1. Black Protest, the Great Depression and the New Deal
Chapter 18
Black Protest, the Great Depression and the New Deal

2. The American Dream
Photographer Margaret Bourke White captured the contrast between the American dream of prosperity—for white families—and the harsh realities of life for black Americans during the Depression. The collapse of the economy spurred the search for radical critiques and solutions to deal with the desperate conditions millions of African Americans endured. Separate economic development and the creation of parallel institutions and organizations was one option. But was it practicable?

3. The Cataclysm, 1929-1933 The Great Depression Stock market crash
Speculation
Lack of federal regulation
Inequality of wealth and income

4. Unemployment, 1925–1945
With the collapse of the American economy, unemployment soared in the 1930s. New Deal programs alleviated some of the suffering, but full recovery did not come until the defense industries swung into action with the U.S. entry into World War II.

5. Harder Times for Black America
Catastrophe
Falling consumer demand for cotton and sugar
Lowered prices
Black sharecroppers and tenant farmers reduced
High unemployment levels
Last hired, first fired
38%-65%

6. Black Business in the Depression
Collapse and Survival
Binga Bank - Jesse Binga
Symbol of black capitalism, by 1930 valued over $1.5 million
Assests tied to home mortgages
Binga refused to seize home and was closed by Illinios State bank auditors.
Atlanta Life Insurance Company
Alonzo Franklin Herndon – former Ga. slave.
Adapted and thrived through the depression along with other insurance companies
North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company

7. Median Income of Black Families Compared to the Median Income of White Families for Selected Cities, 1935–1936

8. The Failure of Relief Relief Charitable organizations
Over 250 black hospitals, clinics and nursing training schools were closed
Relief
Charitable organizations
Problem was too big
Local and state governments
Lowered tax receipts made relief efforts difficult
Government reluctance
Rigid ideology
Aid to businesses

9. II. Black Protest during the Great Depression
NAACP
Campaigned against:
Educational discrimination
Political disfranchisement
Charles Houston
Thurgood Marshall
Critical of American democracy

10. The NAACP and Civil Rights Struggles
Leadership
Walter White
Refused to be silent
NAACP pressed government to protect rights
Du Bois ignites a controversy
Criticized NAACP focus on political right
Resigns from The Crisis

11. Challenging Racial Discrimination in the Courts
Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall
Lead NAACP campaign
State programs
Disparities in expenditures
Inspired community support
Attempted to equalize facilities
Education
Made separate but equal too costly

12. Graduate schools Many southern states had no separate facilities
Gaines v. Canada, 1938
Missouri: a state-supported law school for black citizens
Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 1947
Oklahoma granted out-of-state tuition awards to blacks
Court ordered Oklahoma to provide facilities in home states
Sweatt v. Painter, 1950
Separate but not equal
Texas law school for black students was not equal

13. Disfranchised Smith v. Allwright, 1944 Terrell Law, 1923
“In no event shall a Negro be eligible to participate in a Democratic primary election in Texas”
The equivalent of being disfranchised
Smith v. Allwright, 1944
Ended white primary
NAACP greatest legal victory to date

14. Black Women and Community Organizing
Contributions
Fundraising, membership drives
Daisy Adams Lampkin – President of the Negro Women’s Franchise League. Fought for voting rights.
Juanita Mitchell – NAACP national youth director. Fought against unemployment, segregation and lynching.
Ella Baker – One of the most important women in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Started grassroots movement against segregation
Detroit Housewives League
Pledge to support black businesses, buy black products, and support black professionals.
10,000 members, 1934

15. Cool Down
How do you think blacks coped with the poverty of the Great Depression compared to their white peers?
What impact did court victories have on creating a civil rights movement?

