Norris Dam, Tennessee Valley

African Americans employed by the Authority overwhelmingly occupied temporary unskilled and low skill positions. The TVA accepted and legitimized racist beliefs in the inherent inferiority of African Americans by asserting, even in the face of highly skilled black applicants, that minorities would be unsuitable for skilled positions. Some black workers were trained by the TVA, but they were for the most part trained to occupy the same menial and semiskilled positions that they already had in the valley (Grant, 1990 93). 

The TVA defended its hiring practices by pointing to its policy of seeking to hire African American workers in numbers that were in direct proportion to the racial percentages of the region in which the work took place. However, Morgan s racial quota system only applied to unskilled and temporary jobs, often in the areas of construction and reservoir clearance, and there was no guarantee that the approach would be honored (Fig. 105.3). African American critics added that because blacks occupied low level jobs, they did not receive a proportionate share of the payroll even if they did have a proportionate share of the jobs (Houston Davis, 1934). In the case of Norris Dam, 

Blacks made up 4.5% of the population in the fourteen counties suiiounding the dam. Yet black employment during the peak period of employment (1933 to September 1935) langed 

The TVA s quota approach, in addition to being selectively and inconsistently applied, reduced African Americans to a labor commodity according to the NAACP (Houston Davis, 1934 291). It also allowed the Authority to ignore African Americans in areas in which they made up a small percentage of the population (Grant, 1990). This fact becomes even clearer when we examine the unflinching way in which TVA excluded African Americans from the planned community of Norris. 

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Fig. 105.2 Norris Dam, Tennessee Valley, 2008. (Photograph by Robert N. Brown)...

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