Mr. B’s Notes on the impact of the Great Depression on minorities
African Americans
1920s

After the American civil war, liberated African-Americans searched for a safe place to explore
their new identities as free men and women. They found it in Harlem. This New York
neighborhood became home to some of the best and brightest minds of the 20th century and
gave birth to a cultural revolution that spanned the 1920s. This blossoming of AfricanAmerican culture in European-American society, particularly in the arts, became known as the
Harlem Renaissance.

Swing, which had grown up in the dancehalls of Harlem, would become the defining music for
an entire generation of Americans in the 1930s. Swing rescued the recording industry. In
1932, just 10 million records had been sold in the United States. By 1939, that number would
grow to 50 million.

In some areas of the United States, African Americans had seen improvements during the
1920s, mostly in the northeast, as the Harlem Renaissance flourished. But in many ways,
the 1920s represented economic stagnation as most African American failed to
benefit from the economic growth of the 1920s.
African Americans
1930s

In 1929, the Great Depression devastated the United States. Hard times came to people
throughout the country, especially rural blacks. Half of all African Americans lived in
the south. Rural southern blacks lost farms, as cotton prices and other agricultural products
dropped in price. Cotton prices plunged from eighteen to six cents a pound. Two thirds of
black farmers earned nothing or went into debt.

In the cities, blacks lost jobs as white men took the low-pay, low-status jobs such as
street cleaners and janitors. Even jobs traditionally held by blacks, such as busboys, elevator
operators, garbage men, porters, maids, and cooks -- were sought by desperate unemployed
whites.

Intimidation, including lynchings, increased as the Depression deepened. In
Atlanta, a Klan-like group called the Black Shirts paraded carrying racists signs. And in
Mississippi, where blacks traditionally held certain jobs on trains, several unemployed white
men, seeking train jobs, ambushed and killed the black workers.

By 1932, 75% of black people were unemployed compared to the general figure of
25%.

Relief programs run by local governments went to the whites first, leaving many
black families malnourished and homeless.

As a result of the worsening economic and social conditions, close to half a million blacks
moved to northern cities to find work (in addition to the millions who moved
north during the Great Migration 1915-30). When they arrived in the cities, however,
there were few jobs available, as the cities were already devastated by factory closings and
failed businesses.
Relief
FDR’s First Term

The only group in the early years of the Depression that concerned itself with black rights
of rural blacks was the Communist Party. The Communists also organized interracial
unions and demonstrations for relief, jobs, and end to evictions.

Between Roosevelt's election in 1932 and throughout most of his first term, neither the
President nor the Congress paid much attention to the suffering of blacks. The
President did not want to antagonize the Southern Senators who controlled the
Senate and who could block his efforts to end the Depression.
FDR’s Second Term

By the end of Roosevelt's first term, the president's thinking began to change
thanks, in part, to the efforts of his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt became
profoundly aware of the injustices suffered by African Americans. She began to speak out
publicly on behalf of blacks and against race prejudice.

FDR began to publicly speak out against lynching during his second term. FDR
also appointed several blacks to position within the administration, including attorney William
Hastie, and Mary McLeod Bethune, an important adviser who played a significant role in the
“Black Cabinet”.

Federal agencies began to open their doors to blacks, providing jobs, relief, farm
subsidies, education, and training. But the reliefs provided by these agencies were
limited:
 African Americans benefited from several federal programs including the
Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Works Progress
Administration (WPA).
 Blacks also comprised a quarter of residents in federal housing projects.
 Some divisions harmed African-Americans. The Agricultural
Administration Agency (AAA), whose policy enforcement favored landowners
over tenant farmers, penalized blacks, who were mostly sharecroppers.
 Furthermore, Federal programs that were administered by local governments
often continued to deny relief to African Americans.

One bright spot for the African Americans was the labor movement. One labor union,
the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, founded by A. Philip Randolph, successfully
negotiated the first contract between a black union and a US-based corporation, the Pullman
Company in 1937. As a result, 500,000 blacks joined labor organizations during the
1930s. In some unions they comprised a fifth of the membership.

The relief provided by federal agencies to blacks was insufficient. However, for
the first time since Reconstruction, the federal government actively supported
blacks and made a serious effort to incorporate them into the mainstream of American life.

Black voters responded to the change of heart of the Roosevelt administration by
switching their political allegiance from the Republican Party to the Democratic
Party.
Hispanic Americans

The Great Depression devastated Hispanic Americans. At the start of the Great
Depression there were approximately 1.5 million Latinos in the United States. The majority
was of Mexican heritage. Other Hispanics traced their heritage to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the
Dominican Republic, among other origins. Most Hispanic Americans lived in the Southwest
including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas.

In the Southwestern United States, Hispanics occupied similar socio-economic
status to African Americans in the South. Although some Mexican-Americans
were long established, most Hispanics worked the lowest paying jobs, whether in
agriculture or industry. The agricultural jobs were often geographically temporary, as
workers followed crops, planting and harvesting. Low wages, long hours, and poor working
conditions were commonplace.

When the Depression hit Latinos, they suffered substantial job losses, as they were “last
hired, first fired”.

White programs administrators often wrongly claimed that many eligible Latinos
were not citizens in orders to deny them access to relief programs.

The ill-treatment went further. Latin American children were not allowed to enroll in
schools. Hospitals often refused to admit Hispanics when they were ill or
injured.
There were a few exceptions. For example, the head of the Texas division of the National
Youth Administration, Lyndon B. Johnson, the future president, made sure that Hispanics
benefited from the programs.

Because Hispanics were often treated as unwelcome foreigners, regardless of
citizenship status, they had difficulty in creating stable institutions such as
unions. Latinos frequently had little or no support both outside their own communities.

In the face of poverty and ill-treatment by employers and local and state governments,
Hispanics relocated. The mass movement within the United States resulted in a rise
in the Latino urban population. The move into cities simply relocated their poverty into
urban ghettos.

As the city populations swelled, local government tried to force Mexican
Americans out. In raids on the barrios (a Spanish-speaking section in a city), U.S.
citizens (“illegals”) as well as non-U.S. citizens (“true illegals”) were rounded up in the climate
of discrimination and fear. The intimidation caused close to a half-million Latinos to
move to Mexico during the Great Depression.

It is estimated that half of all Hispanic Americans relocated during the Great Depression
out of fear or in search of a living.