Social Effects of the Great
Depression
By Angela Brown
1
Hoovervilles
• 15,000 homeless in
New York City
• Homeless built shanty
towns called
Hoovervilles
• Mocked President
Hoover – blamed for
crisis
• Lived in piano boxes,
rusted – out cars etc.
2
Farm Distress
• Low food prices cut
income
• Lost farms, expelled
tenant farmers and
sharecroppers
• In protest farmers
dumped thousands of
gallons of milk-destroyed
other crops
• Actions shocked a hungry
nation
3
The Dust Bowl
• A region in the Great Plains where drought
and dust storms took place for much of the
1930s = Dust Bowl
• 440,000 left Oklahoma in 1930s
• 300,000 left Kansas
• Many migrated to California as laborers
4
Dorothea Lange
• Taught the nation to
see the realities of the
Depression in the
faces of suffering
Americans
• Photographer –
portrait studio in San
Francisco
• Left studio for streets
= photo journalist
5
• Attention of Farm
Security
Administration (FSA) set up by FDR
• Hired by FSA to
document the lives of
migrant farmers
• Most famous
photograph “Migrant
Mother”
6
• Lange’s work helped
creation of
government migrant
camps
• Inspired John
Steinbeck’s
Depression – novel
The Grapes of Wrath
7
Impact on Health
• Some starved, some
committed suicide
• Country people grew
food, ate berries and
wild plants
• City residents, sold
apples and pencils –
begged –fought over
contents of restaurant
garbage cans
• “relief gardens”
planted to eat or
barter
8
Stress on Families
• conditions declined –
families moved in
together
• divorce rate dropped
(couldn’t afford
separate households)
• men felt like failures
especially if
wives/children could
find work
9
10
• working women accused of taking jobs
from men – had to worry about feeding
hungry children
• Ford and many others would not hire
married women
• AFL endorsed practice
• Worked as domestic servants, typing,
nursing “women’s work”
11
Discrimination Increases
• Rise in
suspicion/hostilities
against minorities
• While labors filled low
paying jobs typical of
minorities – blacks no
rights to jobs if whites
out of work
• 56% African
Americans
unemployed in 1932
12
 Photographer Gordon
Parks documented plight
of African Americans –
first African American
photographer on staff of
Life Magazine – joined
Civilian Conservation
Corps (CCC) to
counteract hopelessness
of breadlines
13
• Relief programs discriminated – black
churches, and organizations like National
Urban League gave private help – Father
Divine opened soup kitchens
• Denied civil rights – education, voting,
health-care
• Lynchings increased
• Hispanics – Asian – Americans deported
(many born in U.S.)
14
• “Scottsboro Boys” – 9 black boys riding
rails arrested and accused of raping (2)
white women on the train – 8 of 9
convicted sentenced to die
• Communist party supplied legal defense
and organized demonstrations – helped
overturn convictions
15
Bibliography
• www.Snap-shot.com/picpages
• www.runestone.net
• www.//history1900’s.about.com
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