson, Aiding Students, Buying Students, 106.
43 NYA Hearings, 194.
44 NYA Hearings, 21, 44.
45 Edwin Amenta, Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy (Princeton University Press, 1998), 75, 155.
46 Bower, “‘A Favored Child of the State,’” 368-69.
47 Johnson and Harvey, The National Youth Administration, 34; Lindley and Lindley, A New Deal for Youth, 163; Snyder, 120 Years of American Education, 65. By 1939, 51 percent of the Black students receiving aid were women. “Youth on the Student Work Program,” 1940, folder 1, box 1, NYA Background Materials, NYA Records.
48 Annual Report of the Division of Negro Affairs, 1936-37, folder 1, box 1, Director’s Files of Correspondence and Reports of Negro Conferences, 1936-1941, NC-35 117, NYA Records; Lindley and Lindley, A New Deal for Youth, 163; Snyder, 120 Years of American Education, 19.
49 Final Report of the NYA, 56; Cole, “Black Youth in the NYA in California,” 389; Weisenberger, Dollars and Dreams, 139-41.
50 Final Report of the DNA, 58. The 1940 census reported the US population as 89.8 percent White, 9.8 percent Black, and 0.4 percent “other.” Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940 (GPO, 1943).
51 Snyder, 120 Years of American Education, 55.
52 Howard M. Bell, Youth Tell Their Story: A Study of the Conditions and Attitudes of Young People in Maryland between the Ages of 16 and 24, Conducted for the American Youth Commission (American Council on Education, 1938), 71-72.
53 Johnson and Harvey, The National Youth Administration, 44; Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 199.
54 Philip J. Brockway to Alice Blumenthal, Aug. 31, 1937, folder: Maine, box 1, Correspondence with Colleges Regarding Student Aid, 1937, NC-35 56, NYA Records.
55 J. E. Taylor to Houston A. Wright, Oct. 5, 1939, folder: Oklahoma, 1938-39, box 5, Director’s Files of Reports of State Directors of Negro Affairs, 1936-1939, NC-35 119 (hereafter NYA State Reports), NYA Records; J. A. Oliver to Mary McLeod Bethune, Sept. 3, 1936, folder: Virginia, 1937-38, box 3, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
56 NYA Hearings, 128; Lyon, “The Federal Government and College Students During the Great Depression,” 81.
57 Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth, 66-67.
58 Report of the Conference of Negro Administrative Assistants of the NYA, June 2-3, 1936, folder: Conference of Negro Administrative Assistants of NYA, box 2, Director’s Files of Correspondence and Reports of Negro Conferences, 1935-1941, NC-35 117, NYA Records. See also Weisenberger, Dollars and Dreams, 31.
59 Bruce L. Melvin, Rural Youth on Relief (GPO, 1937), 61.
60 NYA Hearings, 178-79; Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth, 70.
61 Lyon, “The Federal Government and College Students During the Great Depression,” 121.
62 Lyon, “The Federal Government and College Students During the Great Depression,” 118-20.
63 Aubrey W. Williams, “The College and High School Aid Program of the National Youth Administration,” Address to the Joint Meeting of College and University Administrators and Secondary School Officials, Harrisburg, PA, Sept. 23, 1937; Conference of Negro State Administrative Assistants and Members of State Advisory Councils, “Findings and Recommendations,” Feb. 13, 1937, folder: Negro Administrative Assistants, box 6, Misc. File of Research and Publicity Materials, 1935-1941, NC-35 120, NYA Records.
64 Williams, “The College and High School Aid Program of the National Youth Administration.”
65 Minutes of Meeting of NYA Officials at Butler Street YMCA, Aug. 21, 1937, folder: Georgia, 1936-1937, box 1, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
66 John A. Salmond, A Southern Rebel: The Life and Times of Aubrey Willis Williams, 1890-1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 135.
67 Brian Balogh, The Associational State: American Governance in the Twentieth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 128.
