the new deal thesis statement

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The Hundred Days

• FDR’s “Fireside Chats,” the role of Eleanor Roosevelt, and crucial New Dealers
• The Second New Deal
• The outcome and legacy of the New Deal

What was the purpose of the New Deal?

What were the new deal programs and what did they do, what were the most important results of the new deal, what new deal programs remain in effect.

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• Table Of Contents

The United States was in the throes of the Great Depression . Banks were in crisis, and nearly a quarter of the workforce was unemployed. Wages and salaries declined significantly, as did production. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (1933–39) aimed to provide immediate economic relief and to bring about reforms to stabilize the economy.

• The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) brought relief to farmers by paying them to curtail production, reducing surpluses, and raising prices for agricultural products.
• The Public Works Administration (PWA) reduced unemployment by hiring the unemployed to build new public buildings, roads, bridges, and subways.
• The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) employed hundreds of thousands of young men in reforestation and flood-control work.
• The National Recovery Administration (NRA) established codes to eliminate unfair practices, establish minimum wages and maximum hours, and guarantee the right of collective bargaining .
• The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) brought cheap electricity to people in seven states.
• The Home Owners’ Refinancing Act provided mortgage relief to the unemployed.
• The Securities Act of 1933 provided government oversight of stock trading.
• The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) protected depositors’ bank accounts.
• Later programs included the Social Security Act, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the National Labor Relations Act.

The New Deal established federal responsibility for the welfare of the U.S. economy and the American people. Despite the importance of this growth of federal responsibility, perhaps the greatest achievement of the New Deal was to restore faith in American democracy at a time when many people believed that the only choice left was between communism and fascism .

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in banking and Fannie Mae (FNMA) in mortgage lending are among New Deal programs still in operation. Other such programs include the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the Farm Credit Administration, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Soil Conservation Service remains as the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Perhaps the most notable New Deal program still in effect is the national old-age pension system created by the Social Security Act (1935).

New Deal , domestic program of the administration of U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) between 1933 and 1939, which took action to bring about immediate economic relief as well as reforms in industry, agriculture, finance, waterpower, labour, and housing, vastly increasing the scope of the federal government’s activities. The term was taken from Roosevelt’s speech accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency on July 2, 1932. Reacting to the ineffectiveness of the administration of Pres. Herbert Hoover in meeting the ravages of the Great Depression , American voters the following November overwhelmingly voted in favour of the Democratic promise of a “new deal” for the “forgotten man.” Opposed to the traditional American political philosophy of laissez-faire , the New Deal generally embraced the concept of a government-regulated economy aimed at achieving a balance between conflicting economic interests.

Much of the New Deal legislation was enacted within the first three months of Roosevelt’s presidency (March 9–June 16, 1933), which became known as the Hundred Days . The new administration’s first objective was to alleviate the suffering of the nation’s huge number of unemployed workers. Such agencies as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were established to dispense emergency and short-term governmental aid and to provide temporary jobs, employment on construction projects, and youth work in the national forests. The WPA gave some 8.5 million people jobs. Its construction projects produced more than 650,000 miles of roads, 125,000 public buildings, 75,000 bridges, and 8,000 parks. Also under its aegis were the Federal Art Project , Federal Writers’ Project , and Federal Theatre Project . The CCC provided national conservation work primarily for young unmarried men. Projects included planting trees, building flood barriers, fighting forest fires, and maintaining forest roads and trails.

Before 1935 the New Deal focused on revitalizing the country’s stricken business and agricultural communities . To revive industrial activity, the National Recovery Administration (NRA) was granted authority to help shape industrial codes governing trade practices, wages, hours, child labour , and collective bargaining . The New Deal also tried to regulate the nation’s financial hierarchy in order to avoid a repetition of the stock market crash of 1929 and the massive bank failures that followed. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) granted government insurance for bank deposits in member banks of the Federal Reserve System , and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was established in 1934 to restore investor confidence in the stock market by ending the misleading sales practices and stock manipulations that had led to the stock market crash. The farm program, known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act , was signed in May 1933. It was centred in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), which attempted to raise prices by controlling the production of staple crops through cash subsidies to farmers. In addition, the arm of the federal government reached into the area of electric power , establishing in 1933 the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which was to cover a seven-state area and supply cheap electricity, prevent floods, improve navigation, and produce nitrates.

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Presentation U.S. History Primary Source Timeline

President franklin delano roosevelt and the new deal.

In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.

The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs, work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal programs reminded them of alphabet soup.

By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and social affairs of the nation.

To search for more documents in  Loc.gov  related to New Deal programs and agencies, use such terms as  Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, Public Works Administration, Farm Security Administration , and the  National Recovery Administration .

• An African American (Eugenia Martin) and the WPA
• Row shelters, FSA ... labor camp, Robstown, Tex.
• The mail must go through.
• PWA (Public Works Administration) housing project for Negroes. Omaha, Nebraska
• Swimming pool created by CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) dam
• Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) Unionism
• Disagreeing with the New Deal
• The New Deal Was a Failure
• Roosevelt Is a "Damned Good Man"
• The Works Progress Administration

Home — Essay Samples — History — History of the United States — The New Deal

Essays on The New Deal

The new deal essay, types of the new deal essay.

• Cause and Effect Essay
• Compare and Contrast Essay
• Analysis Essay

Cause and Effect Essay about The New Deal

• Conduct thorough research: To write a well-informed New Deal Cause and Effect Essay, it is essential to conduct extensive research. This research should involve reading primary and secondary sources, including books, articles, and government reports, to gain an in-depth understanding of the topic.
• Develop a thesis statement: A thesis statement is a central argument or claim that guides the essay's content. It should be specific and concise and clearly outline the essay's main ideas and arguments.
• Organize the essay: In this type of essay, it is essential to have a clear and logical structure. The essay should have an introduction that outlines the topic and the thesis statement, followed by body paragraphs that discuss the causes and effects of the New Deal, and a conclusion that summarizes the main points and reiterates the thesis statement.
• Use evidence to support arguments: It is crucial to use relevant evidence to support the arguments presented in the essay. This evidence can be in the form of statistical data, quotes from primary sources, or expert opinions.
• Edit and proofread: Before submitting the essay, it is essential to edit and proofread it thoroughly. This process involves checking for spelling and grammar errors, ensuring that the essay's structure is logical and coherent, and ensuring that the arguments presented are well-supported and logically sound.

Compare and Contrast Essay about The New Deal

• Choose a specific aspect of The New Deal to compare and contrast. Some possible topics could include the similarities and differences between the Emergency Banking Act and the Glass-Steagall Act, the effectiveness of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration in providing employment, or the similarities and differences between the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act.
• Make a list of the similarities and differences between the two or more aspects of The New Deal that you are comparing. Consider factors such as goals, methods, impact, and public perception.
• Develop a clear thesis statement that highlights the main points of your comparison and contrast.
• Organize your essay in a way that clearly presents the similarities and differences between the aspects of The New Deal that you are comparing. One common approach is to use a block or point-by-point structure.
• Use specific examples and evidence to support your analysis. This could include statistics, historical accounts, or primary source documents.
• Make connections between the similarities and differences you have identified and draw conclusions about the successes and failures of The New Deal as a whole.

The New Deal: Analysis Essay

• Choose a specific aspect of the New Deal to focus on, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, or the National Industrial Recovery Act.
• Conduct extensive research to gather relevant information and data related to the chosen topic.
• Analyze the effectiveness of the New Deal policies in addressing the challenges of the Great Depression.
• Evaluate the impact of the New Deal on the country's economy and society.
• Use examples and evidence to support the arguments made in the essay.
• Provide a critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the New Deal policies and their outcomes.
• Use clear and concise language and maintain a logical flow of ideas throughout the essay.

Tips on How to Choose a Topic

• Consider the type of essay you want to write and select a topic that fits the requirements.
• Research the various aspects of The New Deal, including the policies implemented and their effects.
• Choose a topic that interests you and that you have a strong opinion on.
• Look for gaps in the existing research and choose a topic that allows you to contribute new ideas.

Hook Examples for The New Deal Essays

Anecdotal hook.

Imagine living through the Great Depression, struggling to make ends meet, and suddenly, a series of government programs comes to your rescue. This was the reality for millions of Americans during the era of the New Deal.

Question Hook

Did Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies truly pull the United States out of economic despair, or did they sow the seeds of long-term government intervention in the economy? Explore the lasting impact of this pivotal period.

Quotation Hook

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." — Franklin D. Roosevelt. Discover the context and significance of this famous quote from FDR's inaugural address as it relates to the New Deal's mission to restore hope and confidence.

Statistical or Factual Hook

During the New Deal, over 15 million Americans were employed through various relief programs. Delve into the numbers and programs that aimed to combat unemployment and economic hardship.

Definition Hook

What exactly was the New Deal, and what were its key components? Unpack the policies, acts, and agencies that comprised this comprehensive government response to the Great Depression.

Rhetorical Question Hook

Can government intervention in the economy effectively stimulate recovery during times of crisis, or does it risk overreach and unintended consequences? Investigate the debates surrounding the New Deal's role in shaping economic policy.

Historical Hook

Travel back to the 1930s to explore the dire economic conditions and social challenges that prompted the implementation of the New Deal. Understand the historical context in which these policies emerged.

Contrast Hook

Contrast the New Deal's approach to economic recovery with previous laissez-faire policies. Analyze the shift in government philosophy and its implications for the role of the state in citizens' lives.

Narrative Hook

Follow the journey of a family impacted by the New Deal, from unemployment lines to the benefits of programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Their story illuminates the tangible effects of these policies.

Shocking Statement Hook

Prepare to be astonished by the sheer scale and ambition of the New Deal, which aimed to not only rescue the economy but also reshape society. Explore the bold initiatives and controversies that surrounded this era.

A Comparison of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt

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Comparison of President Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt

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The Factors that Opened The Door for The United States to Deal with The Great Depression at The Start of World War Ii

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Research of How Successful The New Deal Was for Society and Economy

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• Great Depression

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

1933 - 1939

United States

Agricultural Adjustment Administration, National Recovery Administration, Public Works Administration, Public Works of Art Project

The New Deal was a series of programs and projects instituted during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that aimed to restore prosperity to Americans.

Much of the New Deal legislation was enacted within the first three months of Roosevelt’s presidency. The main issue of the new president was to alleviate the suffering of the nation’s huge number of unemployed workers.

In 1935, Roosevelt launched a second, more aggressive series of federal programs, called the Second New Deal with three principal categories—relief, recovery, and reform. Recovery programs were intended to help stabilize and rebuild the economy.

From 1933 until 1941, President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and policies provided support for farmers, the unemployed, youth and the elderly. In Roosevelt's 12 years in office, the economy had an 8.5% compound annual growth of GDP.

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The New Deal

Jane Doe History 505 Professor John Doe 3 April 2018

During The Great Depression, the American nation was in need of recovery from economic collapse, relief, and reform to prevent further depressions. An effort to create these new reforms came in the form of The New Deal. The New Deal comprised of domestic economic programs that were passed by the government in the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression. As Hardman observes, though the New Deal did not end the depression, it changed the American government for good (Hardman).

