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 92nd
Infantry, 93rd Infantry, 761st Tank Battalion, 614th
Tank Destroyer Battalion, and 593rd 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 332nd 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.
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