Race Relations, FDR, and the New Deal

Did the New Deal offer improvements for African Americans or support the status quo while limiting opportunities for equality?

Eleanor Roosevelt became a staunch supporter of many minority groups, including African Americans

Many found jobs with different New Deal programs, including the WPA & CCC

FDR appointed many African Americans to a variety of positions in the government

New policies such as the Fair Employment Practices Committee offered assistance regarding jobs

Emerging leaders, such as Mary McLeod Bethune and A. Philip Randolph, accepted positions & offered a voice for African Americans

The origins of the movement for equality

“I could see my significance as an individual was small in this affair. I had become, whether I liked it or not, a symbol, representing my people. I had to appear.” -- Marian Anderson

Marian Anderson performing at the Lincoln Memorial (April 9th, 1939)

Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Anderson in Japan 

The Marian Anderson Mural by Mitchell Jamieson at the Interior Department Building in Washington, D.C.

Civilian Conservation Corps, Third Corps Area: Yorktown, Virginia, Co. 1351- vocational projects for

"colored veterans" 

Civilian Conservation Corps, Third Corps Area: Yorktown, Virginia, Co. 1351- vocational projects for

"colored veterans" 

NYA:Arizona:"colored boys attending WPA household workers training center(WPA Divisiion of Employment &

U.S.E.S. being served)" 

NYA:Phoenix,Arizona:"colored girls attending WPA household workers training center(serving a tea given for the Phoenix

Recreation Dept.)" 

NYA:Illinois: "office personnel is supplied by NYA girls to colored YWCA in Chicago, one of the many tasks at which

part-time workers are employed"

•Director of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration from 1936 to 1944

•Member of FDR’s “black cabinet”

Mary McLeod Bethune

•Vice President of the NAACP

•Civil rights activist

•Founded the National Council of Negro Women

A. Philip Randolph

•Founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

•Helped organize black workers

•Offered advice as civil rights activist and member of the “black cabinet”

August 5, 1943Mrs. Eleanor RooseveltWhite HouseWashington, D.C.

My dear Mrs. Roosevelt:

Just a word in these days of crisis and of storm and stress to express my deep appreciation for the great service you are rendering in you own way to the cause of democracy in general, and justice for the Negro people in particular. I need not tell you that there is a deep affection among the Negro people for you, because of your forthright and sincere advocacy in human justice.

Because of your attitude for equality and freedom for all people you are the subject of severe criticism among certain sources, but this has been so with the pioneers of human liberty.

I just wanted to send you this note, and I do not expectan answer.

Sincerely yours,A. Philip RandolphInternational PresidentAPR:RB

Discrimination and segregation existed in the New Deal programs

The system of Jim Crow existed to prevent any movement for true equality

New Deal programs failed to improve the lives of the African Americans that participated

African Americans were excluded from social security coverage and minimum wage provisions

Roosevelt never endorsed demands for an anti-lynching law and abolition of the poll tax

Roosevelt was concerned about losing white southern Democratic votes

Drinking fountain on the county courthouse lawn, Halifax, North Carolina (John Vachon, approximately 1938)

Negro going in colored entrance of movie house on Saturday afternoon, Belzoni, Mississippi Delta,

Mississippi (Marion Post Wolcott, approximately Oct 1939)

Negro sharecropper and wife. Mississippi. They have no tools, stock, equipment, or garden. (Dorothea Lange,

June-July, 1937)

Negro mother teaching children numbers and alphabet in home of sharecropper. Transylvania,

Louisiana (Russell Lee, 1939)

September 11th, 1944Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt from Irene C. Stephens of Ashville, NC

“However noble your impulses may be, it is clear that you do not understand the situation at more than one point. For instance, I know people who had admired you tremendously up to the time you put forth your ideas concerning the negro race, which resulted in the disruption of life generally in the South.”

FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act)•Did not offer social security coverage•Minimum wage not enforced

Criticisms of New Deal Programs

TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority)

•Constructed all-white towns•Confined blacks to low-wage jobs

CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp)

•Racially segregated

NRA (National Recovery Administration)

•“Negroes Ruined Again”•“Negro Removal Act”

AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act)

•Took the land of African Americans first

Essential Question:

Did the New Deal offer improvements for African Americans or support the status quo while limiting opportunities for equality?