Living in close quarters, with little privacy, conflicts inevitably arose. As well as being fun, participating in competitive sports, including boxing, was one way of dealing with tensions as they arose.
The boys came from varied backgrounds, rural and urban, and for many it was their first journey away from home. Being in the CCC exposed these young men to people completely different from themselves and gave them an opportunity to learn how to get along. Many an enrollee left the Corps with a broader perspective on their own country and the people in it. Yet the camps in the Civilian Conservation Corps, with a few exceptions, were segregated by race and ethnicity, and sometimes even by the regions the boys were from.