68 Final Report of the NYA, viii.
69 Balogh, The Associational State, 142.
70 Lyon, “The Federal Government and College Students During the Great Depression,” 48.
71 Guy Snavely to J. E. Bryan, March 14, 1936, folder: Alabama, box 1, NYA Testimonial Letters, NYA Records.
72 Fred J. Kelly and John H. McNeely, Federal Student Aid Program (GPO, 1935), 11-15.
73 Kelly and McNeely, Federal Student Aid Program, 11-15.
74 Bower, “‘A Favored Child of the State,’” 378-79.
75 Kelly and McNeely, Federal Student Aid Program, 16.
76 Lyon, “The Federal Government and College Students During the Great Depression,” 124.
77 Shermer mentions that federal policymakers ultimately rejected proposals for a merit-based threshold, but understandably (given the scope and focus of her book) does not focus on the extent to which colleges were able to enact these requirements on the ground. Shermer, Indentured Students, 42.
78 Student Aid Program, NYA Circular No. 10 (1937), NYA Background Materials, folder 1, box 1, NYA Records; George C. Mann to Robert S. Richey, July 3, 1941, folder: V-e-2 (Scholastic Standing of NYA College Students), box 2, NYA Background Materials, NYA Records.
79 J. M. Nabrit Jr. to Francoise Bell, Sept. 8, 1939, folder: Student Aid Program, box 1, Negro Student Aid Applications 1936-1944, NC-35 117A, NYA Records.
80 NYA Hearings, 175-77.
81 Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 78.
82 Alvin C. Eurich and James E. Wert, Applicants for Federal Aid at Minnesota Colleges (University of Minnesota, 1937), 29, 34-37.
83 Kelly and McNeely, Federal Student Aid Program, 17.
84 Lyon, “The Federal Government and College Students During the Great Depression,” 119-20.
85 Lindley and Lindley, A New Deal for Youth, 244; “Youth on the Student Work Program,” 1940, folder 1, box 1, NYA Background Materials, NYA Records.
86 Eurich and Wert, Applicants for Federal Aid at Minnesota Colleges, 13-17.
87 Final Report of the NYA, 47. See also Manual of Student Work Procedure, 1942-43, folder: IV-a (Policy of Decentralized Administration), box 1, NYA Background Materials, NYA Records.
88 Kelly and McNeely, Federal Student Aid Program, 27-29.
89 Minnie L. Steckel to A. F. Harman, March 19, 1936, folder: Alabama, box 1, NYA Testimonial Letters, NYA Records.
90 A. J. Cloud to Anne Treadwell, March 16, 1936, folder: California, box 1, NYA Testimonial Letters, NYA Records; Richard Sweitzer to H. L. Johnson, April 4, 1936, folder: Iowa, box 2, NYA Testimonial Letters, NYA Records.
91 Lindley and Lindley, A New Deal for Youth, 183.
92 Johnson and Harvey, The National Youth Administration, 45.
93 George C. Mann to Robert S. Richey, July 3, 1941, folder: V-e-2 (Scholastic Standing of NYA College Students), box 2, NYA Background Materials, NYA Records.
94 Final Report of the NYA, 75. See also A Report of Negro Activities on the NYA Program in Florida, undated, folder: Florida, 1937-38, box 2, NYA State Reports, NYA Records; NYA College and Graduate Aid at Forty-Two Michigan Institutions, 15-16; Lindley and Lindley, A New Deal for Youth, 169-70; Johnson and Harvey, The National Youth Administration, 32; “Youth on the Student Work Program,” 1940, folder 1, box 1, NYA Background Materials, NYA Records.
95 Final Report of the NYA, 77.
96 Report of Negro Activities in Tennessee, July 15, 1937, folder: Tennessee, 1936-37, box 2, NYA State Reports, NYA Records; General Information, NYA A&I State Teachers College, Nashville, TN, undated, folder: Tennessee, 1938-39, box 5, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
97 Eurich and Wert, Applicants for Federal Aid at Minnesota Colleges, 28.
98 Leo Zinn to Mary McLeod Bethune, July 2, 1938, folder: Tennessee, 1938-39, box 5, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
99 NYA for Alabama Narrative Report of Negro Activities, Feb. 1939, folder: Alabama, 1938-39 (folder 1 of 2), box 3, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
100 Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 41; Frydl, The GI Bill, 60.