With the New Deal, there was a larger role for the government. First, President Franklin Roosevelt increased the power of the president, with the White House becoming the center of government. In addition to this, President Roosevelt expanded the federal government, with the national government becoming directly responsible for the well-being of the people in a way that it had not been before. The government would now make relief payments, serve school lunches and run pension programs. Instead of local and state governments, it was the federal government that became the protector of the people’s welfare.

The measures under The New Deal meant direct government involvement in economic areas never contemplated before. For example, the National Recovery Act was concerned with steps to achieve a planned economy. The Works Progress Act saw the government’s involvement into almost every aspect of the economy. Jobs were created for almost every aspect of employment. At the same time, major steps in government social programs were made. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority tried to remake the social and physical environment of an entire area.

The programs spelt out under the New Deal led to increased spending by the government and unbalanced budgets. While American citizens had little expectations before the New Deal, many of them had bigger expectations from the federal government after the New Deal. According to Hardman, critics of the New Deal argue that “deficit and government spending absorbed the credit that was available, and this made the recovery of the private sector difficult” (Hardman).

A number of measures were instituted under the New Deal and they included the Emergency Banking Act, the Economy Act, the Federal Emergency Relief Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act and many other programs. In terms of fiscal policy, Bordo et al. observe that during the New Deal period, a regime shift took place and it increased the federal fiscal share by about 9 % points (25). Data suggests that programs under the New Deal led to an increase in fiscal centralization as well as setting in motion processes for further centralization.

With these programs, the political setting was such that local and state officials demanded and go active roles in their administration, with the central government setting up general guidelines and providing much of the funds in form of matching grants. As such, the political economy of these New Deal programs took the shape of a cooperative enterprise between various government levels, a factor that is still evident in today’s system of governance.

Also, this pattern of intergovernmental relations created by the New Deal is responsible for the struggles that exist between national and state governments, as well as between Congress and the President over the control of the programs. According to Bordo et al., ever since the New Deal, “congress has portrayed less inclination in locating either financial or administrative control at the state level” (26). Due to this, the national government continues to experiment with a broad range of intergovernmental forms. Therefore, the New Deal basically increased the government’s role in the economy.

Works Cited

Bordo, Michael, Claudia Goldin, and Eugene N. White. The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the 20th Century. University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Hardman, John. “The Great Depression and the New Deal” Edge , 1999, Stanford University , web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/soc_sec/hgreat.htm. Accessed 2 Dec. 2017.

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Article contents

African americans in the great depression and new deal.

• Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy Department of History Eastern Michigan University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.632
• Published online: 19 November 2020

For African Americans, the Great Depression and the New Deal (1929–1940) marked a transformative era and laid the groundwork for the postwar black freedom struggle in the United States. The outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929 caused widespread suffering and despair in black communities across the country as women and men faced staggering rates of unemployment and poverty. Once Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), a Democrat, was inaugurated as president in 1933, he launched a “New Deal” of ambitious government programs to lift the United States out of the economic crisis. Most African Americans were skeptical about benefiting from the New Deal, and racial discrimination remained rampant. However, a cohort of black advisors and activists critiqued these government programs for excluding African Americans and enacted some reforms. At the grassroots level, black workers pressed for expanded employment opportunities and joined new labor unions to fight for economic rights. As the New Deal progressed a sea change swept over black politics. Many black voters switched their allegiance from the Republican to the Democratic Party, waged more militant campaigns for racial justice, and joined interracial and leftist coalitions. African Americans also challenged entrenched cultural stereotypes through photography, theater, and oral histories to illuminate the realities of black life in the United States. By 1940, African Americans now wielded an arsenal of protest tactics and were marching on a path toward full citizenship rights, which remains an always evolving process.

• African American history
• cultural history
• labor history
• political history
• women’s history

Last Hired, First Fired: The Crisis of the Great Depression

On the eve of the Great Depression, African Americans across the country already occupied a fragile position in the economy. 1 In the late 1920s, the vast majority of African Americans toiled as domestic servants, farmers, or service workers, jobs marked by low wages, weak job security, and fraught labor conditions. 2 Approximately eleven million African Americans lived in the American South, where they principally labored as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and wage workers. Approximately 10 percent of black southerners owned land, but most cultivated crops on white-owned land and received a small share of the harvest. 3 Many regions of the South were already suffering from an economic downtown, and most black southerners were locked in an endless cycle of poverty, exploitation, and malnutrition. Disfranchisement and violence—especially the dangers of lynching and sexual assault—created a culture of fear for -black southerners. 4

Between 1915 and 1930 , approximately 1.5 million black southerners had migrated to northern and midwestern cities, such as Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Philadelphia. Not only did New York attract southern migrants, but thirty thousand immigrants from the West Indies also settled in the city, which made the Harlem neighborhood a very cosmopolitan place. 5 African Americans also streamed into western cities, such as Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco. 6 Black migrants had aspired to improve their economic and political standing in their new cities. But most discovered that Jim Crow was ever present beyond the Mason-Dixon line, marked by racial segregation, interracial police violence, and labor segmentation. Some black men were able to secure low-level positions in industry, while most black women labored as servants, cooks, and laundresses. However, southern migrants were able to vote in elections, which created black political constituencies to be courted by politicians. The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 enabled most migrant women to vote, and they participated enthusiastically in politics. 7

In October 1929 , the US stock market crashed, which precipitated the most serious economic crisis in the nation’s history. Banks began to fail, businesses closed, and workers across the nation lost their jobs. The Great Depression triggered immediate suffering in black communities. Economic conditions had been poor in the South since the early 1920s, but the Great Depression marked a new low. Between 1929 and 1933 , the price of cotton dropped from eighteen cents to six cents, which only exacerbated black southerners’ precarious economic position. With a decline in cotton prices, the number of black sharecroppers fell. 8 In northern and midwestern cities, white unemployment reached as much as 25 percent, but for black workers in Chicago, New York, and Pittsburgh, 50 percent were out of work, and that number climbed to 60 percent for black workers in Philadelphia and Detroit. 9 African American workers were often the last hired, and thus, the first fired. The Great Depression initially slowed the pace of migration, but black African Americans continued to stream out of the South throughout the 1930s. 10

With the crisis of the Great Depression, African Americans struggled to receive adequate relief from the crushing impact of unemployment and poverty. White officials distributed relief in the form of food, money, or work programs, but many reasoned that African Americans did not need as many resources as white Americans. 11 At the federal level, President Herbert Hoover’s administration responded to the crisis of the Great Depression by creating the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which offered loan payments to large corporations in order to restart the economy, but very few of these dollars reached suffering workers in the United States. 12

African Americans turned toward their community institutions to alleviate the worst effects of poverty and suffering. Middle-class African Americans spearheaded relief efforts by working with their churches, fraternal orders, and social and political organizations to assist unemployed workers. 13 As the chief purchasers for their families, black women were keenly aware of the cost of living and used the power of their pocketbooks to cope with the Depression. In 1930 , Fannie Peck formed the Housewives’ League of Detroit, asking members to patronize black-owned businesses as a way to protect these establishments and keep money in the black community. By 1934 , the organization had ten thousand members. These organizations mushroomed in other cities, such as Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh, underscoring the importance of black women’s organizing at the grassroots level. Women also banded together to clothe, feed, and house their families. In New York, Detroit, and St. Louis, black women staged meat boycotts and protested rent evictions, while in Cleveland, they protested electricity shut offs. 14 Some African Americans joined the Communist Party (CP) during the Great Depression, finding that this organization was an important vehicle to achieve economic survival for their families. Across the country, black activists united with the CP to fight against interracial police brutality, press for an economic redistribution in society, or protest the unjust criminalization of the thirteen men falsely accused of raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama. 15 As black citizens struggled to survive during the Great Depression, they pondered whether they should remain loyal to the Republican Party or cast their lot with Democratic candidate FDR and his vision for a New Deal in American society.

The New Deal and Racial Discrimination

African Americans supported President Hoover by a two-to-one margin in the 1932 election. While most African Americans still associated the Grand Old Party with Abraham Lincoln and civil rights, Hoover had an uneven record on racial justice. 16 He made black equality a plank in his campaign platform and appointed black men to serve in patronage positions and tapped black women to sit on government advisory committees. But other practices in his administration distressed African Americans. In 1930 , he permitted the War Department to segregate black and white gold star mothers on separate ships; gold star mothers were women whose sons had been killed in World War I. 17 That same year, Hoover nominated John J. Parker to the US Supreme Court. A former governor of North Carolina and Republican, Parker had once declared that African Americans should not participate in politics and publicly supported disfranchisement laws. In response, African Americans in the nation’s two largest civil rights organizations—the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Association of Colored Women (NACW)—banded together to thwart Parker’s confirmation. In response to this robust lobbying, the senate narrowly voted not to confirm Justice Parker, and many scholars point to this victory as a new era in black politics. 18

Hoover’s opponent in the 1932 election, FDR, bore the burden of the Democratic Party’s long support for racial segregation and intolerance. 19 Between 1913 and 1920 , the last Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson, had installed racial segregation in the federal government and thwarted opportunities for black government workers. 20 On the surface, FDR seemed little better. A northerner who served as governor of New York, he also maintained a home in Warm Springs, Georgia, where he received therapeutic treatments for polio and seemed comfortable in the white South, a crucial region in the Democratic coalition. 21 Furthermore, FDR’s running mate was the Texas politician John Nance Garner—further evidence that FDR would likely embody the worst impulses of the Jim Crow South as a Democratic president. Although some African Americans supported FDR, most black voters remained loyal to the Republican Party. 22

Even before FDR’s inauguration, his administration began to take a different path from his predecessors on race relations. Over half of the servants who were hired to work in the White House were African American, which was the largest number in recent years. Two of the most notable were a married couple from Georgia who had met FDR in Warm Springs; Irvin McDuffie worked as FDR’s valet and his wife, Elizabeth, labored as a maid in the White House. Both Irvin and Elizabeth McDuffie became active in Washington’s black community, and they helped to humanize the Roosevelt administration to African Americans in the early 1930s by giving interviews in the press and attending White House events with black performers. However, while FDR was willing to bring black servants into the White House, he appointed no African Americans to the cabinet or other administrative positions. 23

Once FDR was inaugurated as America’s thirty-second president in March 1933 , he pursued an ambitious agenda to bring relief to unemployed persons and set the economy on a path of economic recovery. In his first hundred days, FDR created five sweeping programs, including the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). White administrators oversaw all of these programs, and most were not attuned to racial discrimination, which meant that very few black workers experienced immediate relief. For example, both the TVA and AAA were aimed at the South, and without vigilance, it was easy to deny benefits to African Americans. The AAA evicted black sharecroppers and tenant farmers off of the land they were cultivating. The CCC hired unemployed young men to labor on public works projects and its white director, a native of Tennessee, believed that young black men did not need these jobs as much as their white men. As a result, the CCC admitted fewer black men, housed them in segregated dormitories, and barred black CCC workers from most administrative positions. The TVA tried to bring rural electrification and economic development to the South, but its strict practices of racial segregation thwarted black participation. 24

