Great Depression
https://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-285193
African Americans
African American life during the Great Depression and the New Deal
Workers, many of them migrants, grading beans at a canning plant in Florida in 1937. The economic …
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Arthur Rothstein (neg. no. LC-USF34-005788-D)
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. In early public assistance programs African Americans often received substantially less aid than whites, and some charitable organizations even excluded blacks from their soup kitchens.
This intensified economic plight sparked major political developments among African Americans. Beginning in 1929, the St. Louis Urban League launched a national “jobs for Negroes” movement by boycotting chain stores that had mostly black customers but hired only white employees. Efforts to unify African American organizations and youth groups later led to the founding of the National Negro Congress in 1936 and the Southern Negro Youth Congress in 1937.
Virtually ignored by the Republican administrations of the 1920s, black voters drifted to the Democratic Party, especially in the Northern cities. In the presidential election of 1928 African Americans voted in large numbers for the Democrats for the first time. In 1930 Republican Pres. Herbert Hoover nominated John J. Parker, a man of pronounced antiblack views, to the U.S. Supreme Court. The NAACP successfully opposed the nomination. In the 1932 presidential race African Americans overwhelmingly supported the successful Democratic candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Roosevelt administration's accessibility to African American leaders and the New Deal reforms strengthened black support for the Democratic Party. A number of African American leaders, members of a so-called “black
African Americans
African American life during the Great Depression and the New Deal
Workers, many of them migrants, grading beans at a canning plant in Florida in 1937. The economic …
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Arthur Rothstein (neg. no. LC-USF34-005788-D)
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. In early public assistance programs African Americans often received substantially less aid than whites, and some charitable organizations even excluded blacks from their soup kitchens.
This intensified economic plight sparked major political developments among African Americans. Beginning in 1929, the St. Louis Urban League launched a national “jobs for Negroes” movement by boycotting chain stores that had mostly black customers but hired only white employees. Efforts to unify African American organizations and youth groups later led to the founding of the National Negro Congress in 1936 and the Southern Negro Youth Congress in 1937.
Virtually ignored by the Republican administrations of the 1920s, black voters drifted to the Democratic Party, especially in the Northern cities. In the presidential election of 1928 African Americans voted in large numbers for the Democrats for the first time. In 1930 Republican Pres. Herbert Hoover nominated John J. Parker, a man of pronounced antiblack views, to the U.S. Supreme Court. The NAACP successfully opposed the nomination. In the 1932 presidential race African Americans overwhelmingly supported the successful Democratic candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Roosevelt administration's accessibility to African American leaders and the New Deal reforms strengthened black support for the Democratic Party. A number of African American leaders, members of a so-called “black