The New Deal 1933-1941 - following spec points

Edexcel history a level civil rights and race relations 39.1 new deal

The influence of southern whites in the Democrat Party, how did FDR secure southern democrat support for his bid for power

chose a southern democrat for vice president, John Garner

The influence of southern whites in the Democrat Party, why was Garner valuable

had been speaker of the House of Representatives, most powerful job in Congress. Meant he helped ensure New Deal legislation would pass through Congress. Also ensured FDR wouldn’t upset the southern white dominance of the southern states.

The influence of southern whites in the Democrat Party, what caused an increase in opposition from southern democrats

• concerns over the rapid increase in fed gov power as a result of New Deal programmes as the party traditionally supported state government

• the attempts by FDR to change the composition of of the US Supreme Court through the judicial procedures reform bill of 1937 led to the Conservative Manifesto from the Democrats which demanded a limitation to high fed spending on New Deal programmes, limited fed gov and completely independent Supreme Court.

The influence of southern whites in the Democrat Party, what did Southern Democrats use to win the support of the white vote throughout 1930s

Racism, for example, in 1935 Theodore Bilbo was elected to the US Senate and his support for racism towards blacks went so far as to lead him to introduce an amendment to a bill to help relieve unemployment and distress for all Americans so that federal funds would be made available to deport all blacks to Liberia

The influence of southern whites in the Democrat Party, what did they ensure to do with the New Deal programmes

Ensured they benefitted whites, and no attempt was made by the fed gov to interfere with Jim Crow Laws. As FDR needed southern dem support, no extension of civil rights for blacks was made over this period.

The failure to address black grievances: continuation of Jim Crow Laws, examples of national-level de jure segregation

• US armed forced racially segregated until 1948.

• in federally administered national parks in southern states, legal segregation in the form of separate catering, camping and hotel accommodation was provided for all blacks

The failure to address black grievances: continuation of Jim Crow Laws, de jure segregation at state level

• public schools for black and white children, and not just in southern states

• separate waiting rooms and carriages at railways

• restaurants

• public parks

• restrictions on houses and flats

The failure to address black grievances: exclusion of black voters, what happened to the Louisiana Grandfather Clause?

In 1915, it was overturned by the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional. However, had a limited impact on encouraging higher black voter registration, as legal restrictions were reinforced by the threat of violence and intimidation

The failure to address black grievances: defeat of federal attempts at anti-lynching legislation, what groups led a campaign to end lynching?

the NAACP and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching

The failure to address black grievances: the defeat of federal attempts at anti-lynching legislation, how many lynchings happened between 1882 and 1932

4,608, and more than 7/10 were black

The failure to address black grievances: the defeat of federal attempts at anti-lynching legislation, what ensured all attempts to pass anti-lynching bills failed?

filibusters led by southern Democrats

The failure to address black grievances: Failure to pass anti-lynching legislation, key reasons for failure

• No Presidential Support: FDR omitted anti-lynching legislation from his 1934 address to Congress and later admitted to NAACP leader Walter White that he feared alienating Southern Democrats.

• Senate Filibusters: A 1934 bill targeting officials who failed to stop lynch mobs was killed by a two-month Senate filibuster; similarly, a 1937–1938 bill passed the House but was defeated in the Senate.

• Southern Democratic Opposition: Southern Democrats blocked these bills by claiming they would encourage Black men to assault white women and were designed to break the spirit of the white South.

Impact of the New Deal: effects of the AAA on black farmers; What did the Agricultural Adjustment Act provide a plan for. (AAA was the Agricultural Adjustment Administration)

to compensate farmers who slaughtered surplus pigs or ploughed up surplus corn and grain in a bid to stabilise farm prices. AAA set up to supervise agricultural reforms.

Impact of the New Deal: effects of the AAA on black farmers; between 1932 and 1935, what did farm incomes rise by and what impact did this have on consumer prices?

rose by 58%, did not lead to lower prices for consumers

Impact of the New Deal: effects of the AAA on black farmers; impact on black farmers

• Economic Exploitation: nearly 40% of Black workers operating as sharecroppers or tenant farmers under a small group of wealthy white landowners.

• AAA Fund Discrimination: Wealthy white farmers controlled the county committees administering Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) funds, funnelling the vast majority of government money to large, white-owned farms.

• Mass Displacement: To qualify for AAA acreage-reduction payments, white landlords evicted 100,000 Black tenant farmers and sharecroppers between 1933 and 1934; by 1940, over 200,000 had been driven off the land.

Impact of the New Deal: effects of the AAA on black farmers; what nearly helped the AAA become more fair?

• AAA Overturned (1936): The US Supreme Court declared the original AAA unconstitutional, ruling that the federal government had exceeded its powers.

• FSA and Southern Backlash (1937): The newly created Farm Security Administration (FSA) initially appointed Black farmers to its committees to aid tenants, but Southern Democratic opposition forced the Roosevelt administration to remove black representation.

• Second AAA (1938): Congress passed a second Agricultural Adjustment Act, but it provided little to no support for Black farmers.

Impact of the New Deal: segregation in the CCC, stats on unemployment when FDR became president

13 million people, 25% of workforce, were idle.

Impact of the New Deal: segregation in the CCC, aim of the CCC?

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) provided work experience for men aged 17–25 in army-run camps, paying $30 a month with $25 sent home to their families. Employed 275,000 young men by August 1933 and reached over 3 million participants by its end in 1942.

