-1952)
A social activist his entire career, Ickes served as secretary of interior to Roosevelt. He had earlier been president of the Chicago chapter of the NAACP. Ickes was Roosevelt’s key advisor on black issues. Ickes, through his own initiative, took measures to end segregation in the Interior Department by hiring black lawyers, engineers, and architects. Ickes established the first minority quota hiring system. He demanded that all Public Works Administration contractors employ black workers in proportion to the number of blacks living in the local area of the particular project.
Joe Louis (1914-1981)
Louis, a large black man born in Alabama and raised in Detroit, became a professional boxer in 1934. He won the heavyweight title in June 1937 by knocking out white boxer James J. Braddock. The rise of Louis as a champion prize-fighter made him a folk hero among black Americans during a difficult period. His victories over whites, particularly German fighters, gave a great moral lift to black Americans in their quest to gain racial equality. Louis held the world heavyweight boxing championship longer than any other boxer. He retired from the ring in 1949 and later had an unsuccessful comeback attempt.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
Eleanor married Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1905 and raised five children while her husband chased political ambitions. Following volunteer work during World War I, including Red Cross activities, Eleanor chose the course of social reformer and political activist and became active in the Democratic Party. She supported child labor laws, legislation to protect women, and social services to mothers and children. In the 1930s Eleanor took up the cause of black Americans, promoting anti-lynching laws and bringing NAACP leaders to the White House. She became very popular among the black population for promoting their issues at such a high level.
Robert C. Weaver (1907-1997)
Roosevelt appointed Weaver in 1933 as an advisor on black economic problems and a member of Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet.” He had earlier earned a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. From 1937 to 1940, he served as special assistant for the U.S. Housing Authority. Weaver became the first black cabinet member in U.S. history in 1966 when President Lyndon B. Johnson named him secretary of housing and urban development. In 1969 he became president of Bernard M. Baruch College.
Walter White (1893-1956)
After establishing the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), White became executive secretary of the organization from 1931 to 1955. During the 1930s White spent considerable effort seeking passage of an anti-lynching law, but without success. He also lobbied for voting rights, school desegregation, and many other civil rights issues. White kept ongoing communications with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. As a national spokesman for black issues, White was successful in raising public awareness of the plight of black Americans and laying the foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Racial Discrimination during the New Deal
During the Great Depression, black Americans not only faced racial discrimination in employment, but in economic relief programs as well. They often received inferior food and goods, if any at all. Evelyn Finn of Louisiana reminisced a number of years later, after the end of the New Deal. Finn’s memories are recounted in Studs Terkel’s oral history volume on the Great Depression, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1986, p. 319).
Suggested Research Topics
- Imagine being a black American living in the early twentieth century in the United States. Describe the benefits you might expect from the New Deal programs.
- What were the lasting effects of the New Deal for black Americans and the dream of social justice?
- Conduct more research on people like William H. Hastie, Marian Anderson, and Mary McLeod Bethune to find more out about their lives during the Great Depression and beyond. What types of struggles were unique to them because o