Video: ''Franklin D. Roosevelt First "Fireside Chat" On Banking March 12, 1933

(Sunday, March 12, 1933, 10:00 p.m. EST; during the Great Depression) — U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the first of his Sunday evening “fireside chats” to the American public tonight in a nationwide radio broadcast, to explain why he had declared a bank holiday.

Roosevelt, who had been inaugurated only eight days before on Mar. 4, 1933, had spent his first week coping with a month-long epidemic of bank closings that was hurting families nationwide. He closed the entire American banking system on Mar. 6, 1933. On Mar. 9 Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act, which Roosevelt used to effectively create federal deposit insurance when the banks reopened.

Tonight, on the eve of the end of the bank holiday, Roosevelt spoke to a radio audience of more than 60 million people, to tell them in clear language “what has been done in the last few days, why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be.”

The result, according to economic historian William L. Silber, was a “remarkable turnaround in the public’s confidence…The contemporary press confirms that the public recognized the implicit guarantee and, as a result, believed that the reopened banks would be safe, as the President explained in his first fireside chat.”

Within two weeks people returned more than half of the cash they had been hoarding, and the first stock-trading day after the bank holiday marked the largest-ever one-day percentage price increase.

Roosevelt would go on to deliver 29 more fireside chats through June 12, 1944.