The Great Depression dramatically affected the American family. Many men found themselves out of work, and many married women, eager to support their families, worked outside the home for the first time. African-American women especially found it easier to obtain work than their husbands, working as domestic servants, clerks, textile workers, and in other occupations. This employment increased their status and power in the home, gaining them a stronger voice in household decisions.

The New Deal programs, President Roosevelt’s response to the Depression, were designed to provide jobs to the unemployed through public works projects. Through newly implemented agencies such as the Works Progress Administration, Americans were put back to work. Although some argued that women should not be given jobs when many men were unemployed, women in key positions in the Roosevelt administration, including Ellen Woodward, director of the Division of Women’s and Professional Projects of the WPA, ensured that unemployed women benefited from the work relief programs.

In Petersburg, Va., as in most communities, women employed by the WPA worked in jobs associated with women’s work: sewing bedding and clothing for indigent families, typing and filing city records, immunizing children, staffing nurseries, keeping house for the sick and disabled, and, as at Lee Memorial Park, landscaping publicly owned property. Many of these projects were designed to employ women who lacked specific job skills but who were experienced in homemaking or farm labor.

The WPA project at Lee Park was initiated in December ￜ935, when the City of Petersburg was designated to build a wildflower and bird sanctuary with the park to provide employment for women. Donald Holden, a member of the Petersburg Garden Club and an avid gardener and horticulturalist, was chosen to supervise the project. Groups of unemployed black and white women worked together to clear ravines, build over ten miles of paths, plant over one million roots of honeysuckle for erosion control, label 500 different kinds of plants with both common and botanical names, transplant more than 365,000 plants, shrubs, and trees into the preserve, and construct bridges and benches. Regardless of federal laws governing New Deal programs, racial discrimination was evident in the Lee Park project, with only white women holding supervisory positions while black women were responsible for the demanding manual labor.

Source: "Educator's Guide: On the Trail of History - Lee Memorial Park, Petersburg, Virginia."