Social Effects of the Great Depression

By Angela Brown

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Hoovervilles

• 15,000 homeless in New York City

• Homeless built shanty towns called Hoovervilles

• Mocked President Hoover – blamed for crisis

• Lived in piano boxes, rusted – out cars etc.

2

Farm Distress

• Low food prices cut income

• Lost farms, expelled tenant farmers and sharecroppers

• In protest farmers dumped thousands of gallons of milk-destroyed other crops

• Actions shocked a hungry nation

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The Dust Bowl

• A region in the Great Plains where drought and dust storms took place for much of the 1930s = Dust Bowl

• 440,000 left Oklahoma in 1930s

• 300,000 left Kansas

• Many migrated to California as laborers

4

Dorothea Lange

• Taught the nation to see the realities of the Depression in the faces of suffering Americans

• Photographer – portrait studio in San Francisco

• Left studio for streets = photo journalist

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• Attention of Farm Security Administration (FSA) - set up by FDR

• Hired by FSA to document the lives of migrant farmers

• Most famous photograph “Migrant Mother”

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• Lange’s work helped creation of government migrant camps

• Inspired John Steinbeck’s Depression – novel The Grapes of Wrath

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Impact on Health

• Some starved, some committed suicide

• Country people grew food, ate berries and wild plants

• City residents, sold apples and pencils – begged –fought over contents of restaurant garbage cans

• “relief gardens” planted to eat or barter

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Stress on Families

• conditions declined – families moved in together

• divorce rate dropped (couldn’t afford separate households)

• men felt like failures especially if wives/children could find work

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• working women accused of taking jobs from men – had to worry about feeding hungry children

• Ford and many others would not hire married women

• AFL endorsed practice

• Worked as domestic servants, typing, nursing “women’s work”

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Discrimination Increases

• Rise in suspicion/hostilities against minorities

• While labors filled low paying jobs typical of minorities – blacks no rights to jobs if whites out of work

• 56% African Americans unemployed in 1932

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Photographer Gordon Parks documented plight of African Americans – first African American photographer on staff of Life Magazine – joined Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to counteract hopelessness of breadlines

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• Relief programs discriminated – black churches, and organizations like National Urban League gave private help – Father Divine opened soup kitchens

• Denied civil rights – education, voting, health-care

• Lynchings increased• Hispanics – Asian – Americans deported

(many born in U.S.)

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• “Scottsboro Boys” – 9 black boys riding rails arrested and accused of raping (2) white women on the train – 8 of 9 convicted sentenced to die

• Communist party supplied legal defense and organized demonstrations – helped overturn convictions

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Bibliography

• www.Snap-shot.com/picpages

• www.runestone.net

• www.//history1900’s.about.com

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