Greenbelt Listeners

The majority of the households in Greenbelt would have possessed at least one radio. The radio was not particularly expensive, although in those days of the Depression it could cost as much as a week's wages. However there were cheaper ones available. The radio was the main source of communication with the outside world, and was the means to hear sports reports, news and music.

In the Oral Histories there are only limited records of the listening to radio. I think that this was not the result of the residents not having radios but more because they were not asked questions specifically about it and it was such an integral part of their lives. In a couple of the histories there are records of people hearing first about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on the radio, this suggests that this was the main source of news. Ann Neville, who was an infant Greenbelt resident during this period, recalls listening to Amos and Andy and Jack Benny with her family in Greenbelt.(1)

For the purposes of this project I am going to assume that the majority of houses in Greenbelt had radios and listened to the programs in a similar way to the rest of America. Dee Campo suggests that the Greenbelt residents would have listened to the same radio programs as average blue collar Americans. The most popular types of programs with this group on society were "news, comedy, quiz, audience participation and mystery shows."

In the Greenbelt Museum the house is set up as it was originally set up, the position of the radio in the livingroom shows its central importance.