The Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) is a summer employment program for youth ages 15 through 18 from all segments of society. The program provides teenage employment and accomplishes conservation work on public lands. This hearing provides testimony by participants and directors in or related to the Corps to request funding for the YCC. The opening statement is given by Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, Peter H. Kostmayer. Statements are also given by: (1) Allyssa Prazenic, member, Pennsylvania Conservation Corps; (2) Eleazar Dominguez, member, Pennsylvania Conservation Corps; (3) Virginia Crouch, graduate, Youth Conservation Corps; (4) Carlton Williams, ranger supervisor, Fairmont Park; (5) Paul McCloskey, Jr., Chair, House Commission on National and Community Service; (6) David Moffitt, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Assistant Director, Visitor Services; (7) William Hartwig, U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish & Wildlife Service, Deputy Assistant Director, Refuges and Wildlife; (8) Jay Lamar Beasley, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Deputy Chief for Administration; (9) Peter Engbretson, executive director, Philadelphia Ranger Corps; (10) Don Mathis, director, Pennsylvania Conservation Corps; (11) Richard Bernheimer, interim director, California Conservation Corps; (12) Kathleen Selz, executive director, National Association of Service and Conservation Corps; (13) Margaret Rosenberry, Youth Service America, director, finance and administration; and (14) Destry Jarvis, executive vice president, Student Conservation Association. The document contains a Conservation and Service Corps Profiles chart which highlights the various programs. The appendix contains two letters submitted for the hearing record. (KS)

BETWEEN 1933 and 1942, nearly 200,000 young African-Americans participated in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's most successful New Deal agencies. In an effort to correct the lack of historical attention paid to the African-American contribution to the CCC, Olen Cole, Jr., examines their participation in the Corps as well as its impact on them. Though federal legislation establishing the CCC held that no bias of "race, color, or creed" was to be tolerated, Cole demonstrates that the very presence of African-Americans in the CCC, as well as the placement of the segregated CCC work camps in predominantly white California communities, became significant sources of controversy. Cole assesses community resistance to all-black camps, as well as the conditions of the state park camps, national forest camps, and national park camps where African-American work companies in California were stationed. He also evaluates the educational and recreational experiences of African-American CCC participants, their efforts to combat racism, and their contributions to the protection and maintenance of California's national forests and parks. Perhaps most important, Cole's use of oral histories gives voice to individual experiences: former Corps members discuss the benefits of employment, vocational training, and character development as well as their experiences of community reaction to all-black CCC camps. An important and much neglected chapter in American history, Cole's study should interest students of New Deal politics, state and national park history, and the African-American experience in the twentieth century.