| Title Page | Introduction | Segregation | New Deal | Fair Housing | Conclusion | Bibliography |
The New Deal
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) coordinated the initial New Deal programs that, as Ira Katznelson writes, “mitigated the harshest results of the depression.”[1] The Emergency Relief Act of 1933 provided FERA with its powers. Southern congressmen were concerned that relief to African Americans would result in a disruption of their entrenched, hierarchical plantation system. Therefore, in order to comply with the wishes of southern lawmakers, the Federal government required that relief not exceed the money-making capability of an individual. Rural and urban workers in the South were poor so their relief payments were low. Furthermore, since local white southerners ran the programs, African Americans were sure to receive less money than whites.[2] In reaction to this, the Atlanta black director of Negro Affairs of FERA said, “the way colored people have suffered under the New Deal is a disgrace that stinks to heaven.”[3] A 1935 editorial in the Atlanta Daily World concluded that, “Under the FERA the Negro was shown the same place assigned to him at the close of the Civil War which had for seventy years . . . sealed his illiteracy and poverty.”[4]
When FERA disbanded after 1935, the Social Security Act initiated permanent programs that provided relief for widows, for the elderly, and for the poor.[5] One problem with these payments is that wages determined the relief payments. Thus, poor people received less money.[6] Another problem was that farmworkers and domestics could not receive any of this money. Since 60% of African Americans were farmworkers and domestics, they did not get relief. These occupational exclusions did not change until 1954.[7]
New Deal policies also addressed labor issues but, once again, concessions to Southern lawmakers were necessary to get the crucial bills passed. While the National Industry Recovery Act that was passed in 1933 illegalized the firing of employees for union activity, lawmakers added a clause to exclude agricultural workers.[8] Minimum wage and maximum hour protections promised in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act were not extended to farmworkers and maids.[9] The National Labor Relations Act even changed its own definition of the word “employee” to exclude farmworkers and maids.[10]
The GI Bill provided incredible opportunities to former soldiers. Providing loans for home ownership, education, and new businesses, the GI Bill created the middle class. More than anything else, it was successful in getting the country out of poverty.[11] Although it benefited African Americans as well as whites, local administrators made decisions about eligibility. Katznelson writes that “locally based agents . . . staffed and ran the programs [created by the GI Bill] in a manner consistent with their environment’s racial laws and customs.”[12] Furthermore, overall segregation policies in colleges prevented African Americans from getting the kind of education that whites received.[13]