The National Recovery Administration’s (NRA) program of regulated wage codes underscored how the federal government based their programs on the needs of white men and women. In theory, the NRA was intended to provide a minimum wage for worker in various industries. But in practice, the NRA did not recognize the ways that race intersected class and sex. The NRA’s cotton industry hours regulation excluded the central positions where black male workers labored, while the southern lumber industry’s wages were far lower than those wages paid in the North. Even when black workers were eligible for higher wages, employers preferred to pay this money to white workers. 25 The NRA also sought to regulate the hours and wages for hairdressers. Most white hairdressers had white clients who received their treatments during regular working hours. But black domestics who worked during the day and received their treatments in the evening comprised the clientele of most black hairdressers. Across the country, black hairdressers banded together to protest this exclusionary legislation, pointing out that black women did not have identical interests as white women. One black hairdresser in Washington, DC, even declared that the New Deal was “a white man’s law.” 26

The Social Security Act epitomized the New Deal’s negligence toward race and sex. Social Security was a revolutionary piece of legislation that granted unemployment insurance and retirement benefits to workers in the United States. It was designed to mitigate the worst effects of the Great Depression by providing income to unemployed workers and preventing poverty among the elderly. But, southern white men who were determined to preserve the South’s racial order served these on congressional committees and inserted a provision in the proposed Social Security legislation that excluded farmers and domestic workers. 27 Representatives from two major black organizations—Charles Hamilton Houston from the NAACP and George E. Haynes from the National Urban League (NUL)—testified in Congress, stressing the importance of including all black workers. 28 But when FDR signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935 , it deemed farmers and domestics ineligible, which meant that 87 percent of all-black women and 55 percent of all African American workers were excluded. 29 A broad swath of African Americans protested these exclusions, ranging from individual black workers to the NACW and the Grand Order of the Elks, but this legislation was not broadened until the 1950s. 30

During the early 1930s, the one New Deal agency that took decisive action against racial discrimination was the Public Works Administration (PWA), a massive program of construction projects. During the 1930s, the PWA spent $6 billion and built thousands of projects across the country, including airports, schools, hospitals, libraries, and public housing (see figure 1 ). 31 Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, a former president of the Chicago branch of the NAACP, headed the PWA, which was created as part of the NIRA. To express sensitivity toward race, Ickes announced that he would hire a “Special Advisor on the Status of Negroes” for the PWA and selected Clark Foreman, a white southerner. The appointment of a white man, especially when there were hundreds of qualified black men and women for this position, upset African Americans, causing them to express profound concern whether the New Deal would provide substantive change in black communities. 32 However, Ickes also sought the advice of black advisors, who counseled him on the ways that African Americans could benefit from the PWA. He tapped two black graduates of Harvard University—economist Robert Weaver and attorney William Hastie—to serve in the PWA. 33

Figure 1. Through their residency in these PWA housing complexes, African Americans were able to save money and plan for their future. “ PWA (Public Works Administration) housing project for Negroes .” Omaha, Nebraska, November 1938.

One of the most important programs that the PWA spearheaded was the construction of fifty-one public housing projects, which marked the very first time that the US government erected housing for its low-income citizens. Since segregation was rampant in the 1930s, Ickes did not propose integrated housing projects. But he designated nineteen, or one-third, of these housing projects, for African American occupancy. In cities with large black populations, such as Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, African American families moved into affordable, new housing that was designed to be transitional and life changing. 34 In September 1933 , the NAACP lobbied Ickes to issue a non-discrimination clause in the PWA, stating that construction projects could not discriminate on the basis of race. Ickes’s advisors, including Clark Foreman, William Hastie, and Robert Weaver, supplemented this clause with a quota system, stating that all construction crews had to employ a number of black workers that was proportional to their population. They also recruited black architects to design some of these public housing complexes. 35 The success of the PWA in assisting African Americans in such a concrete way demonstrated that black advisors could make a significant difference in New Deal programs, and prompted other government agencies to hire black consultants.

Activism in the Black Cabinet

By the mid-1930s, white administrators had begun to tap black advisors for government programs with more regularity. This shift can be traced to the PWA’s success in addressing racial discrimination, as well as growing black support for New Deal programs and the Democratic Party. In 1935 , the National Youth Administration (NYA), an agency focused on finding work opportunities for young people, appointed prominent clubwoman and school president, Mary McLeod Bethune, to become the Negro Advisor, and later chair, of its Division of Negro Affairs (see figure 2 ). In taking this position, Bethune became the first black woman to head a government division. A native of South Carolina, she was the founder of the Bethune-Cookman School in Florida, a former president of the NACW, and an activist with deep networks in black women’s politics. In 1935 , Bethune founded a new civil rights organization, the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). 36 In the NYA, Bethune lobbied for African Americans to serve in leadership positions at the federal, state, and local levels. Under her watchful eye, more African Americans served in administrative positions in the NYA than any other New Deal program. And by the early 1940s, as many as 20 percent of black youth participated in NYA programs. 37 Mary McLeod Bethune also cultivated a public friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and educated her about the particular problems that African Americans faced in the United States. Through this friendship, Eleanor Roosevelt elevated her standing with African Americans and became an ally of black civil rights causes. Eleanor Roosevelt supported a federal anti-lynching bill, an end to the poll tax, and increased funding for black schools. 38

Figure 2. Mary McLeod Bethune was able to use her appointment in the New Deal to form the Black Cabinet and the NCNW. “ Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, founder and former president and director of the NYA (National Youth Administration) Negro Relations .” Bethune-Cookman College, Daytona Beach, Florida, January 1943.

Not only did Bethune assume a prominent position in the NYA and inform the First Lady about racial justice, but she also used her new status in Washington, DC, to gather a group of black consultants into the Federal Council of Negro Affairs, which became known as the Black Cabinet. Composed of lawyers, politicians, and journalists, members of the Black Cabinet advised President Roosevelt on matters related to African Americans. Some members of the Black Cabinet included the economist Robert Weaver, lawyer Charles Hastie, Pittsburgh Courier editor Robert L. Vann, who was in the Office of the Attorney General, social worker Lawrence Oxley, and CCC advisor Edgar Brown. The black press covered the Black Cabinet extensively, thereby introducing African American readers to the cohort of black professionals who advised the Roosevelt administration. By 1940 , one hundred African Americans served in administrative positions in the New Deal. But the Black Cabinet was not a formal government institution and Bethune convened its meetings in her office or apartment. 39

Members of the Black Cabinet worked in concert with civil rights organizations to pressure New Deal agencies and programs to end racial bias. For example, in 1933 , the CCC had enrolled a paltry number of young black men. But, after the NAACP put pressure on the CCC, two hundred thousand African American men participated in the program by 1940 , and one-fifth of them learned to read and write while enrolled. 40 In 1935 , Congress passed the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which took over some of the work from the PWA. The WPA’s administrator, Harry Hopkins, built on Ickes’s example by appointing a series of black advisors to design programs that would assist African Americans. 41 In the first year alone, two hundred thousand African Americans joined WPA programs, and that number climbed steadily each year. 42 The WPA constructed black schools and community centers, opened domestic service training centers, conducted adult education classes, and oversaw a myriad of arts projects (see section on “ Black Stories in the New Deal Era ”). In the rural South, African American men and women flocked to literacy classes, which enabled them to learn to read and supplement the poor education they had received in deeply underfunded schools, or even attend school for the first time in their lives (see figure 3 ). By the end of the 1930s, black illiteracy fell by 10 percent. 43

Figure 3. Older African Americans flocked to the WPA adult literacy programs. Pictured is an 82-year-old woman who is the “star pupil” in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. “ Star pupil, eighty-two years old, reading her lesson in adult class. Gee’s Bend, Alabama .” May 1939.

Despite the presence of racial advisors, however, many New Deal programs failed to address the black structural inequalities that lay at the root of American society. For example, the WPA limited black women’s employment opportunities to domestic service training programs and sewing programs, both of which paid low wages, while it enabled white women to seek opportunities in other industries, such as clerical work, gardening, and nursing. 44 Similarly, when the PWA constructed black housing projects, they engaged in slum clearance by razing black neighborhoods. This practice actually created a housing shortage for African Americans in segregated cities and paved the way for urban renewal programs in the postwar era. When Congress created the United States Housing Authority in 1937 , the bureau did not issue mortgages to African Americans in racially integrated neighborhoods. In all of these instances, New Deal programs did not touch America’s landscape of racial segregation and labor segmentation. 45

New Deal programs were especially challenged to improve the lives of rural black southerners, which was a source of continual frustration. A significant number of FDR’s economic advisors were native to the South and determined to use the New Deal as an instrument to tackle poverty in the region. The Agricultural Adjustment Act tried to increase crop prices by paying farmers to decrease their acreage. But the AAA lacked programs to assist black sharecroppers, who could not receive these payments because they were not landowners. Moreover, prominent white men who served on the AAA’s local committees crafted policies that favored white farmers over black farmers, which sometimes forced black landowners off their land and squeezed sharecroppers out of their jobs. The Resettlement Administration tried to relocate southerners to planned communities, but ultimately, only 1,393 black families were able to benefit from this program. 46 Cumulatively, the New Deal assisted black southerners by allocating money to African American schools, funding public health programs, and improving black housing. 47 While black participation in New Deal programs was uneven, there was no question that it marked a new era for African Americans and enabled them to recast their ideas about citizenship and belonging in the United States. By 1935 , 30 percent of African Americans were recipients of New Deal relief programs and many turned their political allegiances in these shifting times. 48

The 1936 election marked a major test for black politics. In his bid for a second term in office, FDR actively courted the black vote, envisioning African Americans as a part of his expanding electoral coalition that included workers, European immigrants, and white southerners. President Roosevelt was very delicate on the race question. Without supporting anti-lynching legislation publicly, he appealed to black voters by touting his record of black appointments and government programs that assisted African Americans. By the mid-1930s, black voter registration was at an all-time high in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit. In southern cities, some African Americans had managed to escape the barriers of disfranchisement and formed Democratic political clubs. 49 At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in June 1936 , thirty African Americans served as delegates, which was a first for the party. Furthermore, the black press received seats in the press box, a black minister, Marshall L. Shepard, delivered the invocation, and black politicians delivered addresses. 50 And, in the weeks before the election, FDR sent his maid, Elizabeth McDuffie, on the campaign trail to offer personal testimony about the Democratic Party’s commitment to African Americans. McDuffie traveled to midwestern cities where she held rallies and spoke to a total of fifty thousand black citizens. As the child of former slaves, McDuffie argued that the New Deal represented a second emancipation for African Americans. 51 This outreach worked and FDR was reelected in a landslide victory in 1936 . He captured 61 percent of the total vote, but he won 76 percent of the black vote. In this election, he cemented the relationship between African Americans and the Democratic Party. 52 Not all African Americans switched to the Democratic Party, however, and some black voters lamented that neither party offered a robust response to black poverty and civil rights. 53

