{"id":200,"date":"2023-03-13T16:55:22","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T16:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/chapter\/module-4-11\/"},"modified":"2023-04-27T22:45:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T22:45:04","slug":"module-4-11","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/chapter\/module-4-11\/","title":{"raw":"4.11 Equal Rights and the New Deal","rendered":"4.11 Equal Rights and the New Deal"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"521\"]\"Photograph Lange, Dorothea. \u201cAfrican American Woman During the Great Depression in Hinds County, Mississippi.\u201d US Farm Security Administration. Wikimedia Commons Public Domain<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nThe Great Depression was particularly tough for nonwhite Americans. As an African American pensioner told interviewer Studs Terkel, \u201cThe Negro was born in depression. It didn\u2019t mean too much to him. The Great American Depression . . . only became official when it hit the white man.\u201d Black workers were generally the last hired when businesses expanded production and the first fired when businesses experienced downturns. In 1932, with the national unemployment average hovering around 25 percent, black unemployment reached as high as 50 percent, while even black workers who kept their jobs saw their already low wages cut dramatically.1<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nBlacks faced discrimination everywhere but suffered especially severe legal inequality in the Jim Crow South. In 1931, for instance, a group of nine young men riding the rails between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, were pulled from the train near Scottsboro, Alabama, and charged with assaulting two white women. Despite clear evidence that the assault had not occurred, and despite one of the women later recanting, the young men endured a series of sham trials in which all but one were sentenced to death. Only the communist-oriented International Legal Defense (ILD) came to the aid of the \u201cScottsboro Boys,\u201d who soon became a national symbol of continuing racial prejudice in America and a rallying point for civil rights\u2013minded Americans. In appeals, the ILD successfully challenged the boys\u2019 sentencing, and the death sentences were either commuted or reversed, although the last of the accused did not receive parole until 1946.2<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nDespite a concerted effort to appoint black advisors to some New Deal programs, Franklin Roosevelt did little to directly address the difficulties black communities faced. To do so openly would provoke southern Democrats and put his New Deal coalition\u2014\u2013the uneasy alliance of national liberals, urban laborers, farm workers, and southern whites\u2014at risk. Roosevelt not only rejected such proposals as abolishing the poll tax and declaring lynching a federal crime, he refused to specifically target African American needs in any of his larger relief and reform packages. As he explained to the national secretary of the NAACP, \u201cI just can\u2019t take that risk.\u201d 3<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nIn fact, many of the programs of the New Deal had made hard times more difficult. When the codes of the NRA set new pay scales, they usually took into account regional differentiation and historical data. In the South, where African Americans had long suffered unequal pay, the new codes simply perpetuated that inequality. The codes also exempted those involved in farm work and domestic labor, the occupations of a majority of southern black men and women. The AAA was equally problematic as owners displaced black tenants and sharecroppers, many of whom were forced to return to their farms as low-paid day labor or to migrate to cities looking for wage work. 4<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most notorious failure of the New Deal to aid African Americans came with the passage of the Social Security Act. Southern politicians chafed at the prospect of African Americans benefiting from federally sponsored social welfare, afraid that economic security would allow black southerners to escape the cycle of poverty that kept them tied to the land as cheap, exploitable farm laborers. The Jackson<\/em> (Mississippi) Daily News<\/em> callously warned that \u201cThe average Mississippian can\u2019t imagine himself chipping in to pay pensions for able-bodied Negroes to sit around in idleness . . . while cotton and corn crops are crying for workers.\u201d Roosevelt agreed to remove domestic workers and farm laborers from the provisions of the bill, excluding many African Americans, already laboring under the strictures of legal racial discrimination, from the benefits of an expanding economic safety net.5<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nWomen, too, failed to receive the full benefits of New Deal programs. On one hand, Roosevelt included women in key positions within his administration, including the first female cabinet secretary, Frances Perkins, and a prominently placed African American advisor in the National Youth Administration, Mary McLeod Bethune. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was a key advisor to the president and became a major voice for economic and racial justice. But many New Deal programs were built on the assumption that men would serve as breadwinners and women as mothers, homemakers, and consumers. New Deal programs aimed to help both but usually by forcing such gendered assumptions, making it difficult for women to attain economic autonomy. New Deal social welfare programs tended to funnel women into means-tested, state-administered relief programs while reserving entitlement benefits for male workers, creating a kind of two-tiered social welfare state. And so, despite great advances, the New Deal failed to challenge core inequalities that continued to mark life in the United States.6<\/sup><\/a>\r\n

