Impact of the Great Depression, World War II, and the New Deal on African America >>>>> Snippet from My Chapter on African American History in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education

Impact of the Great Depression, World War II, and the New Deal on African America

The Great Depression that began with the stock market crash of 29 October 1929 fell hard on African America.  Most blacks in the south toiled as sharecroppers or as laborers on other people’s farms, so when landowners ran into economic difficulty, black framers had to scramble for work.  But in the South, other work was rare, and the North did not offer much hope during the 1930s:  Whites who had come to eschew certain kinds of labor eagerly took jobs that they had formerly rejected.  Left with few options, the downcast African American worker of the South was the most economically devastated figure of the Great Depression.

 

During the Great Depression, the capitalist system seemed to many to be failing, and in that context interest in communism increased.  Leaders of the Communist Party made a special effort to recruit disaffected African Americans, and the party nominated African American James Ford as vice-presidential candidate in 1932, 1936, and 1940.  The African American laboring people of the urban North, while making some progress in gaining acceptance into unions, in general still found membership difficult to obtain, and in terms of work availability and work conditions they fared poorly.  Asa Philip Randolph emerged as a major figure in labor leadership, superintending the formation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in August 1925 that culminated a dozen years later (25 August 1937) in better wages and work conditions for the African American porters who worked for the Pullman Company, which dominated the sleeping car industry aboard railroads.

 

Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal gave hope to many in the United States, African Americans included, and his administration featured notable advances in the cause of black citizenship.  The United States, though, was still a very segregated society.  As a rule, African Americans stayed in the camps of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) longer than whites, moved less readily into administrative poistiions, and were confined to 10% of total enrollment.  Approximately 50,000 African Americans wre served by the CCC and another 64,000 young African Americans found work through the National Youth Administration (NYA).  The education program of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) employed over 5,000 African Americans in leadership and supervisory positions, taught basic literacy to almost 25,000 black students, and provided training in skills transferrable to jobs in business, industry, and the trades.  The WPA was led by Harry Hopkins, an enlightened individual who maneuvered to get policies established making discrimination based on race, creed, or color illegal.

 

As part of the New Deal, the Federal Writers Project (FWP) abetted the careers of African American authors Horace R. Crayton, St. Clair Drake, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neal Hurston, and Richard Wright.  The Federal Music Project, Federal Art Project, and Federal Theater Project also supported the work of creative African Americans, producing concerts, supporting hundreds of black sculptors and painters (including very notably Horace Pippin and Jacob Lawrence), and employing 500 African Americans for theater productions in New York City.  The works of Hall Johnson (Run Little Chillun) Rudolf Fischer (Conjure Man Dies:  a Mystery Tale of Harlem [an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth]) gained production under the aegis of the Federal Theater Project.  Many African American creative artists such as dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham and actor Rex Ingram went on to exciting and seminal careers in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the programs of the New Deal.  

 

Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in getting her husband to create a “Black Cabinet” to provide advice to the president on New Deal policies.  Roosevelt appointed African American educator Mary McCleod Bethune to head the Division of Negro Affairs within the National Youth Administration, and it was she who organized the Black Cabinet.  The group included Robert L. Vann, editor of the Pitsburgh Currier, who held a post in the office of the attorney general;  William H. Hastie, a civil rights attorney who served in the Department of Justice;  Robert D. Weaver, an economist serving in the Department of the Interior;  Lawrence A. Oxley, a social worker in the Department of Labor;  and Edgar Brown, president of the United Government Employees and an official in the Civilian Conservation Corps.  Other African Americans tapped for positions in the Roosevelt administration included E. K. Jones, on leave from the National Urban League, at the Department of Commerce;  Ira Reid on the Social Security Board; and Ambrose Carver at the Office of Education.

 

Eleanor Roosevelt served as a conduit to the president for congresspersons seeking his support for legislation, notably Walter White in behalf of his anti-lynching bill.  The spouse of the president arranged for Marian Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial when the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) denied the famous soprano the opportunity to perform in Constitution Hall.  Eleanor Roosevelt was a hugely important figure at a time when so many Americans held virulently racist views, absorbing the political heat, educating her husband on issues of racial equity, and prodding his conscience as necessary.

 

The New Deal put millions of Americans back to work and lifted the spirits of the nation, but the economic stimulus provided by the need for the material goods of warfare meant that World War II (1939-1945) was really responsible for ending the Great Depression.  About 1,000,000 African Americans served in the armed forces during World War II, including several thousand women in the women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WACS).  About 500,000 soldiers served in either the European or Asia/ Pacific theaters of the war, typically in segregated units in technically noncombat positions (quartermaster, engineer, ordinance handler, and transport provider).  But the 92^nd Infantry, 93^rd Infantry, 761^st Tank Battalion, 614^th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and 593^rd Field Artillery provide examples of military units in which African Americans served with great distinction in direct combat during World War II.  Bernie Robinson became the first African American officer in 1942;  by war’s end there were 50 such African American officers in the military forces of the United States.

 

African American pilots charted some of he most remarkable achievements of World War II.  The most famous of these was the 332^nd Fighter Group, better known as the Tuskegee Airmen.  Graduates of the segregated pilot program in Tuskegee, Alabama, this accomplished group of aiment flew escort planes, charged with the duty of protecting heavy bombers;  in more than two hundred missions, they never lost an escorted plane to the Germans or other opponents, and they managed to sink a German navy destroyer with aircraft gunfire.

 

At Pearl Harbor, mess attendant Dorie Miller positioned himself at a machine gun and shot down at least four Japanese aircraft.  Miller was honored with the Navy Cross for heroism but was promoted only to mess attendant first class and, sadly, died aboard a small carrier craft torpedoed by the Japanese on 24 November 1943.

 

African American physician Charles Drew oversaw establishment of the first blood bank in New York City, following with similar efforts at the request of Great Britain and for the Red Cross back in the United States.  A sad demise, though, also was the reality for the man who had saved so many lives as an expert in hematology.  Drew died in the aftermath of an automobile accident in North Carolina, driving himself to a meeting in order to avoid segregated transportation.  The segregated hospital gto which he was admitted lacked the blood plasma that might have saved his life.  

 

African Americans did, though, see gains in many facets of American life during the last years of World War II and the years immediately following.  Executive Order 8802 prohibited employment discrimination in industries producing war goods.  Before 1948, 78% of African Americans earned under $3,800 per year.  Between1948 and 1961, that percentage would decrease to 47%, and during the same period the percentage of African Americans earning over $100,000 increased from less than 1% to about 17%. 

One could also see that the efforts of the NAACP to improve the legal and social climate for African American college attendance was producing favorable results:  Whereas in 1947, the number of African American college students was 124,000, by 1964 this figure had almost doubled, to 233,000.  In politics, Adam Clayton Powell of New York City won a seat in the House of Representatives and, buoyed by a strong and devoted following back home, strode in to barbershops, dining rooms, and showers that had previously been segregated.