Militant Black Protest Politics in the 1930s

While African Americans caused a major political realignment by switching from the Republican to the Democratic Parties, they also formed new protest organizations and deployed strategies of mass action in order to achieve racial justice. Early 21st-century historians point to these activities in the 1930s as evidence of a “long” civil rights movement in the United States, which helped to pave the way for the postwar black freedom struggle. 54 During the 1930s, the NAACP and NUL paid close attention to New Deal programs and put pressure on administrators to end racial bias. African Americans frequently reached out to their local branches or the national organization, and the NAACP was swift to conduct investigations and assisted thousands of African Americans across the country. 55 The NAACP had brilliant lawyers in Charles Hamilton Houston and his student at Howard University Law School, Thurgood Marshall. This legal team won landmark cases: Murray v. Maryland in 1936 and Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada in 1938 , which both whittled away at racial segregation in professional and graduate schools. 56 They also scored a victory in the Supreme Court in Hale v. Kentucky in 1938 which opened jury service to African Americans. And the national NAACP, along with local branches, aligned with the CP, despite worries about the party’s radicalism, to secure justice for the Scottsboro Nine, black teenagers who had been accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama in 1931 . All but the youngest were given a death sentence by electrocution in Alabama courts. Ada Wright, mother of two of the accused, traveled with the CP’s International Labor Defense throughout Europe in the early 1930s to spread awareness about the case, and her speaking engagements helped to educate a global audience about the injustices of the legal system for African Americans. 57 Through mass marches, newspaper exposes, and a massive fundraising campaign, the defendants were ultimately exonerated and released from jail. 58

African Americans also formed new organizations to fight for their economic rights and political interests in the 1930s. In 1931 , black sharecroppers in Alabama established the Alabama Sharecroppers Union in connection with the CP and by 1934 , it had four thousand members. Black women evaluated the strength of their organizations and tested new strategies. In 1935 , Mary McLeod Bethune founded the NCNW, to serve as a civil rights organization for black women. The NCNW gathered members from the NACW, but also federated with sororities, church groups, and professional organizations. Seeking to distance herself from the NACW’s respectability politics, Bethune designed the NCNW to lobby for black women’s interests with a special emphasis on employment opportunities. However, the NCNW was largely a middle-class organization that did not directly assist working-class women. In 1936 , John P. Davis and Howard Professor Ralph Bunche formed the National Negro Congress (NNC) and its youth organization, the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC). The NNC and SNYC reached down below to the grassroots level, recruiting activists, students, and workers to fight for black rights. By the late 1930s, the NNC established seventy-five local chapters across the country. 59

Men, women, and especially, young people, banded together with these new protest organizations to stage militant campaigns across the country. Activists in the NNC fought to broaden New Deal programs, improve living conditions for African Americans, organize black workers into industrial labor unions, protest disfranchisement, and protect all African Americans from interracial violence, especially lynching and police brutality. 60 In Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Washington, DC, black women and men staged Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work campaigns. Citizens picketed the white-owned stores and restaurants in black neighborhoods that did not hire black workers. 61 They also withheld their patronage from these establishments and intimidated black customers. These protests were largely successful and resulted in hundreds of jobs for unemployed and underemployed men and women, including teenagers who needed to supplement their family’s income. 62 African Americans also celebrated a major success when the Supreme Court upheld their right to picket in New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery in 1938 . These grassroots protests in the 1930s demonstrated the power of mass action and would help to inspire protests in the postwar era. 63

Not only did African Americans fight for jobs, but they also formed labor unions within different industries. In 1935 , Congress passed the Wagner Act, which upheld the right of workers to organize labor unions, participate in collective bargaining, and stage strikes, which nurtured a more supportive climate for industrial black workers. The largest black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), negotiated a contract with the Pullman Company to reduce their hours and increase their wages. 64 White labor leaders formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which organized black and white workers in mining, automobile, meatpacking, and steel industries. The CIO made racial equality central to its organization by fighting against pay scales and hiring black organizers in all of its unions. 65 The CIO also became a civil rights ally by lobbying against the poll tax, supporting a federal anti-lynching law, and fighting against labor discrimination. 66 Black tobacco workers and Red Caps both joined CIO-affiliated unions to fight for economic justice during the 1930s. 67 While black women joined some of these labor unions, they overwhelmingly assisted male workers. 68 In the 1930s, with the backing of the NNC, some black women formed a domestic workers union in New York City. But the union proved unable to improve their circumstances significantly during the Great Depression and New Deal eras, and domestic workers remained one of the nation’s most exploited groups, as they still are. 69

During the New Deal era, domestic workers suffered from abject poverty. Not only were they excluded from the Social Security Act, but white families reeling from the Depression fired servants or slashed wages. In 1935 , activists Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke wrote a landmark piece that was published in the NAACP’s organ, the Crisis , entitled “The Bronx Slave Market.” 70 This piece chronicled the desperate black servants who crowded the streets of the Bronx and the white housewives who would hire them for day wages. By terming this a “slave market,” Baker and Cooke underscored the severity of black women’s economic predicaments and the intersections of race, class, and gender during the Depression. 71 One job coveted by Washington, DC, domestic workers was to become a federal “charwoman,” a worker who cleaned government offices. The positions paid higher wages than domestic service and offered retirement benefits, and when the federal government announced it was accepting applications for these positions, between ten thousand and twenty thousand black women showed up to apply for these jobs. Many had spent the night at the station in order to obtain a good place in line. Their numbers were so large that officials had to stop distributing applications and turn toward crowd control. When women learned that they could not receive job applications, they began to express anger and frustration as white police officers were dispatched to contain the crowds of rioting women. The episode illustrated the dire economic circumstances experienced by black women and black families, the women articulating their collective desire to leave domestic service in white women’s houses and their exclusion from many New Deal programs, especially Social Security. 72

Black women and men who had suffered disproportionately from unemployment sometimes turned to the underground economy for survival. African Americans held rent parties, played numbers games, joined economic cooperatives, engaged in petty theft, and traded in sex to survive the effects of the Depression. 73 Yet these activities also made black women and men vulnerable targets for interracial police violence in cities such as Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC. 74

The visibility of African Americans in this era—whether they were marching in picket lines, staging boycotts, or rioting for jobs—underscored a new era in their culture of protest. Simultaneously, art, photography, writing, and oral history offered African Americans bountiful opportunities to recast their image in American culture and speak some of their truths.

Black Stories in the New Deal Era

Through the New Deal, the federal government first began to finance arts projects that, in turn, involved significant black engagement. Not only were writers, actors, photographers, and painters suffering from higher rates of unemployment than other categories of workers, but New Deal administrators also argued that the arts were a crucial part of the nation’s vitality. Largely through the WPA, the federal government organized the Federal Theater Project (FTP) and the Federal Writers Project (FWP), which employed writers and playwrights. The FWP also dispatched interviewers to travel to the South and interview thousands of former slaves in the United States, which became an invaluable resource for historians of slavery. Finally, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) hired photographers to travel across the country and document the lives of ordinary Americans. Not only did the FSA recruit black photographers, but white photographers also snapped searing and indelible images of African Americans. Collectively, all of these initiatives enabled African Americans to defy some of the pernicious racial stereotypes that were perpetuated against them throughout American culture. 75

African Americans participated enthusiastically in both the FWP and the FTP. During the 1920s, cities such as Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC, had witnessed the flourishing of black arts through literature, poetry, painting, film, and playwriting. These artistic communities laid the groundwork for black participation in New Deal artistic programs. 76 Both the FWP and the FTP had Negro divisions that oversaw black projects. The FTP’s Negro Division staged plays, hired black actors and directors, and took black stories seriously. Prior to the FTP, most black actors were limited to artistic opportunities related to minstrelsy. In rare cases, black actors were able to perform in the early phase of black film with auteurs, such as Oscar Micheaux. 77 The FTP’s Negro Division traveled to twenty-two cities across the country, which enabled African Americans to interact with this new, innovative type of theater. Black performers not only acted in plays with themes rooted in African American history and culture, such as racial prejudice, the Haitian Revolution, and lynching, but they also performed all-black productions of Macbeth and Swing Mikado , which reset expectations about black actors portraying historical white and Asian characters. 78

The FWP hired luminaries in black culture, including the writers Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, the scholars St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, and the poet Sterling Brown. These writers documented the contributions of African Americans to United States history and culture. 79

The gathering of ex-slave narratives may have been the most important aspect of the FWP’s work. In the mid-1930s, the last generation of enslaved men and women were about to die. Members of the FWP recognized that this project represented a transformative opportunity for interviewers to speak with the men and women who had survived the trauma of racial slavery and narrate their experiences. Prior to the ex-slave narrative project, the vast majority of historiography about racial slavery was written from the viewpoint of white masters and mistresses. By inviting former slaves to share their recollections and offer their personal testimony, the nation would be able to reckon with its traumatic past.

Between 1936 and 1938 , dozens of black and white researchers traveled to the American South to interview over two thousand former slaves. When the project had concluded, they had amassed ten thousand typed pages and thousands of hours of testimony. These interviews proved invaluable in illuminating some of the hidden worlds of slavery, including sexual violence, physical brutality, and black survival strategies. The vast majority of these former slaves had regional accents, or in some cases, spoke in black dialect. Since white interviewers conducted the majority of the interviews, power relations were imbalanced and former slaves were not as direct as they would be with black researchers, especially around issues of trauma and sexual violence. Moreover, the interviews starkly illuminated the abject poverty that former slaves experienced. 80 The ex-slave narratives offered invaluable information to future historians, who continue to use the narratives as major sources for understanding both American slavery and the disappointment of Reconstruction.

In addition to listening to African Americans through testimony, the FSA hired a series of black and white photographers, who traveled across the country to visualize African Americans and black culture in the 1930s (see figure 4 ). Photography was a revolutionary instrument that could be wielded for social change. In this era, mass culture, such as advertisements, cartoons, and films, depicted African Americans in derogatory stereotypes as lazy, immature, childlike, and dangerous. These stereotypes were not simply abstract images, but rather, evidence that fueled a social, cultural, and political narrative about who African Americans were. 81 A documentary photograph that depicted a person hard at work, then, made it that much more difficult to deny basic human rights and dignities. These photographs helped to give a human face to African Americans who were suffering as ordinary Americans. White FSA photographers, such as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, traveled across the country and snapped indelible photographs of African Americans. These images revealed the complexities of black life across the country. 82 Gordon Parks, one of the most notable black FSA photographers, used his camera as a weapon and captured images of thousands of African Americans throughout the country. His image of Ella Watson, a charwoman in the federal government, dramatically portrayed her between an American flag and a broom, meditating on a black woman who literally mopped the floors of the federal government yet was denied access to major government programs. It is now known as the black American gothic (see figure 5 ). 83

Figure 4. In this photograph, Dorothea Lange depicts a 13-year-old sharecropper boy in Americus, Georgia, in an image that defies racial stereotypes. “ Thirteen-year old sharecropper boy near Americus, Georgia .” July 1937.

Figure 5. In his photograph of government charwoman Ella Watson, Gordon Parks meditates on a black woman who cleans government offices, yet is excluded from government programs. “ Washington, D.C. Government charwoman .” August 1942.

Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial became one of the most significant cultural moments for African Americans during the New Deal era. Anderson was a classically trained opera singer popular among both black and white audiences. It had been customary for Anderson to perform a concert with the Howard University Music School each year in Washington, DC. But organizers struggled to find a venue that was large enough to accommodate the audience as Anderson’s fame grew. In 1939 , the Daughters of the American Revolution lent their concert space, but then rescinded the invitation, explicitly because of Anderson’s race. After a protracted battle to find a place where Anderson could perform, a coalition contacted Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, who had been an important white ally for African Americans in the New Deal. Ickes arranged for Marian Anderson to perform her concert on Easter Sunday in 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where Anderson’s stunning voice sang the sweet words, “America (My Country Tis’ of Thee).” Only dedicated in 1922 , Anderson’s concert marked the first time when Americans would use the Lincoln Memorial as a site of protest. Her concert foreshadowed future civil rights demonstrations, most notably the iconic March on Washington in 1963 . 84

The Great Depression and New Deal represented a watershed moment for African Americans throughout the country and reshaped the 20th-century trajectory of black life in the United States. By 1940 , black politics had undergone a radical change. The majority of voters now identified with the Democratic Party and used the party as a vehicle for civil rights and economic justice. Through the Black Cabinet and racial advisors, the federal government now turned toward African Americans for advice on the distribution of programs. African Americans scored important legal victories in the United States with the right to serve on juries, stage pickets, and integrate some graduate and professional schools. These legal triumphs were crucial ingredients for the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education and the postwar black freedom struggle. Leaders such as Robert Weaver and William Hastie had experimented with non-discrimination clauses and quota systems that would pave the way for this implementation on a national level as well as the rise of affirmative action in the United States in the 1960s. At the grassroots level, black women and men formed local organizations, staged economic boycotts, picketed businesses, joined labor unions, and engaged in strikes and riots for better jobs. Black women brought their deep organizational networks to all of these campaigns and played a transformative role in the struggle for racial equality and justice. Culturally, African Americans were able to defy racial stereotypes and illuminate the beautiful complexities and contradictions of the black experience in the United States.

Discussion of the Literature

Since the institutionalization of African American History in the 1960s, scholars have devoted significant attention toward the periods of the Great Depression and New Deal eras, and this historiographical literature reflects a rich and complex body of work. Early historians focused on the relationship between African Americans and the New Deal, especially as it related to region. Raymond Wolters’s essay—“The New Deal and the Negro,” in the edited volume, The New Deal: The National Level —and Harvard Sitkoff’s important essay—“The Impact of the New Deal on Black Southerners,” in another edited volume, The New Deal and the South —both offer an excellent overview about each New Deal program and the precise ways that African Americans did and did not benefit from these government initiatives. 85 Nancy Grant’s TVA and Black Americans: Planning for the Status Quo and Owen Cole’s The African-American Experience in the Civilian Conservation Corps , both followed in this vein by centering on specific government programs. 86 In several important works—such as Harvard Sitkoff’s A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue ; John Kirby’s Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era: Liberalism and Race ; and Nancy Weiss’s Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR —historians have debated the reasons for black political realignment in the 1930s, with some pointing to the New Deal’s economic benefits and others emphasizing the Democratic Party’s (slow) embrace of civil rights. 87 Scholars in this period also highlighted the white allies in the New Deal who spoke out for racial equality, including Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, FSA administrator Will Alexander, and especially, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Patricia Sullivan’s Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era added complexities and nuance to this literature. 88 Finally, in the 1980s and 1990s, historians explored the black alliance with the CP, with Mark Naison’s Communists in Harlem during the Depression and Robin D. G. Kelley’s brilliant Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Depression . 89

In the early 21st century , historians have focused less on electoral realignment and interracial alliances, and more on the ways that African Americans worked at the grassroots level to wage an early civil rights movement in the United States. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall’s seminal article, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” credits leftist black protest during the Depression and the New Deal with the success of the postwar black freedom struggle even as it struggled to survive during the Cold War and rise of the New Right. 90 In Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights , Erik Gellman builds on Robin Kelley’s work to chronicle the grassroots organizing of the NNC and SYNC in cities such as Richmond, Virginia, Washington, DC, and Chicago. 91

In this turn toward the flourishing of black activism in this period, historians have particularly emphasized women’s participation, stretching from their leadership in organizations and government programs to their grassroots advocacy for social change. In Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta , Karen Ferguson puts gender at the center of her analysis of the Great Depression and New Deal, while in For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois , Lisa G. Materson analyzes the political activism of both migrant women and clubwomen. 92 In “Running with the Reds: African American Women and the Communist Party during the Great Depression,” LaShawn Harris analyzes the complex ways that black women forged relationships with the CP. 93 Other historians have chronicled black women’s widespread participation in housewife boycotts, labor riots, and underground economies. Finally, cultural historians have analyzed black participation in New Deal arts programs. Lauren Rebecca Skarloff’s Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era analyzes the relationship between black participation in arts programs and visions of democracy. 94

Primary Sources

Government sources.

For African American experiences with the New Deal, the National Archives’ trove of records are a good place to start. The majority of these collections are housed at the National Archives II in College Park, Maryland, and many have finding aids that list the Negro division for each branch and contain a wealth of materials. Additionally, New Deal Agencies and Black Americans offers a curated set of documents that can be a helpful entry point for further research. 95 These documents are available on microfilm or on LexisNexis. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Censuses can illuminate information about the lives of ordinary Americans and whether they were the beneficiary of government programs. These census records are available at any branch of the National Archives or through ancestry.com.

Manuscript Collections

Organizational records from the NAACP, the NCNW, the NUL, the NNC, and the BSCP, all offer information about black activities in this era and all are available in the manuscript reading room at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The George Meany Memorial Archive at the University of Maryland, College Park, has collections related to the American Federation of Labor-CIO unions. The Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has the papers of the Housewives’ League of Detroit. Additionally, many of the leaders of this era—including Nannie Helen Burroughs, Charles Hamilton Houston, Irvin and Elizabeth McDuffie, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Robert Weaver—have personal papers that are rich with information. The Houston papers are at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in Washington, DC; the Burroughs papers at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the Bethune papers at the Amistad Research Center at Tulane in New Orleans; the Irvin and Elizabeth McDuffie papers at Robert W. Woodruff Library at Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia; and the Robert Weaver papers at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library in New York City. Finally, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, has an immense amount of materials related to African American participation in New Deal programs, as well Eleanor Roosevelt’s correspondence with a range of black individuals and organizations.

Newspapers & Periodicals

The 1920s and 1930s were a golden age in the black press. To chronicle some of the political activities as well as everyday experiences, newspapers such as the Baltimore Afro-American , the Chicago Defender , the New York Amsterdam News , the Norfolk Journal and Guide , and the Pittsburgh Courier are all excellent resources, and they are digitized through ProQuest. Additionally, the Crisis and Opportunity were two periodicals that offered updates about black life and activism in the 1930s.

Photographs

The FSA photographs are outstanding sources for gathering information on African Americans. The Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress have all of the FSA photographs, and the digital website Photogrammar from Yale has digitized the photographs in an excellent database that is searchable by region, photographer, and subject. Finally, the WPA Slave Narratives at the Library of Congress offer an important assessment of some of the material circumstances of African Americans in this era.

Further Reading

• Kirby, John B. Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era: Liberalism and Race . Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980.
• Ferguson, Karen . Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
• Gellman, Erik S. Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
• Grant, Nancy . TVA and Black Americans: Planning for the Status Quo . Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
• Greenberg, Cheryl . “Or Does It Explode?” Black Harlem in the Great Depression . New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Kelley, Robin D. G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
• Materson, Lisa G. For the Freedom of Her Race: African American Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
• McMahon, Kevin . Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
• Murphy, Mary-Elizabeth B. Jim Crow Capital: Women and Black Freedom Struggles in Washington, D.C., 1920-1945 . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
• Naison, Mark . Communists in Harlem during the Depression . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983.
• Sitkoff, Harvard . A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue . New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
• Skarloff, Lauren Rebecca . Black Culture in the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
• Sullivan, Patricia . Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
• Watts, Jill . The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics during the Age of Roosevelt . New York: Grove Atlantic, 2020.
• Weiss, Nancy . Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
• Wolcott, Victoria . Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

1. Major historiographical works on African Americans in the Great Depression and New Deal include: Raymond Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression: The Problem of Economic Recovery (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970); Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) ; John B. Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era: Liberalism and Race (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980) ; Nancy J. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983) ; Nancy Grant, TVA and Black Americans: Planning for the Status Quo (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990) ; Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists in the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Cheryl Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?” Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) ; Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ; Karen Ferguson, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002) ; Lauren Rebecca Skarloff, Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); and Jill Watts, The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics during the Age of Roosevelt (New York: Grove Atlantic, 2020) .

2. US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population , Vol. IV, Occupations by States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1933), 25–34.

3. Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks , 35; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe , 35–36; and Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liverlight, 2013), 163.

4. Greta de Jong, A Different Day: African American Struggles for Justice in Rural Louisiana, 1900–1970 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 90–91; Joe William Trotter Jr., “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?, 1929–1945,” in To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans , eds. Robin D. G. Kelley and Earl Lewis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 417.

5. Irma Watkins-Owens, Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900–1930 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).

6. Definitive works on the first Great Migration include James Grossman, Land of Hope: Black Southerners and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Joe William Trotter Jr., ed., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Milton C. Sernett, Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); Kimberly L. Philips, Alabama North: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Victoria Wolcott, Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); James N. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Douglas Flaming, Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America (Berkeley, CA: University Press of California, 2005); Davarian L. Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); and Beth Tompkins Bates, The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

7. Grossman, Land of Hope ; Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, “Discontented Black Feminists: Prelude and Postscript to the Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment,” in We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible: A Reader in Black Women’s History , eds. Darlene Clark Hine, Wilma King, and Linda Reed (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1995), 487–504; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “In Politics to Stay: Black Women Leaders and Party Politics in the 1920s,” in Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History , eds. Vicki L. Ruiz and Ellen Carol Dubois (New York: Routledge, 2000), 292–306; Nikki J. Brown, Private Politics and Public Voices: Black Women’s Activism from World War I to the New Deal (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); and Lisa G. Materson, For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877–1932 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 60–184.

8. Trotter, “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?,” 409.

9. Wolcott, Remaking Respectability , 170; Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?,” 65–66; and Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, To Ask for an Equal Chance: African Americans in the Great Depression (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), 27; and Shawn Leigh Alexander, W. E. B. DuBois: An American Intellectual and Activist (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), 93.

10. Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks , 34–39.

11. Ferguson, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta , 51; and Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?,” 47–56.

12. Trotter, “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?,” 412.

13. Sernett, Bound for the Promised Land ; Ferguson, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta , 48–54; and Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy, Jim Crow Capital: Women and Black Freedom Struggles in Washington, DC, 1920–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 113–117 .

14. Darlene Clark Hine, “The Housewives’ League of Detroit: Black Women and Economic Nationalism,” in Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism , eds. Nancy A. Hewitt and Suzanne Lebsock (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 223–241; Annelise Orleck, “‘We Are That Mythical Thing Called Public’: Militant Housewives during the Great Depression,” Feminist Studies 19, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 147–172; Wolcott, Remaking Respectability , 181–183; and Bettye Collier-Thomas, Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion (New York: Knopf Press, 2000), 303–305; and Keona Ervin, Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017), 39–42.

15. Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983) ; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe ; LaShawn Harris, “Running with the Reds: African American Women in the Communist Party during the Great Depression,” Journal of African American History 94, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 21–43; Erik S. McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012) ; and Murphy, Jim Crow Capital , 75–109.

16. Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks , 19–30; and Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 22–25.

17. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 16–17.

18. Kenneth J. Goings, “ The NAACP Comes of Age”: The Defeat of Judge John J. Parker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Free Press, 2009), 138–142; and Murphy, Jim Crow Capital , 37–38.

19. Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks , 19–30; and Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 22–25.

20. For information on Woodrow Wilson’s segregation of the federal government, see Eric S. Yellin, Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

21. Kaye Lannings Minchew, A President in Our Midst: Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Georgia (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2016).

22. Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era , 16–18; Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks , 19–30; and Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 22–25.

23. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 38, 104; Adrian Miller, The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 133–136; and Mary-Elizabeth Murphy, “‘The Servant Campaigns’: African American Women and the Politics of Economic Justice in Washington, D.C. in the 1930s,” Journal of Urban History 44, no. 2 (March 2018): 189–190.

24. Raymond Wolters, “The New Deal and the Negro,” in The New Deal: The National Level , eds. John Braeman, Robert H. Bremmer, and David Brody (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1975), 170–178; Harvard Sitkoff, “The Impact of the New Deal on Black Southerners,” in The New Deal and the South , eds. James C. Cobb and Michael Namorato (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1984), 117–124; Grant, TVA and Black Americans ; Owen Cole, The African-American Experience in the Civilian Conservation Corps (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999); Trotter, “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?,” 411–416; and Neil M. Maher, Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 109–110.

25. Sitkoff, “Impact of the New Deal on Black Southerners,” 120–121; and Wolters, “The New Deal and the Negro,” 180–185.

26. Tiffany Gill, Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 70; and Murphy, Jim Crow Capital , 119–121.

27. Mary Poole, The Segregated Origins of Social Security: African Americans and the Welfare State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Katznelson, Fear Itself , 163–174; Murphy, Jim Crow Capital , 122–123.

28. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 166–168.

29. US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States , 25–34.

30. Murphy, “The Servant Campaigns,” 190–191.

31. Wolters, “The New Deal and the Negro,” 186–187; and Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era , 17–18.

32. Sullivan, Days of Hope , 24–40.

33. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 67–68.

34. For a discussion of the PWA housing projects, see Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 85–110, 147–176; Ferguson, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta , 186–220; and Richard Rothenstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liverlight, 2017), 20–23.

35. Marc W. Kruman, “Quotas for Blacks: The Public Works Administration and the Black Construction Worker,” Labor History 16 (Winter 1975): 37–51; Paul D. Moreno, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair Employment Law and Policy in America, 1937–1997 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997); Sigmund Shipp, “Building Bricks without Straw: Robert C. Weaver and Negro Industrial Employment, 1934–1944,” in Historical Roots of the Urban Crisis: African Americans in the Industrial City, 1900–1950 , eds. Henry Louis Taylor Jr. and Walter Hill (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), 209–226; and Wendell E. Pritchett, Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

36. Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 148–154; and Rebecca Tuuri, Strategic Sisterhood: The National Council of Negro Women in the Black Freedom Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 15–18.

37. Wolters, “The New Deal and the Negro,” 193.

38. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 143–145; Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era , 76–105; and Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2: The Defining Years, 1933–1938 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1999).

39. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 136–156; Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era , 106–151; and Watts, The Black Cabinet .

40. Sitkoff, “Impact of the New Deal on Black Southerners,” 124.

41. Trotter, “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?,” 418–419.

42. Wolters, “The New Deal and the Negro,” 189.

43. de Jong, A Different Day , 90–91; Trotter, “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?,” 417.

44. Ferguson, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta , 121–128; and Murphy, “The Servant Campaigns,” 194–198.

45. Trotter, “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?,” 415; and Ferguson, New Deal Politics in Black Atlanta , 165–185.

46. Sitkoff, “Impact of the New Deal on Black Southerners,” 127.

47. Sullivan, Days of Hope , 41–69; and Ferguson, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta .

48. Wolters, “The New Deal and the Negro,” 189.

49. Trotter, “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?,” 431; and Elizabeth Gritter, River of Hope: Black Politics and the Memphis Freedom Movement, 1865–1954 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014).

50. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 184–193.

51. Murphy, “The Servant Campaigns,” 191–193.

52. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln , 204–208.

53. Leigh Wright Rigueur, The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 13–51.

54. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (March 2005): 1233–1263.

55. Sullivan, Lift Every Voice , 145–206.

56. Mark V. Tushnet, The NAACP’s Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 49–81; and Sullivan, Lift Every Voice , 207–211.

57. James A. Miller, Susan D. Pennybacker, and Eve Rosenhaft, “Mother Ada Wright and the International Campaign to Free the Scottsboro Boys, 1931–1934,” American Historical Review 106, no. 2 (April 2001): 387–430.

58. Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969); Kelley, Hammer and Hoe ; James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994); and Sullivan, Lift Every Voice , 145–151.

59. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe ; Trotter, “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?,” 151–155; White, Too Heavy a Load , 157–165; Tuuri, Strategic Sisterhood , 16–20; and Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow .

60. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow .

61. In Harlem, the movement was known as the “Jobs for Negroes” movement. For the historiography on the Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work campaigns, see Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode,” 114–139; Michele F. Pacifico, “‘Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work’: The New Negro Alliance of Washington,” Washington History 6, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 1994): 66–88; Ervin, Gateway to Equality , 79–96; and Traci Parker, Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and the Civil Rights Movement from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 61–65; I fixed it to be 61-65

62. Marcia Chatelain, South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 96–129.

63. Pacifico, “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work,” 82.

64. Beth Tompkins Bates, Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 126–147.

65. Robert H. Ziegler, The CIO: 1935–1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); and Michael Goldfield, “Race and the CIO: The Possibilities for Racial Egalitarianism during the 1930s and 1940s,” International Labor and Working-Class History 44 (Fall 1993): 1–32.

66. Trotter, “From A Raw Deal to a New Deal?,” 422–424.

67. Robert Rodgers Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); and Eric Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

68. Melinda Chateauvert, Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).

69. Danielle Phillips, “Cleaning Race: Irish Immigrant and Southern Black Domestic Workers in the Northeast United States, 1865–1930,” in U.S. Women’s History: Untangling the Threads of Sisterhood , eds. Leslie Brown, Jacqueline Castledine, and Ann Valk (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017), 36–27; and Vanessa May, Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York, 1870–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 146–173.

70. Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke, “The Bronx Slave Market,” Crisis 42, November 1935.

71. Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 76–77; and LaShawn Harris, “Marvel Cooke: Investigative Journalist, Communist, and Black Radical Subject,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 6, no. 2 (Fall 2012): 91–126.

72. Murphy, Jim Crow Capital , 133–138.

73. Wolcott, Remaking Respectability ; and LaShawn Harris, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 123–166.

74. Simon Balto, Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 82; Murphy, Jim Crow Capital ; and Clarence Taylor, Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City (New York: New York University Press, 2018), 51–58.

75. Skarloff, Black Culture in the New Deal , 1–14.

76. David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Random House, 1981); Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes ; and Treva B. Lindsey, Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C . (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017).

77. Jacqueline Jajuma Stewart, Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005); and Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes , 91–154.

78. Skarloff, Black Culture in the New Deal , 33–80.

79. Trotter, “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal,” 419; and Skarloff, Black Culture in the New Deal , 81–122.

80. William F. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts: The Origins and Administrative History of the Arts Projects of the Works Progress Administration (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969); Stephanie J. Shaw, “Using the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives to Study the Impact of the Great Depression,” Journal of Southern History 69, no. 3 (August 2003): 623–658; and Skarloff, Black Culture in the New Deal , 81–122.

81. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); and Skarloff, Black Culture in the New Deal .

82. Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life beyond Limits (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 259–278.

83. Gordon Parks, A Choice of Weapons (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1965); Nicholas Natanson, The Black Image in the New Deal: The Politics of FSA Photography (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992); Deborah Willis, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000); and Richard J. Powell, Maurice Berger, and Deborah Willis, Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work, 1940–1950 (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2018).

84. Scott Sandage, “A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory,” Journal of American History 80, no. 1 (June 1993): 135–167; and Raymond Arsenault, The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009).

85. Wolters, “The New Deal and the Negro”; and Sitkoff, “Impact of the New Deal on Black Southerners.”

86. Grant, TVA and Black Americans ; and Cole, African-American Experience .

87. Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks ; Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era ; and Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln .

88. Sullivan, Days of Hope .

89. Naison, Communists in Harlem .

90. Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement.”

91. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow .

92. Ferguson, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta ; and Materson, For the Freedom of Her Race .

93. LaShawn, “Running with the Reds.”

94. Skarloff, Black Culture and the New Deal .

95. John B. Kirby, ed., New Deal Agencies and Black Americans (Arlington, VA: University Publications of America, 1984).

Related Articles

• The Black Freedom Struggle in the Urban North
• The New Deal
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Developing a Thesis Statement

Many papers you write require developing a thesis statement. In this section you’ll learn what a thesis statement is and how to write one.

Keep in mind that not all papers require thesis statements . If in doubt, please consult your instructor for assistance.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement . . .

• Makes an argumentative assertion about a topic; it states the conclusions that you have reached about your topic.
• Makes a promise to the reader about the scope, purpose, and direction of your paper.
• Is focused and specific enough to be “proven” within the boundaries of your paper.
• Is generally located near the end of the introduction ; sometimes, in a long paper, the thesis will be expressed in several sentences or in an entire paragraph.
• Identifies the relationships between the pieces of evidence that you are using to support your argument.

Not all papers require thesis statements! Ask your instructor if you’re in doubt whether you need one.

Identify a topic

Your topic is the subject about which you will write. Your assignment may suggest several ways of looking at a topic; or it may name a fairly general concept that you will explore or analyze in your paper.

Consider what your assignment asks you to do

Inform yourself about your topic, focus on one aspect of your topic, ask yourself whether your topic is worthy of your efforts, generate a topic from an assignment.

Below are some possible topics based on sample assignments.

Sample assignment 1

Analyze Spain’s neutrality in World War II.

Identified topic

Franco’s role in the diplomatic relationships between the Allies and the Axis

This topic avoids generalities such as “Spain” and “World War II,” addressing instead on Franco’s role (a specific aspect of “Spain”) and the diplomatic relations between the Allies and Axis (a specific aspect of World War II).

Sample assignment 2

Analyze one of Homer’s epic similes in the Iliad.

The relationship between the portrayal of warfare and the epic simile about Simoisius at 4.547-64.

This topic focuses on a single simile and relates it to a single aspect of the Iliad ( warfare being a major theme in that work).

Developing a Thesis Statement–Additional information

Your assignment may suggest several ways of looking at a topic, or it may name a fairly general concept that you will explore or analyze in your paper. You’ll want to read your assignment carefully, looking for key terms that you can use to focus your topic.

Sample assignment: Analyze Spain’s neutrality in World War II Key terms: analyze, Spain’s neutrality, World War II

After you’ve identified the key words in your topic, the next step is to read about them in several sources, or generate as much information as possible through an analysis of your topic. Obviously, the more material or knowledge you have, the more possibilities will be available for a strong argument. For the sample assignment above, you’ll want to look at books and articles on World War II in general, and Spain’s neutrality in particular.

As you consider your options, you must decide to focus on one aspect of your topic. This means that you cannot include everything you’ve learned about your topic, nor should you go off in several directions. If you end up covering too many different aspects of a topic, your paper will sprawl and be unconvincing in its argument, and it most likely will not fulfull the assignment requirements.

