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The great depression and its impact on African Americans
The great depression and its impact on African Americans
Prejudicial beliefs against African Americans
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African Americans treated worse during the Great Depression. African Americans were already being treated horribly before the depression and during the depression their life's only got harder. Since almost everyone lost their jobs and the jobs that were available were often times were given to white men life's for black people were In the letter to F.D.R it states how it's harder to get jobs because they are black and how the all available jobs are going to white people. The letter states, "white peoples doing there own work and there fore that knocks the colored out of work"(Anonymous). The writer is telling the president how hard it is for a black man to get a job in the Great Depression. Even though black people were treated poorly before
The Great Depression of 1929 to 1940 began and centered in the United States, but spread quickly throughout the industrial world. The economic catastrophe and its impact defied the description of the grim words that described the Great Depression. This was a severe blow to the United States economy. President Roosevelt’s New Deal is what helped reshape the economy and even the structure of the United States. The programs that the New Deal had helped employ and gave financial security to several Americans. The New Deals programs would prove to be effective and beneficial to the American society.
Back in the early 1800’s, America was having a hard time accepting others. The Americans did not like having immigrants living in the same area, and they really hated when immigrants took their jobs. Many Americans discriminated against African Americans even if they were only ⅛ African American. Americans were not ready to share their country and some would refuse to give people the rights they deserved. This can be seen in the Plessy vs Ferguson and Yick Wo vs Hopkins. In Plessy vs Ferguson, Plessy was asked to go to the back of the train because he was ⅛ African American.
During the span of thirty years from 1865 to 1895 blacks that lived within this time frame went through arguably the most profound series of events to occur in African American history. Southern blacks were faced with prejudice, bondage, slavery, and ultimately survival. Shortly after the thirteenth amendment was ratified, stating that: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
The Executive Order No. 8802 (doc 15) stated, “it is the policy of the United States to encourage full participation in the national defense program by all citizens of the United States, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin, in the firm belief that the democratic way of life within the Nation can be defended successfully only with the help and support of all groups within its borders.” This order ensured African Americans that everything possible was being done to end discrimination in the workplace. Therefore, the willingness of the Roosevelt Administration to recognize the existence of a racial problem in America and how they managed to ameliorate that problem, was unprecedented. The New Deal did not end the Great Depression, many were still living in poverty and were unemployed despite the new jobs being offered.
The Varied Impact of the Great Depression on American People The experiences of Americans during the Great Depression varied greatly. For most, the Great Depression was a time of hardships and trials. The way that people were tried were different though, some languished in a collapsed economy, while others had to struggle to make a living in the remote regions of the country. The years berween 1929 and 1933 were trying years for people throughout the world.
Reconstruction occurred after the Civil war in the years 1865-1877. The Radical Republicans, 15th Amendment and the Ku Klux Klan were the reason why Reconstruction failed to secure the permanent rights of African Americans. These were only a few of the reasons why Reconstruction failed, but they are the ones that seems to widely affect it. The Radical Republicans were against giving rights to blacks, the 15th amendment led to the Ku Klux Klan act, and the Ku Klux Klan was a group that was against African Americans, the Reconstruction was there to put rights for blacks in place but it failed and never gave them permanent rights.
Amendment 13, passed January 31, 1865, ratified December 6 1865, brought freedom and citizenship to all slaves. Although the slaves were free, they weren’t equal to the whites, and didn’t have the rights that all of the other white American citizens did. Black Americans moved past slavery, but faced other challenges that held their population back. During the reconstruction era Black Americans faced difficulties socially, politically, and economically that White Americans didn’t.
Throughout history, many African Americans have faced a long battle for equal rights. They started making progress in the 1800’s when they got slavery abolished, but they still were not treated equal to the white citizens of the United States after the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. The struggles they faced caused the fight for equality accelerated starting in the 1950’s. The struggle brought on by the African Americans to gain equality in many different aspects of everday life is know as the civil rights movement. It had lasted from 1954 to 1968.
