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Depression and New Deal

The American Dilemma

Four Freedoms

Civil Rights I

Civil Rights II

The Great Depression and New Deal

1920s were a prosperous time for many Americans.  The economy was growing and the future looked bright.  Not everyone shared equally in the prosperity.  African Americans managed to secure employment in the automobile industry, in glass, paper, and tobacco factories.  Despite the rapid growth of the Southern textile industry only a few African Americans managed to gain employment there.  Still the majority of the African American population were involved in agricultural pursuits.  Equality still eluded blacks and a series of organizations were created to help them gain equality in employment opportunities at least.  One of these was the Friends of Negro Freedom formed in 1920.  The Friends hoped to establish branches across the nation and then use the boycott to fight discrimination in employment.  Only a few locals were established and the organization’s efforts by and large had little impact.  Others were organized and they too, for the most part, failed.  The three major reasons for this failure was white hostility, African American indifference, and African American disunity.

A significant step was taken towards leveling the employment field in 1925 when A. Philip Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids.  The organization was immediately attacked by the Pullman Company as a radical society.  Since the 1890s the US had a strong paranoia over labor organization.  Organization typically led to riots, chaos, and violence.  In the 1920s that paranoia was that much greater because the Communist Revolution in Russia in 1917.  Americans were afraid that Communism would infiltrate the US.  Marxist socialism, upon which Communism is built, calls for the eventual uprising of the proletariat, or laboring classes, against the bourgeoisie, or those who control a society’s wealth.  Organization of labor smacked of socialism.  Such accusations were much more effective when labeled at organizations attempting to organize black laborers because they were at the utmost bottom of the labor ladder, they were among the most discontented classes and had the most to gain from a socialist uprising.  Randolph’s organization survived the attacks by the Pullman Company, especially after it received endorsements from the NAACP, National Urban League, and AFL (the only labor organization open to African Americans).  In 1937 the Pullman Company formally recognized the organization.

Life was dismal in the agricultural community and both blacks and whites struggled to get by.  The war years were ones of relative prosperity for American farmers because European agricultural output dropped drastically due to the war.  Following the war a series of events combined to hurdle American farmers into depression long before the rest of the nation found itself there.  European farmers resumed production while American farmers maintained their production.  The end result was a severe drop in prices and therefore farm incomes.  Many farmers had gone into debt during the war to expand production while prices were high.  Now they found themselves with large debts and diminished ability to pay it.  Many were forced off the land and into tenancy.  In addition to this, the boll weevil destroyed harvests that had progressively grown smaller as a result of erosion and soil depletion.  Even with the migration of thousands of African Americans off the land, those who remained suffered through years of depressed conditions before the stock market crashed.

The stock market crash did not cause the Depression alone and it was actually more of a sign of the ills of the American economy than a cause of it.  In the years following WWI the distribution of wealth in the US became increasingly polarized with an extremely small group of people controlling a majority of the wealth.  Purchasing power dropped because those with the ability to buy had no need to buy…they had everything they needed while those who would buy if they had the means didn’t because they didn’t.  Stock speculation, over-reliance on the auto and construction industries, and other issues combined to cause the floor to drop out of the US economy.  After the stock market collapse began in October 1929 banks began to close because they were so heavily leveraged in stocks that had lost their value.  As banks began to close, runs began on other banks which caused even more to close.  Factories had cut production because demand had declined, which put people out of work causing further declines in demand followed by more production cuts and the cycle repeated.

Even before the crash, as companies began to cut production, African Americans were among the first to feel the pinch.  They were the first to be terminated and the low wages they worked for ensured that they had little or no savings to cushion the blow.  As jobs became scarce the menial positions blacks had been forced to accept because whites felt they were below them didn’t seem so menial anymore…any job is better than no job and starvation.  The force with which the black community was hit by the depression is evidenced by the fact that in October 1933 25-40% of the urban black population in major cities went on relief roles.  This figure was 3 to 4 times higher than that of whites.  In some areas that figure was higher: 65% in Atlanta needed relief while at least 80% in Norfolk found themselves in the same situation.

The Depression Era witnessed a change in voting patterns among African Americans.  In 1928 the Republican Party abandoned its black constituents in favor of winning the support Southern whites.  The ploy worked and Hoover won seven Southern states in the election that year.  1928 was also saw the first African American Congressman elected from the north: Illinois Republican Representative Oscar DePriest.    African Americans had rediscovered their political voice in a sense and the years following 1928 saw them increasingly vote for those viewed as friends and against those perceived as enemies, regardless of race.  The days of blind loyalty to the Party of Lincoln were becoming a thing of the past.  In 1940 Arthur Miller replaced DePriest and became the first African American Democrat elected to Congress.

