Reply #13: My Dad was in it in Virginia. They had a Black CCC and White CCC & built 2 lakes [View All]

[HamdenRice]

It's kind of sad in retrospect. The people were very, very poor because it was a tobacco growing area and the price of tobacco collapsed in one year. The family was offered $5 for the entire crop.

The CCC built two recreational lakes by damming a river -- one built by blacks for blacks, one built by whites for whites.

In retrospect, though, it's also amazing that FDR was able to force the state to submit a project that expended any money at all on the poor African American farmers of the area.

When I was growing up in NYC every summer we went south to my grandma's farm and always went to the "colored" lake. I never saw the "white" lake until I was an adult, even though they were nominally desegregated in the 60s. I guess the tradition just stuck.

Today, Prince Edward Lake and Lake Goodwin are part of a single park called "Twin Lakes State Park."

http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/fishing/waterbodies/display.asp?id=106