Notes<\/h4>\r\n
    \r\n \t
  1. Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression<\/em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), 82. \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South<\/em> (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1969). \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t
  3. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929\u20131945<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 201. \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t
  4. Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America<\/em> (New York: Norton, 2005). \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t
  5. George Brown Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913\u20131945<\/em> (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1967), 491. \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t
  6. Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890\u20131935<\/em> (New York: Free Press, 1994).\"image\"<\/a><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"
    \"Photograph
    Lange, Dorothea. \u201cAfrican American Woman During the Great Depression in Hinds County, Mississippi.\u201d US Farm Security Administration. Wikimedia Commons Public Domain<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
    \n

    The Great Depression was particularly tough for nonwhite Americans. As an African American pensioner told interviewer Studs Terkel, \u201cThe Negro was born in depression. It didn\u2019t mean too much to him. The Great American Depression . . . only became official when it hit the white man.\u201d Black workers were generally the last hired when businesses expanded production and the first fired when businesses experienced downturns. In 1932, with the national unemployment average hovering around 25 percent, black unemployment reached as high as 50 percent, while even black workers who kept their jobs saw their already low wages cut dramatically.1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

    Blacks faced discrimination everywhere but suffered especially severe legal inequality in the Jim Crow South. In 1931, for instance, a group of nine young men riding the rails between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, were pulled from the train near Scottsboro, Alabama, and charged with assaulting two white women. Despite clear evidence that the assault had not occurred, and despite one of the women later recanting, the young men endured a series of sham trials in which all but one were sentenced to death. Only the communist-oriented International Legal Defense (ILD) came to the aid of the \u201cScottsboro Boys,\u201d who soon became a national symbol of continuing racial prejudice in America and a rallying point for civil rights\u2013minded Americans. In appeals, the ILD successfully challenged the boys\u2019 sentencing, and the death sentences were either commuted or reversed, although the last of the accused did not receive parole until 1946.2<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

    Despite a concerted effort to appoint black advisors to some New Deal programs, Franklin Roosevelt did little to directly address the difficulties black communities faced. To do so openly would provoke southern Democrats and put his New Deal coalition\u2014\u2013the uneasy alliance of national liberals, urban laborers, farm workers, and southern whites\u2014at risk. Roosevelt not only rejected such proposals as abolishing the poll tax and declaring lynching a federal crime, he refused to specifically target African American needs in any of his larger relief and reform packages. As he explained to the national secretary of the NAACP, \u201cI just can\u2019t take that risk.\u201d 3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

    In fact, many of the programs of the New Deal had made hard times more difficult. When the codes of the NRA set new pay scales, they usually took into account regional differentiation and historical data. In the South, where African Americans had long suffered unequal pay, the new codes simply perpetuated that inequality. The codes also exempted those involved in farm work and domestic labor, the occupations of a majority of southern black men and women. The AAA was equally problematic as owners displaced black tenants and sharecroppers, many of whom were forced to return to their farms as low-paid day labor or to migrate to cities looking for wage work. 4<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

    Perhaps the most notorious failure of the New Deal to aid African Americans came with the passage of the Social Security Act. Southern politicians chafed at the prospect of African Americans benefiting from federally sponsored social welfare, afraid that economic security would allow black southerners to escape the cycle of poverty that kept them tied to the land as cheap, exploitable farm laborers. The Jackson<\/em> (Mississippi) Daily News<\/em> callously warned that \u201cThe average Mississippian can\u2019t imagine himself chipping in to pay pensions for able-bodied Negroes to sit around in idleness . . . while cotton and corn crops are crying for workers.\u201d Roosevelt agreed to remove domestic workers and farm laborers from the provisions of the bill, excluding many African Americans, already laboring under the strictures of legal racial discrimination, from the benefits of an expanding economic safety net.5<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

    Women, too, failed to receive the full benefits of New Deal programs. On one hand, Roosevelt included women in key positions within his administration, including the first female cabinet secretary, Frances Perkins, and a prominently placed African American advisor in the National Youth Administration, Mary McLeod Bethune. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was a key advisor to the president and became a major voice for economic and racial justice. But many New Deal programs were built on the assumption that men would serve as breadwinners and women as mothers, homemakers, and consumers. New Deal programs aimed to help both but usually by forcing such gendered assumptions, making it difficult for women to attain economic autonomy. New Deal social welfare programs tended to funnel women into means-tested, state-administered relief programs while reserving entitlement benefits for male workers, creating a kind of two-tiered social welfare state. And so, despite great advances, the New Deal failed to challenge core inequalities that continued to mark life in the United States.6<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

    Notes<\/h4>\n
      \n
    1. Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression<\/em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), 82. \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\n
    2. Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South<\/em> (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1969). \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\n
    3. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929\u20131945<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 201. \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\n
    4. Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America<\/em> (New York: Norton, 2005). \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\n
    5. George Brown Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913\u20131945<\/em> (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1967), 491. \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\n
    6. Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890\u20131935<\/em> (New York: Free Press, 1994).\"image\"<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"menu_order":11,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-200","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":32,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":692,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/200\/revisions\/692"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/32"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/200\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}