 Roosevelt, bringing to an end a 75-year period of black allegiance to Republican candidates. Shortly after the elections, a Black Cabinet, composed of black American government employees, was formed to advise the president. But the president’s and Mrs. Roosevelt’s support did not come without controversy and loss of political support for the New Deal programs, particularly among Southern Democrats. World War II (1939-1945) finally brought economic relief to black Americans. But significant advances in racial equality would not come until the civil rights movement pressed for changes in the 1950s and 1960s. The New Deal was a period of great economic suffering, small political gains, and lost social opportunities.
Tough Times Turn Harder
Racism in the 1920s invaded every aspect of life in the United States. Many people outwardly expressed such feelings in public with few reservations. Given this longstanding social atmosphere, black Americans naturally suffered greatly when the economy declined in 1929. Those employed were often the first to be laid off when company fortunes fell. The slogan “Last Hired, First Fired” became well known. By 1932 black Americans had a 50 percent unemployment rate compared to 25 percent in the U.S. population in general. With unemployment escalating, jobs previously considered “Negro occupations” suddenly became attractive to the larger population. These jobs included domestic help, elevator operators, street cleaners, garbage collectors, waiters, and bellhops. Blacks were considered fit for only low paying dirty jobs no one else wanted. In Atlanta the slogan “No Jobs for Niggers Until Every White Man Has a Job” became popular among whites. Those blacks able to keep their jobs sometimes had their wages cut in half. The Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, written years later in 1960, was based on the racial prejudices of the 1930s. The story focuses on the courtroom trial of an unjustly accused black man. It examined the ignorance, prejudice, and hate that characterized that period. An award-winning movie was later adapted from the book.
Depression in the Rural South
In 1930 over two million males worked in agriculture. Of these over 835,000 black farmers and laborers faced particularly difficult times in the rural South. Less than 13 percent of black farmers owned their own land. The rest worked as sharecroppers and tenant farmers on farms of large landowners. Approximately 40 percent of black workers in the nation in the 1930s were farm laborers, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers. Not only was a declining economy a threat to their employment, new machines, such as mechanical cotton pickers, displaced many farm workers. For those black sharecroppers still working, discrimination in pay was common. White sharecroppers received an average income of $417 a year compared to $295 for blacks. Not surprisingly with such low wages, living conditions were deplorable. Many black families lived in one-or two-bedroom shacks with no electricity, insulation from the winter cold, or running water. Relief through private organizations in the South was rarely available to needy blacks. Sharecropper families would often drift from one farm to another every three years or so in search of better living conditions.
Some sharecropper unions formed to seek better conditions. But these groups often met harsh resistance from the large white landowners and local law authorities. The Croppers’ and Farm Workers’ Union and the Share Croppers’ Union were formed in 1931. Both met with violence. In Alabama just before Christmas in 1931 a force of vigilantes and authorities attacked an entire black population in Reeltown, Alabama, to break up union activities. Hundreds were injured and two killed. The incident did bring increased public sympathy to the plight of black sharecroppers.
As the economy struggled through the 1930s, jobs grew even scarcer. Competition between whites and blacks brought added hostility. The number of lynchings of blacks by white mobs increased from eight in 1932 to 28 i