101 “The New Deal and the Negro,” Congressional Record – House 88, Oct, 14, 1942, p. 8187.
102 Mettler, Dividing Citizens, 18-19; Donahue, Hazardous Crosscurrents, 2; Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (W. W. Norton, 2005), 17. In general, subsequent social welfare programs have revealed that state and local implementation tends to facilitate discrimination against people of color. Howard, The Welfare State Nobody Knows, 34-35, 175-79.
103 Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 64, 94; Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York University Press, 1994).
104 Nancy J. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR (Princeton University Press, 1983), 58-59.
105 In 1939, the WPA started to be administered via a more nationalized process and also became more racially equitable. Amenta, Bold Relief, 128-29, 158.
106 Wilkerson, Special Problems on Negro Education, 36; Final Report of the NYA, 56; NYA Hearings, 470.
107 Reid, In a Minor Key, 40.
108 Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 58-59.
109 Robert Weaver to Josephine Roche, July 8, 1935, folder: Final Report, box 1, Final Report, 1943, NC-35 118, NYA Records.
110 Final Report of the DNA, 33-38; Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 143-44, 151; Walter G. Daniel and Carroll L. Miller, “The Participation of the Negro in the National Youth Administration Program,” Journal of Negro Education 7 (July 1938), 359.
111 Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 153.
112 Minutes of State Meeting Held at Bordentown, Aug. 3, 1936, folder: New Jersey, 1936-37, box 1, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
113 Christie L. Bourgeois, “Stepping over Lines: Lyndon Johnson, Black Texans, and the National Youth Administration, 1935-1937,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 91 (Oct. 1987), 159-60.
114 Salmond, A Southern Rebel, 126, 151-56; Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 74-75, 149, 173; Shermer, Indentured Students, 54-55.
115 Salmond, A Southern Rebel, 127; Employment Figures for NYA and WPA, May 26, 1939, folder: Student Aid Applications, box 1, Student Aid Statistics, NC-35, NYA Records.
116 Final Report of the DNA, 40; Florence Fleming Corley, “The National Youth Administration in Georgia: A New Deal for Young Blacks and Women,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 77 (Winter 1993), 733.
117 Balogh, The Associational State, 171.
118 Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White, 19-65.
119 John J. Corson Oral History Interview, July 17, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Oral Histories of the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, https://discoverlbj.org/item/oh-corsonj-19780717-1-82-10; Weisenberger, Dollars and Dreams, 134; Bourgeois, “Stepping over Lines,” 149-51, 166-67.
120 Mitchell Lerner, “‘To Be Shot at by the Whites and Dodged by the Negroes’: Lyndon Johnson and the Texas NYA,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 39 (June 2009), 271; Bourgeois, “Stepping over Lines,” 161-62.
121 Bourgeois, “Stepping over Lines,” 162.
122 Lerner, “‘To Be Shot at by the Whites and Dodged by the Negroes,’” 264.
123 “State Youth Administrators Meeting,” June 15, 1940, folder: Applications, box 1, Director’s Files of Correspondence and Reports of Negro Conferences, 1936-1941, NC-35 117, NYA Records; Report Covering the First Six Months of the Work of the Office of Negro Affairs, 1938, folder: Inactive File, 1938, box 1, Files of Early Inactive Correspondence, 1936-1938, NC-35 116 (hereafter Inactive Files), NYA Records.
124 Participation of Negro Youth in the Program of the NYA, 1936, folder: Inactive File, 1938, box 1, Inactive Files, NYA Records; Daniel and Miller, “The Participation of the Negro in the National Youth Administration Program,” 361.