Impact of the New Deal: segregation in the CCC, what did CCC workers do

• conservation projects

• improving accomodation and road access to national parks

• planted trees

• fought forest fires

• built bridges and roads

Impact of the New Deal: segregation in the CCC, impact on black people

• 10% of places in CCC reserved for blacks

• 1933-42, 275,000 young black men went through CCC programme

• faced racial discrimination - in Clarke County, Georgia, not one black was chosen to attend CCC camps, even though they were 60% of the population

• blacks in Georgia only received places when the fed gov threatened to withhold all CCC funding from that state

• In Mississippi, where blacks were 50% of population, only 1.7% were recruited by CCC.

• Robert Fechner ordered complete segregation following complaints from local white communities and politicians in the south who wanted Jim Crow laws extended to the CCC

• Pennsylvania, white community petitioned the CCC to cancel a black CCC camp as young white girls might want to go out with young black men

Impact of the New Deal: differential wages in the National Recovery Administration (NRA), what did the NRA aim to do

• set codes of fair practice, including a basic wage and safety standards

• NRA codes included a 40-hour working week, a minimum wage of $13 a week and no child labour (under 16s).

• participating businesses awarded a Blue Eagle logo

Impact of the New Deal: differential wages in the National Recovery Administration (NRA), black Americans faced considerable racial discrimination:

• The first National Recovery Administration (NRA) code for the cotton textile industry deliberately excluded the unskilled jobs typically held by Black workers.

• In other NRA codes, flat percentage raises widened the racial wage gap; for example, a 20% increase in the hotel industry applied to a Black worker's $51 monthly wage yielded far less than the same percentage applied to a white clerk's $100 wage.

Impact of the New Deal: Trade unions influence on black americans

• National Industrial Recovery Act and the Wagner Act gave trade unions the right to bargain for better wages and conditions

• blacks were under-represented in trade unions. In 1930, 19 major trade unions excluded black americans

• estimated by NAACP in 1930 that total black union membership was 50,000 out of 3.4 million

• half of the 50,000 was in one union: the all-black American Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

Impact of the New Deal: benefits of welfare to black workers and their families, Impact of Harold Ickes

• in his role in the PWA, particularly its housing division, Ickes directly aided blacks.

• Housing division introduced racial quotas for its construction projects and by 1940, blacks occupied 1/3 of its housing units

• ensured black PWA workers equally paid

• spent over $65 million building and improving black homes, schools and hospitals

Impact of the New Deal: benefits of welfare to black workers and their families, impact of WPA

• 1936-1940, provided work for 350,000 blacks

• educational programmes employed over 5,000 black teachers and taught 250,000 blacks how to read and write

• in the National Youth Administration, the head of the Negro Affairs Department, Mary McLeod Bethune, provided skills training for 500,000 young blacks

Impact of the New Deal: benefits of welfare to black workers and their families, how many did WPA employ per annum and what percentage were blacks of the workforce?

employed 350,000 per annum, 15% of workforce

Impact of the New Deal: benefits of welfare to black workers and their families, The Resettlement Administration (later renamed the Farm Security Adminstration)

• aimed to co-ordinate the various New Deal programmes designed to help the rural poor

• Under the direction of Tugwell, who genuinely tried to run a colour-blind administration.

• Of its 150 rural projects, 115 were all white, 9 all blacks and 26 mixed-race

• in Alabama, an all-black community received financial aid and assistance: cattle, seeds and fertiliser to help them become self-sufficient

• 1937, purchased land worth $122,000 and subdivided among the community’s black farming population

• However, shut down in 1938, lost fed gov funding

Impact of the New Deal: the work of Eleanor Roosevelt, Stuff to do with letters

• Public Correspondence: Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged Americans to write to her, receiving over 300,000 letters starting in 1933, thousands of which detailed racial discrimination, poverty, and violence.

• Internal Advocacy: She frequently forwarded these letters to New Deal administrator Harry Hopkins to highlight the plight of Black Americans.

• Challenging Discrimination: She pressured the National Recovery Administrator to investigate Southern wage disparities and questioned Navy Secretary Claude Swanson over the confinement of Black sailors to mess hall assignments.

• Limited Impact: Despite her efforts, her advocacy achieved very limited success, and Black Americans in the US Navy remained confined to servile positions.

Impact of the New Deal: the work of Eleanor Roosevelt, appointment of Mary McLeod Bethune

• Eleanor Roosevelt insisted, and FDR made Mary his special adviser on minority affairs in 1935

• following year, she became the chairperson of an informal ‘black cabinet’, a group of federally appointed black officials to help plan priorities for black community

Impact of the New Deal: the work of Eleanor Roosevelt, ability to improve position of black Americans in new deal programmes

• limited success, almost eery work relief camp and construction crew working on New Deal projects was divided on a racial basis

• associated with one of the most high-profile symbolic gestures in favour of black americas during New Deal - Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Marion Anderson sing in the Constitutional Hall, so Eleanor resigned and arranged for her to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

Impact of the New Deal: impact on voting patterns of black Americans, pre-1993

• blacks primarily voted Republican

• part of the Emancipation Proclamation

• Radical republicans pushed 14, 15th amendments

Impact of the New Deal: impact on voting patterns of black Americans, first democrat candidate to make a concerted attempt to win the black American vote

Al Smith, who enlisted the support of James Weldon Johnson, the executive secretary of the NAACP, and Walter White, the assistant executive secretary of the NAACP. Blacks still voted Republican

Impact of the New Deal: impact on voting patterns of black Americans, when did the change of voting pattern first appear

1934 congressional elections. In Chicago, black Democrat Arthur Mitchell defeated black republican Oscar de Priest to become the first black Democrat elected to Congress

Impact of the New Deal: impact on voting patterns of black Americans first major breakthrough for democrats

came in the presidential and congressional elections of 1936 when they won the majority of black American votes, voting for FDR as his programmes offered jobs and hope to many poor and unemployed black Americans