During the reconstruction era and the settlement of the western United States, Native Americans were treated horribly. They were driven from their lands, forced to assimilate to Euro-American culture, and promised treaties and contracts that would almost certainly be broken by the US government. Indians were seen as a problem to the average white settler. First, the “problem” was perpetuated through lies, and conflicts started by white men that were blamed on the Indians. Then, as light was shed on the true story of the Indians many “solutions” were proposed to fix the problem. However, none of these solutions would prove to solve anything as shown by the state of Native Americans today.
It is worth highlighting that although FDR was presented as an advocate of civil rights, he crucially failed to pursue an anti-lynching act to avoid losing Southern democrat support. The New Deal itself had a negligible impact on African Americans as similarly to immigrants, there were no specific measures to help them. More importantly, the New Deal did not address the ubiquitous discrimination in America. On the one hand, segregation remained in use and albeit unintentional, AAA production cuts lost jobs for thousands. On the other hand, African Americans became more conspicuous and their predicament could no longer be ignored. However, visibility was all they achieved for no notable action was taken and they were not
The US government’s role in the Great Depression has been very controversy. Different hypothesizes argued differently on the causes of the Great depression and whether the New Deal introduced by the government and President Roosevelt helped United States got out of the depression. I would argue that even though not the only factor, the US government did lead the country into the Great Depression and the New Deal actually delayed the recovery process. I will discuss five different factors (stock market crash, bank failure, tariff and tax cut, consumer spending and agriculture) that are commonly accepted to cause the depression and how the government linked to them. Furthermore, I will try to show how the government prolonged the depression in the United States by introducing the New Deal.
Moynihan, born to a broken family in the great depression era, entered politics and developed to become an important political figure in the labor department during the 1960’s. The principal belief of Moynihan was that unemployment was destructive to the potential social mobility of the poor, a lynchpin of the American dream. Once the civil rights movement gained momentum, Moynihan gained interest on how his theory affects black families specifically and began to research this topic. The results of his research showed just how devastating the effects of three hundred of years of slavery and institutionalized racism were on black families and how much worse off they were than white families in general. These findings led Moynihan to draft and publish a government report titled “The Negro Family.” “The Negro Family” illustrated how debilitating the present society was for black families but offered no possible policies to address the problem, something very peculiar for a government report. The reason for the lack of policies is stated by Moynihan, “It would have got in the way of the attention-arousing argument that a crisis was coming and that family stability was the best measure of success or failure in dealing with it.” (The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration, “Lower-class Behavior in our Cities is Shaking Them Apart”) President Johnson had
Reading this chapter really made me realize how much of history I didn’t know and had come to assume happened just based on my judgements of America's past. The idea of the Founding Fathers being racist slaveholders or the whitewashing that happens in history weren’t new to me but the hard facts about how bad it is and the things they said and did stopped me in my reading. Multiple times I covered my mouth with my hand in shock and reread or read aloud a sentence I couldn’t believe was true. I just can't imagine being so ignorant and thinking you're better than someone simply because of what they look like. I’m really happy I got to read this so I have a better understanding of what exactly minorities, particularly Black and African American people, had to go through.
Trying to explain my depression is like trying to swim across the San Francisco Bay from Alcatraz in the shark infested water; if Alcatraz were my mind and the water were boiling tar, pulling me further and further down until the black gunk filled my lungs and stung my eyes. After so many pointless attempts of struggling, I eventually give up and let my body slowly sink to the bottom, letting the tar consume me and soon enough, no one remember the real me, only the black swamp that I have recluded in. This is what is left of me by then: The girl that once was is now suppressed by the demons that my friends and family have long come to know. But I am still in here somewhere, right?
The Great Depression was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downfall in the history of the United Sates. No event has yet to rival The Great Depression to the present day today although we have had recessions in the past, and some economic panics, fears. Thankfully the United States of America has had its shares of experiences from the foundation of this country and throughout its growth many economic crises have occurred. In the United States, the Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors ("The Great Depression."). In turn from this single tragic event, numerous amounts of chain reactions occurred.