The national unemployment rate is at its highest since 1984. U.S. News and World Report found February had more than 120,000 foreclosures. Times are tough.

Many are unaware, however, that the current economic situation is similar to the ones faced by previous generations.

“I’m inclined to say, and there are people who will disagree with me, that Oklahomans simply don’t care very much about their history,” history professor William Savage said. “I think much of it has to do with the degree of unpleasantness one finds.”

The national unemployment rate during the Great Depression, from 1929 to 1940, was 17.9 percent, more than double the current rate.

Based on the 2005 Oklahoma population, 5 percent of the state, or 177,172 workers, are unemployed as of January.

At one point during the Great Depression, 240,000 Oklahomans were unemployed, said Lynda Schwan, an Oklahoma Historical Society program coordinator.

The unemployment rates created a sticky national situation.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered the White House in 1933, he was faced with many economic problems. His solution? The New Deal.

The New Deal in Oklahoma

The Works Progress Administration, part of the New Deal that created specific jobs to work with people’s individual skill sets and talents, left an unerasable mark on Norman.

WPA 1937 and 1939 shields adorn sidewalks along Cruce Street and Asp Avenue in the Chautauqua Historic District. The shields were stamped into the sidewalks about 70 years ago, but remain bold and legible signs of what might come.

“The tendency is to ignore the Depression completely as simply an unpleasant aspect of our history,” Savage said.

The WPA built parks and buildings, but also raised the confidence of many Oklahomans.

“It [the WPA] provided buildings and resources Oklahoma didn’t have,” Schwan said. “And it helped to employ those people so they felt like they still had a sense of worth.”

Then and now

The WPA could serve as a model for future policies to combat the nation’s economic problems, said Zac Savage, history senior.

But the U.S. would be headed toward a new New Deal sooner than some think.

Congress recently passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which will save or create 3.5 million jobs, according to President Barack Obama.

In his Feb. 24 address to Congress, Obama said 90 percent of the jobs created will be in the private sector and will include rebuilding roads and bridges, constructing wind turbines and solar panels, and expanding mass transit systems.

Could Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act be another New Deal?

Only time can tell, but future generations of sooners may unknowingly walk over sidewalks and past buildings stamped with “ARRA 2009.”

WPA built in Oklahoma

At OU, the WPA built the tower of the Oklahoma Memorial Union, and Adams and Richards Halls from 1937 to 1965.

-4 hospitals

-4 firehouses

-825 school buildings

-27 parks

-34 swimming pools

-29,325 miles of road

-330 miles of sidewalk

-585 miles of curb

-5,115 manholes

-Lynda Schwan, Oklahoma Historical Society program coordinator.