16. African Americans and the New Deal
FDR, democrat
African Americans support Republican party
Last election black voters could be ignored
New Deal programs shift black allegiance
Agricultural Adjustment Act – farmer protection
NRA – National Recovery Administration
Inadequate and unfairly administered but beneficial
Prompted social change

17. Roosevelt and the First New Deal, 1933-1935
One hundred days
No predetermined plan
Experimentation
Emergency federal relief
Benefited black and white people
Unevenly administered in the South

18. Black Officials in the New Deal
Roosevelt administration
Hired black professionals
“Black Cabinet”
Mary McLeod Bethune
Blacks gained allies and new influence
Potential voters
Eleanor Roosevelt
Commitment to racial justice

19. Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet”
Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet” in a 1938 photograph. Mary McLeod Bethune is in the center of the front row. The advisers included Robert Weaver, Eugene Kinckle Jones, Ambrose Caliver, and William H. Hastie, among many others.

20. African Americans and the Second New Deal
Second New Deal – needed due to slow progress of the first New Deal
More radical than the first
Role of federal government grows
1936 election
FDR leftward shift
Helped gain black allegiance to party
Rejected racial discrimination

21. IV. The Communist Party and African Americans
Attractive to some African Americans
Antiracist and interracial
Expelled racist members
Gave black men key leadership positions
Few joined but many sympathetic to left-wing ideas

22. Scottsboro Boys Open to page 657 – first 2 paragraphs. Ages 13 to 20
Accused of raping two white women
Jurors found them guilty
8 received death sentence

23. The International Labor Defense and the “Scottsboro Boys”
ILD – International Labor Defense – Communist party law firm
ILD appealed the conviction and death sentence
Two important Supreme Court decisions
Powell v. Alabama, 1932
Inadequate legal counsel
Hostile and volatile atmosphere
Norris v. Alabama, 1935
Defendants’ right to a jury of their peers
Exclusion of black jurors denied equal protection

24. Scottsboro boys Evidence proved the boys were falsely convicted
One of the girls admitted that the rape was a hoax
Alabama pursues the case
After public pleasure, Alabama decided to drop case.

25. The “Scottsboro Boys”
The “Scottsboro Boys,” a case of southern justice gone awry, attracted international attention and fueled competition between the NAACP and the Communist Party. In this 1937 photograph the NAACP’s Juanita E. Jackson Mitchell visits with the Scottsboro Boys. Nine unemployed black young men accused of raping two white women mill workers on a Southern Railroad freight car on March 25, 1931, were sentenced to death, with one exception. Eugene Williams’s life was spared because he was only thirteen. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates recanted their stories, but it made no difference. The United States Supreme Court overturned the death convictions and sentences in two landmark cases, one of which established the right of the accused to competent legal counsel.

26. Debating Communist Leadership
NAACP and Communist party
Open hostility
Communist party staged marches and protests
NAACP sought respectability
Questioned the sincerity of Communist party

27. The Tuskegee Study
One of the worst manifestations of racism in American science.
US public health service initiated a study on syphilis
Known to cause paralysis, insanity and heart failure
USPHS recruited 622 poor illiterate black men
431 had advanced cases of syphilis

28. The Tuskegee Study cont.
The Tuskegee Study was called a treatment program
In reality, it was an experiment, designed to chart the progression and development of the fatal disease
Doctors hired a black nurse and convinced the patients they had “bad blood”
Penicillin became available in the 1940s, but they were given a placebo and told it would cure them

29. The Tuskegee Study cont.
Intended to last 6-12 months
Regular exams, including a needle inserted into the spinal cord to draw fluids
Several cases of paralysis and death
Never treated for syphilis
Subjects felt fortunate to receive medical assistance and a hot lunch on exam day
Not discovered until 1972
Attorney Fred Gray of Alabama sued the US government
Before trial, government paid $9 million settlement to survivors and descendants of those who died.

30. Tuskegee Experiment
Tuskegee Experiment patients (1932–1972) From 1932 to 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) conducted an experiment on approximately 400 black Alabama sharecroppers to trace the evolution of untreated syphilis. The men were never informed that they had the disease, nor were they given penicillin when it became available. The men died. On May 16, 1997, President Bill Clinton on behalf of the U.S. government finally apologized for this cruel and clearly racist experiment on human subjects.

31. Cool Down
Give your opinion of the Tuskegee study.