The Great Depression and
The New Deal
Chapter 18
The Great Depression Facts
■ 1929: Stock market crash; Pres Hoover
■ National income $81 billion to 40 billion
■ Bank closings and loss of life savings
■ Americans buy fewer consumer goods
■ Business production, investment and payroll
drops
■ Unemployment increases
African Americans and The Great
Depression
■ AA community hit hard; bad to worse
■ Already in exploitative agricultural system
■ Lay-offs & deterioration of living standards
■ 38%+ of AA could not support themselves
(17% Whites)
■ Lost jobs traditionally held because Whites
took job or could not afford services
■ AA response
■ Collectives, barter for goods/services; mutual
aid societies
African American Business and The
Great Depression
■ AA elite and business owners experienced
loss
■
■
■
Customers they relied on could not afford
services or to pay loans/mortgages
AA owned banks fail
AA insurance companies survived
The Failure of Relief
■ Depression made it impossible for charitable
organizations to meet needs of the people
■
AA had hard time getting aid and got less than
Whites
■ Pres Hoover’s hesitated to act and failed to
use Federal Government to intervene
■
Racist views resulted in refusal to hear AA
issues
African Americans and The New Deal
■ 1932: FDR becomes president; introduces New Deal
programs
■ 1st New Deal
■
Programs supposed to benefit AA and whites but
discrimination resulted in unfair administration (436)
■ Eleanor Roosevelt
■ AA Officials
■ Influence FDR; government employ of AA
■ “The Black Cabinet” or Federal Council on Negro
Affairs
■ Pressure president and fed agency heads to adopt &
support color-blind policies; advance status of AA
■ Mary McLeod Bethune (438)
Black Social Scientists and the New Deal
■ Social sciences used to settle issue of race
relations in country
■
Sociology, History, Economics, Political
Science
■ AA scholars study the economic, political and
sociological problems of AA
Black Social Scientists and the New Deal
■ Sociology
■ E Franklin Frazier: studied AA families
■ Charles S Johnson: editor of Opportunity;
critiqued American racial practices and policies;
highlighted work of AA novelists, poets,
playwrights
Black Social Scientists and the New Deal
■ Political Science: Ralph Bunche
■ Economics: Abram Harris and Robert Weaver
■ History-Carter G Woodson, Lorenzo Greene,
Benjamin Quarles, John Hope Franklin
■
AA “had been active agents in the past and not
simply passive objects of white people’s
actions”
Black Social Scientists and the New Deal
■ Carter G Woodson
■ Lorenzo Greene, Alrutheus Taylor and Monroe
Work
■
■
■
■
Association for the Study of Negro Life and
History
Negro History Week
Scholarship to dismiss claims of black inferiority
Emphasis on racial pride, achievement, and
autonomy helped raise AA morale
Black Social Scientists and the New Deal
■ Carnegie Corporation sponsors study of AA
life in 1930s
■
■
Importance of AA scholars
Led by Gunnar Myrdal (Swedish); staffed by AA
scholars
■
An American Dilemma: how racism undermined
progress of AA & set agenda for CRM
African Americans and the 2nd New Deal
■ 1st New Deal programs invalidated by
Supreme Court
■ 2nd New Deal survived legal challenges &
strengthens role of federal government
AA and political shift
■ AA shift political party allegiance to Democrats
■ AA voters concentrated voting power in urban
communities
■ Political power connected to economic
conditions
■
■
■
Oscar De Priest: 1st AA congressman from North
(1928)
Some Democrats support anti-lynching legislation
AA concerns about Southern Democrats
AA political shift
■ 1936 Democratic Convention
■ Conflict between AA Democrats and White
conservative Democrats
■ Southern congressman succeeded in
excluding AA from key gov’t programs
■
AA denied benefits through National Labor
Relations Act and Social Security
Works Progress Administration (WPA)
■ Changes of 2nd ND and shift of AA to
Democratic Party
■ Harry Hopkins
■ Created to employ the unemployed
■ Created jobs
■
Lincoln Tunnel (NY-NJ), Hoover Dam
■ More fair; reject racial discrimination
■ 1 million families get assistance
WPA~Arts Programs
■ Federal Art Project, Federal Music Project,
Federal Theater Project, Federal Writers
Project
■
Employed musicians, intellectuals, writers and
artists
■ Historical Records Survey (1937)
■ Writing teams to collect folklore & study ethnic
groups (Zora Neale Hurston)
Slave Narratives
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
■
WPA-Arts Programs
■ AA artists display talents
■ Murals on gov’t buildings, post offices, public
parks
■ Established art schools
■ 16 black theater units
■
Ex. Harlem Theater Project
■ Federal Theater Project
■ Controversial due to fear of communist
influence and leftist political views of AA writers
and performers
Black Protest during the Great
Depression
■ 1930s agenda:
■
