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- In deep frustration many blacks called President Franklin D. Roosevelt's programs a "raw deal" instead of a "new deal." Some charities refused to provide needy black persons food, particularly in the South. To make matters worse, violence rose against blacks during the 1930s, carried out by whites competing for the same jobs.
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Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s. Negro and White Man Sitting on Curb, Oklahoma, 1939. The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for ...
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Between 1915 and 1930, approximately 1.5 million black southerners had migrated to northern and midwestern cities, such as Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Philadelphia.
Feb 20, 2020 · In an in-depth look at unexamined archival material and detailed data, The Southern Key challenges established historiography, both telling a tale of race, radicalism, and betrayal and arguing that the outcome was not at all predetermined.
- Introduction
- Issue Summary
- Contributing Forces
- Perspectives
- Impact
- Notable People
- Primary Sources
- Suggested Research Topics
- Bibliography
"Let Jesus lead you and Roosevelt feed you" (quoted in Robert S. McElvaine. The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941,1993). These words were spoken by a black minister to his congregation shortly before the 1936 presidential election. Hard times were nothing new for black Americans. After all, Southern slavery had ended only a few generations earli...
Tough Times Turn Harder
Racism in the 1920s invaded every aspect of life in the United States. Many people outwardly expressed such feelings in public with few reservations. Given this longstanding social atmosphere, black Americans naturally suffered greatly when the economy declined in 1929. Those employed were often the first to be laid off when company fortunes fell. The slogan "Last Hired, First Fired" became well known. By 1932 black Americans had a 50 percent unemployment rate compared to 25 percent in the U....
Chronology:
1929: 1. The radio program Amos 'n' Andy,exploiting all stereotypes held by white America of blacks, becomes the most popular radio program in the nation, attracting 60 percent of the radio-listening public. 1933: 1. The number of lynchings of blacks in the United Statesduring the Great Depression peaks at twenty-eight. 1935: 1. President Franklin Roosevelt issues an executive order prohibiting discrimination in new Works Progress Administration projects, one of the first anti-discrimination...
Depression in the Rural South
In 1930 over two million males worked in agriculture. Of these over 835,000 black farmers and laborers faced particularly difficult times in the rural South. Less than 13 percent of black farmers owned their own land. The rest worked as sharecroppers andtenant farmers on farms of large landowners. Approximately 40 percent of black workers in the nation in the 1930s were farm laborers, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers. Not only was a declining economy a threat to their employment, new machine...
Black Americans had historically been among the nation's most underprivileged segments of society. During the early nineteenth century, black slaves were a key element of the U.S. economy providing cheap labor for the South's agricultural region. Freedom following the Civil War brought little relief, as white supremacy remained a key part of Americ...
Local Perspectives
Black Americans entered the Great Depression already economically deprived. The introduction of New Deal work relief programs in 1933 raised some hope for federal assistance. But because local governments dominated by white supremacists guided politics administered many New Deal programs, little help arrived. The combination of longstanding racism and increased competition over jobs led to considerable hard feelings. This situation was especially strong in the South. In many areas black Ameri...
National Perspectives
On a national level, black Americans, who composed only 10 percent of the population and had traditionally been economically downtrodden and politically voiceless, had a major mountain to climb for relief. This poem (from McElvaine's The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941, 1993) was a popular fictional characterization of President Roosevelt speaking to Eleanor. It was a criticism of Eleanor's promotion of black equality. This prose represents well the racism that pervaded American society...
International Perspectives
Racism was not unique to the United States in the 1930s. Preaching racial and religious hatred, Adolf Hitler gained political power in Germany in the late 1920s and became the leader of Germany in 1933.Hitler claimed the Germans formed a "master race" that would rule the world. He considered blacks an inferior race. As a result, the Nazi Party in Germany most vigorously promoted the rise of racism in Europe through the 1930s. Black Americans were among the first Americans to condemn Hitler an...
The historic civil rights movement of the 1950s resulted in major legal gains in the 1960s. It clearly owed part of its success to the gains made in the 1930s. Black Americans had been appointed to the highest public offices in U.S. history. A key group, the Black Cabinet, personally advised the president on a regular basis. First Lady Eleanor Roos...
Will Alexander (1884–1956). A white Methodist minister in Tennessee, Alexander became increasingly concerned with rural black poverty. He left the ministry to become executive director of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in 1919. He then became president of Dillard University in New Orleansin 1930. In 1935 Alexander was appointed assistant...
Racial Discrimination During the New Deal
During the Great Depression, black Americans not only faced racial discrimination in employment, but in economic relief programs as well. They often received inferior food and goods, if any at all. Evelyn Finn of Louisiana reminisced a number of years later, after the end of the New Deal. Finn's memories are recounted in Studs Terkel's oral history volume on the Great Depression, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression(1986, p. 319).
Imagine being a black American living in the early twentieth century in the United States. Describe the benefits you might expect from the New Deal programs.What were the lasting effects of the New Deal for black Americans and the dream of social justice?Conduct more research on people like William H. Hastie, Marian Anderson, and Mary McLeod Bethune to find more out about their lives during the Great Depression and beyond. What types of struggles w...Sources
Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn. "Or Does It Explode?": Harlem in the Great Depression. New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1991. "Jim Crow Concert Hall," Time,March 6, 1939. Kelley, Robin D.G., and Earl Lewis. To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans. New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 2000. Kirby, John B. Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era: Liberalism and Race.Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980. McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941.New York: Times Bo...
Further Reading
Appiah, Kwame A., and Henry L. Gates, eds. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience.New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999. Egerton, John. Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South.New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Hampton, Henry, and Steve Fayer. Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s.New York: Bantam Books, 1990. Mead, Christopher. Champion: Joe Louis, Black H...
Jul 16, 2020 · The Southern Key argues that much of what is important in politics and society today was largely shaped by the successes and failures of the labor movements of the 30s and 40s, notably the failures of southern labor organizing during this period.
2 days ago · The Great Depression of the 1930s worsened the already bleak economic situation of African Americans. They were the first to be laid off from their jobs, and they suffered from an unemployment rate two to three times that of whites.
Feb 22, 2018 · The Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women on a train near Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931, endured several lengthy court trials.