For the sample assignment above, both Spain’s neutrality and World War II are topics far too broad to explore in a paper. You may instead decide to focus on Franco’s role in the diplomatic relationships between the Allies and the Axis , which narrows down what aspects of Spain’s neutrality and World War II you want to discuss, as well as establishes a specific link between those two aspects.

Before you go too far, however, ask yourself whether your topic is worthy of your efforts. Try to avoid topics that already have too much written about them (i.e., “eating disorders and body image among adolescent women”) or that simply are not important (i.e. “why I like ice cream”). These topics may lead to a thesis that is either dry fact or a weird claim that cannot be supported. A good thesis falls somewhere between the two extremes. To arrive at this point, ask yourself what is new, interesting, contestable, or controversial about your topic.

As you work on your thesis, remember to keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times . Sometimes your thesis needs to evolve as you develop new insights, find new evidence, or take a different approach to your topic.

Derive a main point from topic

Once you have a topic, you will have to decide what the main point of your paper will be. This point, the “controlling idea,” becomes the core of your argument (thesis statement) and it is the unifying idea to which you will relate all your sub-theses. You can then turn this “controlling idea” into a purpose statement about what you intend to do in your paper.

Look for patterns in your evidence

Compose a purpose statement.

Consult the examples below for suggestions on how to look for patterns in your evidence and construct a purpose statement.

• Franco first tried to negotiate with the Axis
• Franco turned to the Allies when he couldn’t get some concessions that he wanted from the Axis

Possible conclusion:

Spain’s neutrality in WWII occurred for an entirely personal reason: Franco’s desire to preserve his own (and Spain’s) power.

Purpose statement

This paper will analyze Franco’s diplomacy during World War II to see how it contributed to Spain’s neutrality.

• The simile compares Simoisius to a tree, which is a peaceful, natural image.
• The tree in the simile is chopped down to make wheels for a chariot, which is an object used in warfare.

At first, the simile seems to take the reader away from the world of warfare, but we end up back in that world by the end.

This paper will analyze the way the simile about Simoisius at 4.547-64 moves in and out of the world of warfare.

Derive purpose statement from topic

To find out what your “controlling idea” is, you have to examine and evaluate your evidence . As you consider your evidence, you may notice patterns emerging, data repeated in more than one source, or facts that favor one view more than another. These patterns or data may then lead you to some conclusions about your topic and suggest that you can successfully argue for one idea better than another.

For instance, you might find out that Franco first tried to negotiate with the Axis, but when he couldn’t get some concessions that he wanted from them, he turned to the Allies. As you read more about Franco’s decisions, you may conclude that Spain’s neutrality in WWII occurred for an entirely personal reason: his desire to preserve his own (and Spain’s) power. Based on this conclusion, you can then write a trial thesis statement to help you decide what material belongs in your paper.

Sometimes you won’t be able to find a focus or identify your “spin” or specific argument immediately. Like some writers, you might begin with a purpose statement just to get yourself going. A purpose statement is one or more sentences that announce your topic and indicate the structure of the paper but do not state the conclusions you have drawn . Thus, you might begin with something like this:

• This paper will look at modern language to see if it reflects male dominance or female oppression.
• I plan to analyze anger and derision in offensive language to see if they represent a challenge of society’s authority.

At some point, you can turn a purpose statement into a thesis statement. As you think and write about your topic, you can restrict, clarify, and refine your argument, crafting your thesis statement to reflect your thinking.

As you work on your thesis, remember to keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times. Sometimes your thesis needs to evolve as you develop new insights, find new evidence, or take a different approach to your topic.

Compose a draft thesis statement

If you are writing a paper that will have an argumentative thesis and are having trouble getting started, the techniques in the table below may help you develop a temporary or “working” thesis statement.

Begin with a purpose statement that you will later turn into a thesis statement.

Assignment: Discuss the history of the Reform Party and explain its influence on the 1990 presidential and Congressional election.

Purpose Statement: This paper briefly sketches the history of the grassroots, conservative, Perot-led Reform Party and analyzes how it influenced the economic and social ideologies of the two mainstream parties.

Question-to-Assertion

If your assignment asks a specific question(s), turn the question(s) into an assertion and give reasons why it is true or reasons for your opinion.

Assignment : What do Aylmer and Rappaccini have to be proud of? Why aren’t they satisfied with these things? How does pride, as demonstrated in “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” lead to unexpected problems?

Beginning thesis statement: Alymer and Rappaccinni are proud of their great knowledge; however, they are also very greedy and are driven to use their knowledge to alter some aspect of nature as a test of their ability. Evil results when they try to “play God.”

Write a sentence that summarizes the main idea of the essay you plan to write.

Main idea: The reason some toys succeed in the market is that they appeal to the consumers’ sense of the ridiculous and their basic desire to laugh at themselves.

Make a list of the ideas that you want to include; consider the ideas and try to group them.

• nature = peaceful
• war matériel = violent (competes with 1?)
• need for time and space to mourn the dead
• war is inescapable (competes with 3?)

Use a formula to arrive at a working thesis statement (you will revise this later).

• although most readers of _______ have argued that _______, closer examination shows that _______.
• _______ uses _______ and _____ to prove that ________.
• phenomenon x is a result of the combination of __________, __________, and _________.

What to keep in mind as you draft an initial thesis statement

Beginning statements obtained through the methods illustrated above can serve as a framework for planning or drafting your paper, but remember they’re not yet the specific, argumentative thesis you want for the final version of your paper. In fact, in its first stages, a thesis statement usually is ill-formed or rough and serves only as a planning tool.

As you write, you may discover evidence that does not fit your temporary or “working” thesis. Or you may reach deeper insights about your topic as you do more research, and you will find that your thesis statement has to be more complicated to match the evidence that you want to use.

You must be willing to reject or omit some evidence in order to keep your paper cohesive and your reader focused. Or you may have to revise your thesis to match the evidence and insights that you want to discuss. Read your draft carefully, noting the conclusions you have drawn and the major ideas which support or prove those conclusions. These will be the elements of your final thesis statement.

Sometimes you will not be able to identify these elements in your early drafts, but as you consider how your argument is developing and how your evidence supports your main idea, ask yourself, “ What is the main point that I want to prove/discuss? ” and “ How will I convince the reader that this is true? ” When you can answer these questions, then you can begin to refine the thesis statement.

Refine and polish the thesis statement

To get to your final thesis, you’ll need to refine your draft thesis so that it’s specific and arguable.

• Ask if your draft thesis addresses the assignment
• Question each part of your draft thesis
• Clarify vague phrases and assertions
• Investigate alternatives to your draft thesis

Consult the example below for suggestions on how to refine your draft thesis statement.

Sample Assignment

Choose an activity and define it as a symbol of American culture. Your essay should cause the reader to think critically about the society which produces and enjoys that activity.

• Ask The phenomenon of drive-in facilities is an interesting symbol of american culture, and these facilities demonstrate significant characteristics of our society.This statement does not fulfill the assignment because it does not require the reader to think critically about society.

Drive-ins are an interesting symbol of American culture because they represent Americans’ significant creativity and business ingenuity.

Among the types of drive-in facilities familiar during the twentieth century, drive-in movie theaters best represent American creativity, not merely because they were the forerunner of later drive-ins and drive-throughs, but because of their impact on our culture: they changed our relationship to the automobile, changed the way people experienced movies, and changed movie-going into a family activity.

While drive-in facilities such as those at fast-food establishments, banks, pharmacies, and dry cleaners symbolize America’s economic ingenuity, they also have affected our personal standards.

While drive-in facilities such as those at fast- food restaurants, banks, pharmacies, and dry cleaners symbolize (1) Americans’ business ingenuity, they also have contributed (2) to an increasing homogenization of our culture, (3) a willingness to depersonalize relationships with others, and (4) a tendency to sacrifice quality for convenience.

This statement is now specific and fulfills all parts of the assignment. This version, like any good thesis, is not self-evident; its points, 1-4, will have to be proven with evidence in the body of the paper. The numbers in this statement indicate the order in which the points will be presented. Depending on the length of the paper, there could be one paragraph for each numbered item or there could be blocks of paragraph for even pages for each one.

Complete the final thesis statement

The bottom line.

As you move through the process of crafting a thesis, you’ll need to remember four things:

• Context matters! Think about your course materials and lectures. Try to relate your thesis to the ideas your instructor is discussing.
• As you go through the process described in this section, always keep your assignment in mind . You will be more successful when your thesis (and paper) responds to the assignment than if it argues a semi-related idea.
• Your thesis statement should be precise, focused, and contestable ; it should predict the sub-theses or blocks of information that you will use to prove your argument.
• Make sure that you keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times. Change your thesis as your paper evolves, because you do not want your thesis to promise more than your paper actually delivers.

In the beginning, the thesis statement was a tool to help you sharpen your focus, limit material and establish the paper’s purpose. When your paper is finished, however, the thesis statement becomes a tool for your reader. It tells the reader what you have learned about your topic and what evidence led you to your conclusion. It keeps the reader on track–well able to understand and appreciate your argument.

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• How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on January 11, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on August 15, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . It usually comes near the end of your introduction .

Your thesis will look a bit different depending on the type of essay you’re writing. But the thesis statement should always clearly state the main idea you want to get across. Everything else in your essay should relate back to this idea.

You can write your thesis statement by following four simple steps:

• Start with a question
• Write your initial answer
• Develop your answer
• Refine your thesis statement

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Table of contents

What is a thesis statement, placement of the thesis statement, step 1: start with a question, step 2: write your initial answer, step 3: develop your answer, step 4: refine your thesis statement, types of thesis statements, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis statements.

A thesis statement summarizes the central points of your essay. It is a signpost telling the reader what the essay will argue and why.

The best thesis statements are:

• Concise: A good thesis statement is short and sweet—don’t use more words than necessary. State your point clearly and directly in one or two sentences.
• Contentious: Your thesis shouldn’t be a simple statement of fact that everyone already knows. A good thesis statement is a claim that requires further evidence or analysis to back it up.
• Coherent: Everything mentioned in your thesis statement must be supported and explained in the rest of your paper.

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The thesis statement generally appears at the end of your essay introduction or research paper introduction .

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts and among young people more generally is hotly debated. For many who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education: the internet facilitates easier access to information, exposure to different perspectives, and a flexible learning environment for both students and teachers.

You should come up with an initial thesis, sometimes called a working thesis , early in the writing process . As soon as you’ve decided on your essay topic , you need to work out what you want to say about it—a clear thesis will give your essay direction and structure.

You might already have a question in your assignment, but if not, try to come up with your own. What would you like to find out or decide about your topic?

For example, you might ask:

After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process .

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Now you need to consider why this is your answer and how you will convince your reader to agree with you. As you read more about your topic and begin writing, your answer should get more detailed.

In your essay about the internet and education, the thesis states your position and sketches out the key arguments you’ll use to support it.

The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education because it facilitates easier access to information.

In your essay about braille, the thesis statement summarizes the key historical development that you’ll explain.

The invention of braille in the 19th century transformed the lives of blind people, allowing them to participate more actively in public life.