In 1932 Roosevelt did not receive overwhelming support from the African American electorate but he would not be in office long before he secured that support.  Roosevelt’s approach to the Depression and his association with and use of African American advisors helped foster great support among African Americans.  Eleanor Roosevelt helped this position by her close association with African Americans as well.  She became a close associate of Mary McLeod Bethune and was instrumental in having Marian Anderson give an Easter Sunday recital in front of 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused permission for her to sing at Constitution Hall.

Roosevelt’s reliance on African American advisors was nothing new to the White House.  Other presidents had done so in limited measures.  What was different was that there were a large number in the Roosevelt White House, they had ready access to the President, and they were given jobs that were perceived as important.  One of the most visual was Mary McLeod Bethune who served several years as director of the division of Negro affairs in the National Youth Administration.  In addition to Bethune there were several others who served in multiple positions.

Many New Deal agencies discriminated against African Americans.  Roosevelt, while not necessarily agreeing with this practice, held his tongue in order to retain support of conservative minded Southern Congressmen.  Had Roosevelt come out in strong favor of equality for African Americans his New Deal for fighting the Great Depression would be dead in the water.  As a result, African Americans suffered more and received less than their share of New Deal relief.

The NIRA provided for establishment of minimum wages and a 40-hour workweek.  The committees that drew up the codes often wrote in cost of living adjustments that ensured whites received higher wages than blacks.  In many cases African Americans were terminated when wages increased and their jobs given to white laborers.  Roosevelt’s AAA meant to help farmers actually did more harm to many farmers (white and black) than it did good.  Farmers were paid for curtailing production.  Landlords often kept checks that were supposed to be distributed to tenant farmers.  When adjustments were made to AAA providing for direct payment to tenant farmers, landlords simply forced tenant farmers off the land, ensuring that the checks would be issued to them.  Work relief programs like the WPA and PWA also discriminated in giving jobs and in wages.  Blacks were forced to accept lower wages than whites and provisions that required African Americans be hired in proportion to their representation in the population were ignored.  WPA offered, in addition to employment, food and clothing which were distributed on a much more equitable basis than jobs were.  Social Security benefits were not available to most because agricultural and domestic laborers, which accounted for the majority of the black population, were not eligible for the program.

The National Youth Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps did provide assistance to thousands of young African American men and women.  NYA programs gave students the means to continue their education.  CCC took young men and put them in camps across the nation operated by the military.  These men were removed from the despair and hopelessness that the Depression engendered in urban families.  They received discipline, three square meals, money, training, and exposure to other people from around the nation.  In return they performed forestry projects, planting trees, and building trails, lodges and fire towers.  Between 1933 and 1942 approximately 200,000 African Americans passed through the CCC.

One of the most disturbing episodes of the period, and history, involved a study conducted by the US Public Health Service began in the last days of Hoover’s presidency in Alabama.  It charted the progression of untreated syphilis in over four-hundred black sharecroppers and laborers.  Medical treatment for the disease was withheld and the participants were never informed they had the disease.  Wives and children were infected by men who were unaware they had the disease.  This study continued until 1972 when it was exposed by an Associated Press article.

During the depression blacks found that employment discrimination had gotten much worse.  Organizations again were created to help alleviate these problems.  In 1929 the Colored Merchants’ Association was organized to open stores and buy merchandise cooperatively.  It urged the black community to purchase from these stores to provide employment for their race.  The attempt fell short and the stores closed within two years.  Boycotts spread across the nation as African Americans tried to force merchants who served black communities to hire black employees.  The most intensive of these efforts took place in New York City where the Citizens’ League for Fair Play was organized in 1933.  They urged stores to hire black employees and when the stores refused they began picketing with the motto “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work”.

Labor unions provided virtually no assistance until 1935.  New Deal legislation provided for recognition of labor’s right to organize.  This didn’t help African Americans because unions adhered to their racially discriminatory policies much more closely during the Depression to secure as many jobs for whites as they could.  In 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, setting a minimum wage of 25 cents and a forty-hour workweek.  Again, African Americans fell outside the benefits of this law because, like Social Security, it did not apply to agricultural and domestic laborers.  In November 1935 the Committee for Industrial Organization was created to organize the mass production industries.  The CIO made it clear they intended to organize labor regardless of race.  Finally unions that accepted African Americans were established in the steel and meatpacking industries and among dockworkers.

Roosevelt’s legislation, while alleviating the suffering of the Depression, was not enough to end it.  It wouldn’t be until WWII began and the US got involved that the nation’s economy finally picked up.  Again, African Americans would go off to fight on foreign shores for a country that denied them many of the basic rights of citizenship and again they would perform effectively.  When they came home nothing would be the same and the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement that had been laid in the post WWI years sprang to life.