125 Final Report of the DNA, 21-22.
126 Report on Conference of Negro State Administrative Assistants and Members of State Advisory Committees, 1937, folder: Conference of Negro Administrative Assistants of NYA (June 1936), box 2, Director’s File of Correspondence and Reports on Negro Conferences, 1935-1941, NC-35 117, NYA Records; Marian Thompson Wright, “Negro Youth and the Federal Emergency Programs: CCC and NYA,” Journal of Negro Education 9 (July 1940), 406; Wilkerson, Special Problems on Negro Education, 140. Regarding the disproportionate poverty among Black people, including the college-age population, see Daniel and Miller, “The Participation of the Negro in the National Youth Administration,” Journal of Negro Education 7 (July 1938), 357-65.
127 Wilkerson, Special Problems on Negro Education, 140; Final Report of the DNA, 21-22, 43, 58.
128 Final Report of the DNA, 21-22.
129 Final Report of the NYA, 51-52; Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (1978; repr., Oxford University Press, 2009), 55; Wilkerson, Special Problems on Negro Education, 143. For the contrast between the NYA and other New Deal agencies, see Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 58-59.
130 Michael S. Holmes, “The New Deal and Georgia’s Black Youth,” Journal of Southern History 38 (Aug. 1972), 443-60.
131 Lerner, “‘To Be Shot at by the Whites and Dodged by the Negroes,’” 264.
132 Daniel and Miller, “The Participation of the Negro in the National Youth Administration Program,” 362.
133 Cole, “Black Youth in the NYA in California,” 391-92.
134 Lyon, “The Federal Government and College Students During the Great Depression,” 73.
135 Report of Negro Activities, July-Dec. 1936, folder: Illinois, 1936-37, box 1, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
136 Annual Report of the NYA for New Jersey, undated, folder: New Jersey, box 5, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
137 “Benefits of the NYA Program to the Negroes of Nebraska,” undated, folder: Nebraska, box 1, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
138 September Report of the NYA, undated, folder: Wyoming, 1937-38, box 3, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
139 Final Report of the DNA, 101-2; NYA Hearings, 470; Final Report of the NYA, 51-52; Salmond, A Southern Rebel, 126.
140 Rawick, “The New Deal and Youth,” 269.
141 California Report of the NYA Division of Negro Affairs, Jan. 1939, folder: California, 1938-39, box 3, NYA State Reports, NYA Records; Lyon, “The Federal Government and College Students During the Great Depression,” 73; Cole, “Black Youth in the NYA in California,” 391-92.
142 W. J. Faulkner to R. E. Clay, July 4, 1938, folder: Tennessee, 1938-39, box 5, NYA State Reports, NYA Records.
143 Report on the Special Negro Fund Allotment Under the NYA, undated, folder: Student Aid Program, box 1, Negro Student Aid Applications, 1936-1944, NC-35 117A, NYA Records.
144 Final Report of the DNA, 105-7; Wright, “Negro Youth and the Federal Emergency Programs,” 402.
145 For examples of this emphasis on the GI Bill, see Wilkinson, Aiding Students, Buying Students; Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, The GI Bill: The New Deal for Veterans (Oxford University Press, 2009).
146 Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth, 9. The GI Bill was not as exceptional as sometimes portrayed, given the extent of earlier war-related education policies. Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 9.
147 Alice M. Rivlin, The Role of the Federal Government in Financing Higher Education (Brookings Institution, 1961), 66; Frydl, The GI Bill, 120; Altschuler and Blumin, The GI Bill, 67; Olson, The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 23, 61.
148 Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 80.
149 Regarding the American tradition of providing social welfare to veterans, see Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Harvard University Press, 1992).
150 Frydl, The GI Bill, 233-34, 252-53.
151 Frydl, The GI Bill, 31; Olson, The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 18; Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White, 126-29.
152 Olson, The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 74; Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White, 129-33.
153 NYA Hearings, 3-5; Loss, Between Citizens and the State, 79; Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth, 178.
154 NYA Hearings, 19.
155 Snyder, 120 Years of American Education, 76. It is possible that the program had some counterproductive impact by facilitating tuition increases. Shermer, Indentured Students, 73.
156 Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 204.
157 Bower, “‘A Favored Child of the State,’” 376.
158 Higher Education for American Democracy, vol. 2, 47, 53.
159 Williams, “The College and High School Aid Program”; Johnson and Harvey, The National Youth Administration, 44.