A strong thesis statement should tell the reader:

• Why you hold this position
• What they’ll learn from your essay
• The key points of your argument or narrative

The final thesis statement doesn’t just state your position, but summarizes your overall argument or the entire topic you’re going to explain. To strengthen a weak thesis statement, it can help to consider the broader context of your topic.

These examples are more specific and show that you’ll explore your topic in depth.

Your thesis statement should match the goals of your essay, which vary depending on the type of essay you’re writing:

• In an argumentative essay , your thesis statement should take a strong position. Your aim in the essay is to convince your reader of this thesis based on evidence and logical reasoning.
• In an expository essay , you’ll aim to explain the facts of a topic or process. Your thesis statement doesn’t have to include a strong opinion in this case, but it should clearly state the central point you want to make, and mention the key elements you’ll explain.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

Follow these four steps to come up with a thesis statement :

• Ask a question about your topic .
• Write your initial answer.
• Develop your answer by including reasons.
• Refine your answer, adding more detail and nuance.

The thesis statement should be placed at the end of your essay introduction .

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Monday, October 8, 2012

The new deal and its effects on america.

The Great Depression and the New Deal Phenomenon Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The Great Depression was a phenomenon that did significant damage to the American economy. Before that, the economy grew on an unseen scale under President Hoover, but the growth was marked by excess and inequity, which eventually caused the Wall Street Crash. Hoover, clinging to the laissez-faire policy, was completely unable to alleviate the depression; on the contrary, F. D. Roosevelt introduced numerous steps (which became known as “the New Deal”) and provided significant governmental assistance to the population, which allowed the country to recover from the depression.

The Great Depression came to the USA in October 1929, with the bloated stock market crash known as the Wall Street Crash. In the preceding years, the U.S. had experienced a major growth in its economy under the President Herbert Hoover, a Republican.

However, the growth was extremely intense. While the level of life of an average American increased significantly, the owners of businesses, especially large ones, benefited the most. With time, due to the highly unequal distribution of income, as well as to the depression in farming regions, the buying capacity of Americans decreased significantly; this led to the inability to purchase the goods present in the market. It meant that companies could no longer sell their products; the products accumulated in the markets, unsold.

The businesses also could not hire employees or pay them salaries, so the unemployment rose. Everything “exploded” with the Wall Street Crash; tremendous amounts of money were withdrawn from the banks, and the latter were not able to collect debts from stagnating European banks. Numerous investors were wiped out of the market, and many businesses went bankrupt, while the surviving ones introduced layoffs and salary cuts, deepening the depression further (Foner 800).

President Hoover response to the Depression was controversial. He listened to his advisers who stated that crises were a normal part of capitalism (which they are), and that people should “tighten the belt” so that the unproductive firms die out and the moral virtue among the poor is born in large quantities (which is a doubtful point of view, though it apparently does follow from the logic of capitalism).

It was not realized by the government that the lower and middle classes constituted a crucial part of the people’s buying capacity, and that without the “less fortunate” being able to earn money, the depression would be only likely to worsen. Hoover strongly opposed any governmental aid to the needy, and continued hoping that the situation would solve on its own, as a result of voluntary steps of the business.

The Republican Congress under Hoover took a number of unsuccessful attempts to resolve the situation (in 1932 such as increasing taxes, which only further reduced the buying power of Americans); finally, in 1932, Hoover admitted that his politics had failed, and took some steps to help businesses, but not the unemployed (Foner 802-803).

On the other hand, when Roosevelt won the election in 1933, he took numerous steps which were almost opposite to what Hoover proposed. Before the elections, he offered the Americans “a new deal”; even though the notion was vague at the time, his policy became known under that name.

FDR significantly changed the relationship between businesses and the government, limited the actions of banks, and introduced significant governmental help to the population. In the first 100 days of his rule, Roosevelt adopted a large number of laws and established various national agencies aimed at addressing the crisis (Foner 812-813).

Among the acts adopted by the Congress under FDR, there were AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act) and NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act). AAA provided subsidies for farmers for not planting crops on a part of their territory, and for killing excess domesticated animals, which would defeat the excess of the farming products in the markets and increase their price.

NIRA established NRA (the National Recovery Administration) which was to set standards “for output, prices, and working conditions,” so that “‘cutthroat competition’… would be ended”; still, corporations turned NRA to their advantage, so it did little to help the situation (Foner 813-814).

The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was an agency that provided states with finances to run relief programs and create jobs. In March 1933, CCC (the Civilian Conservation Corps) was created to employ young men in projects such as forest preservation or improvement of nature reserves, which allowed them to earn at least some wages from the government.

In November, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) was established to provide temporary jobs (such as construction of roads, tunnels, etc.) to larger numbers of unemployed people to help them survive the winter. CWA, however, became too costly to the government, and was dismissed in spring 1934 (Foner 813-815).

In 1934, FDR decreased governmental employment for the needy. In 1935, however, he restored his politics. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established; it provided jobs for nearly 3 million people who built bridges and buildings, organized art projects, etc.; WPA worked until 1943 and provided help to great numbers of people who were in the desperate need of a job (Foner 825).

To sum up, it should be stressed that the Great Depression came to the U.S. as a result of the highly unequal distribution of income, which meant that the population, the main purchasing power of the people, could buy not nearly enough products from the market, so the goods were left unsold, and the production stopped.

While the Hoover’s laissez-faire policy proved impotent in fighting the crisis, Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which included numerous programs of social security, governmental jobs for the unemployed, etc., alleviated the situation and allowed the country to recover from the economic disaster.

Works Cited

Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History . Vol. 2. 4th ed. 2013. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Print.

• Roaring 1920’s in the USA
• Frederick Douglass and His Incredible Life
• The comparison between National Rifle Association and the American Association of Retired People in regard to power
• FDR’s New Deal: Democratic Platform
• Leadership Styles: Democratic, Autocratic and Laissez-Faire
• American History From Reconstruction to World War I
• American Revolution: Reclaiming Rights and Powers
• Gilded Age and Progressive Era Freedom Challenges
• Women Status after the American Revolution
• Slavery and the Abolition of Slave Trade
• Chicago (A-D)
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IvyPanda. (2020, May 4). The Great Depression and the New Deal Phenomenon. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-great-depression-and-the-new-deal-phenomenon/

"The Great Depression and the New Deal Phenomenon." IvyPanda , 4 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/the-great-depression-and-the-new-deal-phenomenon/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'The Great Depression and the New Deal Phenomenon'. 4 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "The Great Depression and the New Deal Phenomenon." May 4, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-great-depression-and-the-new-deal-phenomenon/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Great Depression and the New Deal Phenomenon." May 4, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-great-depression-and-the-new-deal-phenomenon/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Great Depression and the New Deal Phenomenon." May 4, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-great-depression-and-the-new-deal-phenomenon/.

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History 7: The Great Depression, the New Deal and how it changed our economy

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When we last left the United States of America in our economic telling of history (in this episode of Summer School), it was the early 1900s and the country's leaders were starting to feel like they had the economic situation all figured out, with just one paper currency in circulation and a central bank to help stabilize the monetary supply.

Flash forward a decade or so, and the financial picture was still looking pretty good as America emerged from the first World War. But then, everything came crashing down with the stock market collapse of 1929. Businesses closed, banks collapsed, one in four people was unemployed, families couldn't make rent, the economy was broken. And this was happening all over the world.

Today we'll look at how leaders around the globe intervened to turn the international economy around, and in the process, how the Great Depression rapidly transformed the relationship between government and business forever.

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‘Call Her Daddy’ Host Alex Cooper Inks Multiyear Deal With SiriusXM Worth up to $125 Million for Exclusive Content and More, as Podcaster Ends Spotify Pact

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Alex Cooper , host of the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast, reached a multiyear agreement with SiriusXM that encompasses exclusive programming from her company expected to begin rolling out in 2025.

The deal between Cooper and SiriusXM is worth as much as $125 million over the course of the deal, which runs a little more than three years, a source familiar with the pact told Variety . Another source, however, said the deal is valued at $100 million. Reps for Cooper and SiriusXM declined to comment.

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“Call Her Daddy” has amassed a huge fanbase thanks to Cooper’s no-holds-barred style to discussing dating, sex, mental health, self-care and other topics. In 2021, amid its initial spending frenzy on podcast content and technology, Spotify had paid about $60 million for a three-year exclusive deal for the podcast , which originated at Barstool Sports.

SiriusXM, among other recent podcast pacts, in January inked a three-year, $100 million-plus deal with SmartLess , the podcast and media company founded by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes giving the satellite radio and audio streaming company exclusive distribution and ad-sales rights to its shows.

Full episodes of “Call Her Daddy” had been  available only on Spotify from July 2021 to January 2024, under a deal worth more than $60 million. As of January, the audio-only version of the Cooper-hosted show became available on other audio platforms , while Spotify continued to have exclusive distribution rights to the video version of “Call Her Daddy.”

Last year Cooper launched media company Trending and subsidiary Unwell Audio Network with her husband and business partner Matt Kaplan of Ace Entertainment, aiming to “elevate the voices and stories of Gen Z.” Unwell Network’s initial talent signings have included Alix Earle, Madeline Argy, Harry Jowsey and Owen Thiele.

Cooper, who is represented by UTA, lays claim to being “the most listened-to female podcaster in the world,” according to Spotify. Recent guests on “Call Her Daddy” have included Jane Fonda, Post Malone, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hailey Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Zayn, Janelle Monáe, Kim Petras, Shay Mitchell, Christina Aguilera, John Mayer, Brazilian popstar Anitta, Madison Beer, Lil Dicky, John Legend, Rebel Wilson, Adam Devine and Chelsea Handler.

“Alex’s fearless, unfiltered approach, where no topic is off the table, has created a passionate and dedicated fanbase that is unmatched in podcasting and perfectly aligns with the content that SiriusXM subscribers have come to love and expect from us,” Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM’s president and chief content officer, said in announcing the deal Tuesday.

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Israel Accepts Proposal to Bridge Differences on Cease-Fire, Blinken Says

The statement by the secretary of state put new pressure on Hamas, whose officials have called the proposal fundamentally slanted toward Israel.

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Robert Jimison reported from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and Isabel Kershner and Aaron Boxerman from Jerusalem.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Monday that Israel had accepted a Biden administration proposal to bridge some remaining differences with Hamas on a cease-fire deal, as he pushed what he called “probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity” to secure a truce and free the remaining hostages in Gaza.

Mr. Blinken made the declaration after a nearly three-hour meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem. “In a very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today, he confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal — that he supports it,” Mr. Blinken told reporters. “It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same.”

The statement put new pressure on Hamas, whose officials have called the proposal fundamentally slanted toward Israel, although the details have not been publicized.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official, said in a televised interview on Monday with Al Jazeera that Hamas had broadly accepted a framework for a cease-fire outlined by President Biden in late May. But he accused Mr. Netanyahu of introducing new conditions to that proposal and said Israeli officials had conceded nothing on key issues during a round of talks in Doha, Qatar, last week.

“If the U.S. administration was serious, we wouldn’t need more negotiations — only to implement Biden’s proposal,” Mr. Hamdan said.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the meeting with Mr. Blinken had been “positive” and that the prime minister had “reiterated Israel’s commitment to the current American proposal on the release of our hostages, which takes into account Israel’s security needs, which he strongly insists on.”

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