Destroy obstacles to racial justice and barriers
to equal opportunities
■
Disparity between AA and white people in
relation to benefit from New Deal programs
NAACP and Civil Rights
■ Membership growth, increased effectiveness
■ Legal campaign against:
■ educational discrimination
■ political disfranchisement
■ government discrimination
■ Led by Charles Houston,Thurgood Marshall
and Walter White
■ Joined AFL to oppose/defeat Hoover federal
judge nomination
Criticism of the NAACP
■ Focused on civil liberties but ignored
economic misery of AA
■ DuBois criticized overemphasis on integration
■
■
Economic self determination for AA
Oppose legal segregation + strengthen
segregated institutions
■
■
Attacked for advocating voluntary segregation
Forced to resign as The Crisis editor
■ NAACP emphasizes economic policy and
builds stronger ties to labor movement
Charles Hamilton Houston
■ Harvard trained
■ Howard Law School
vice-dean
■ Plan to legally challenge
inequality in education
and voting
■
Equalize facilities
■ Lawsuits to force state &
local gov’t to comply with
Constitution
Thurgood Marshall
■ Houston’s former
student at Howard
NAACP and the Courts
■ Greater parity between AA & white teachers
■ End grad school discrimination
NAACP and the Courts
■ Attack “separate but equal”
■ Gaines v Canada (1938): Missouri ordered to provide
AA with opportunity to study law in state supported
school; Lincoln University
■ North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina
■ Sipuel v Board of Regents of the University of
Oklahoma (1947): state had to provide separate law
school for AA students in their home states
■ Sweatt v Painter (1950): challenged inferior law schools
for AA
■ Legal foundation for Brown v Topeka BOE
NAACP and the Courts
■ Fight against political disfranchisement
■ Texas: Terrell Law (no AA participation in
Democratic primary elections)
■ NAACP test case to challenge
■
■
■
20 + years; most sustained and intense effort
Nixon v. Herndon (1927): Texas Democratic
primary unconstitutional
Smith v. Allwright (1944): ended white primary
altogether
Black Women and Community
Organizing
■ Contributions include:
■ NAACP fundraising and membership drives
■ Organizations formed to help AA during
Depression
■
■
Direct spending campaigns boycotts to persuade
businesses to hire AA women/children and stock
AA products
Support AA businesses, products and
professionals to keep money in community
Daisy Adams Lampkin (444)
■ 1884-1965
■ Voting
■ Liberty bond sales in AA community during
WWI
■ Raised money for NAACP
■ Lead roles in AA women organizations
Juanita E. (Jackson) Mitchell
■ 1913-1992
■ Founded City-Wide Young People’s Forum in
Baltimore, Maryland
■
Encouraged youth to discuss and plan attacks on
unemployment, segregation and lynching
■ NAACP national youth program director and directed
voter registration campaigns
■ 1st AA women admitted to practice law in Maryland
■
Cases against segregation on state’s public beaches
and public schools
Ella Baker
■ 1903-1986 “Mother of Civil Rights Movement”
■ Civil rights organizer (grass roots) and Journalist
Youth, women and labor
■ Young Negroes Cooperative League in Harlem
■ Collective decision making to solve community problems
■ YWCA, Harlem Housewives Cooperative, WPA, NAACP,
Urban League, Advisor to SNCC
■
Fannie B Peck
■ Detroit Housewives’ League
■ Economic nationalism and black women’s self
determination to help black families and
businesses survive during Depression
■ Directed spending campaigns to persuade
businesses to hire black women and children
■ Membership: pledge to support black business,
products and professionals to keep money in
the community
Organized Labor
■ AA and labor union affiliation changes in
1930s
■
■
■
Before 1930s
The New Deal
1935 Committee for Industrial Organization
(CIO)
Organized Labor
■ A Philip Randolph/Brotherhood of the Sleeping
Car Porters
■ African American Women
The Communist Party and African
Americans
■ What is Communism?
■ African American attraction to CP
■ The “Scottsboro Boys” Case
■ CP International Labor Defense (ILD)
■ Powell v Alabama (1932)
■ Norris v Alabama (1935)
■
■
Angelo Herndon (446)
Hoboing in Alabama (449)
The Communist Party and African
Americans
■ Debating Communist
Leadership
■
■
CP v NAACP
AA Public Opinion
■ The National Negro
Congress
■
■
■
■
■
John P. Davis
Modeled on Joint
Committee on National
Recovery
What?
NAACP associates
absent
Decline
The Tuskegee Study (Experiment)
■ 1932-1972 United States Public Health
Service program-Tuskegee Study of
Untreated Syphilis in the Male Negro
■
■
■
Macon County, Alabama
622 AA men/431 had advance syphilis or “bad
blood” + controls
Experiment rather than treatment program
■
“exam”, placebos, spinal taps, lunch, burial fund
The Tuskegee Study (Experiment)
■ Eunice Rivers
■ 1972 exposure
■ Settlement
■ May 16, 1997 Pres Clinton apologizes
■ AA and medicine today