The Great Depression Case

During the Great Depression, Americans were left desperate and in need of help. Elected in 1942, Franklin Roosevelt then introduced the New Deal. The New Deal was aimed to give relief, reform, and recovery to the American population. While the New Deal helped a majority of Americans, it had both positive and negative effects on the African American population

Two important programs were the National Recovery administration and the Works Progress Administration. The National Recovery Administration allowed everyone to have a minimum wage of forty cents an hour, an eight-hour day, and it abolished child labor. This impacted African Americans specifically because it set a standard that put them on the same level as the white population. The National Recovery Administration also made codes to “weaken the wage differential based on color.” Reinforcing the fact that no matter what color one was they would receive the same compensation.^[1]

 The Works progress administration helped over one million African Americans. This program helped the Negro community by finally allowing them to achieve positions in upper level government jobs such as “The department of Interior, Civilian Conservation Corps and the Federal Housing Administration.” ^[2]  Before the New Deal, White Americans only held these jobs.  

Although Sears thought that the National Recovery Administration was good for the African American population, John Davis and Leslie Fishel both thought it did not benefit the population. Davis thought it would require the regulations of the “ Laissez-Faire industry.” By this he meant that the program would never work unless there were some standard regulations in the industry set for the government. Such as the standards on capital and labor in the south would need to be fixed. This meant that the south would not pay the Africans Americans less and would have to give them jobs that a white man could hold. Also the African Americans would receive the smallest amount of income and would have been the first people targeted by the employers.^[3] Because of their demographic, blacks received less compensation for the same amount of work and were “frozen” out of skilled jobs. Even the National Recovery Administration administrator, General Hugh A. Johnson, thought that the program was “ a complete failure for not properly recognizing the Negro.” ^[4]

Another program created during the Great Depression was the Federal Emergency Relief Act. While the Federal Emergency Relief Act was active it employed over thirty-five hundred blacks in various skilled and unskilled professions. The Federal Emergency Relief Act employed over thirty-five hundred blacks in skilled and unskilled positions. Also provided than twenty percent of African American students at black West Virginian Colleges with jobs and gave more than fifty thousand dollars in aid to black graduate students. In all black colleges and high schools received over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in scholarships from the Federal Emergency Relief Act.^[5] Over forty thousand families received aid from this program; this was almost thirty percent of the population in 1935.^[6]

  Although James Sears believed the Federal Emergency Relief Act helped the African American population Leslie Fishel believed that is was “dogged by racial discrimination.” Leslie tells the reader that is was this way because local people were in charge of many of the projects that the program created. An example that he gives the reader is in Jacksonville, Florida where the number of black Americans working on the project out numbered the whites but the whites still recieved a bigger percentage of the funds.^[7]

The Civilian Conservation Corps was a program granted under the New Deal that gave jobs to unmarried eighteen through twenty-five year old men. The program aimed to “help relieve poverty and provide training for young men.” According to Salmond, this program was the best of all of the New Deal programs. He believed that it gave people a second chance at education and gave training toward receiving better jobs that the workers might not have been able to receive without it. The program had over two and a half million men go through it.^[8] 

Sears also agreed with Salmond that the Civilian Conservation Corps helped the black population. Sears tells the readers that between 1933 and 1942 the program provided more than two hundred thousand African Americans with jobs. The Program also helped the African Americans to increase their reading skills. They also learned “valuable skills”, and the program kept them from running the streets and getting into trouble. The African Americans also benefited from the social security money that they received. This aided dependent African American mothers and children. ^[9]