Dirty Dealers: The Discrimination and Exclusion of African Americans from New Deal Policy.
Dirty Dealers:
The Discrimination and
Exclusion of African Americans from New Deal Policy.
J.M. Rogers
. . .
As
the Great Depression spread across the United States, the neglectful policies
of President Hoover’s administration did little, if anything, to curb the
suffering of American citizens. With a presidential election on the horizon in
1932, the issues of record levels of national unemployment, environmental collapse
throughout large swathes of America’s farmland, and a lack of legislative
consensus on how to reorder American business, were front and center in the
public forum. Through his reformative efforts, the newly elected President,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, instituted a litany of relief programs that sought
to put American men back to work, as well as providing them with the first
tax-related benefits of the Social Security Act. Unfortunately, the access to
benefits provided by these relief programs was marginalized for African
Americans due to the intercession of the “Southern Veto”: a legislative
blockade that sought to imbue the New Deal with discriminatory practices and
antiquated racial biases favored among Southern Democratic leaders.
The implementation of
the First New Deal began in earnest immediately after FDR took office in 1932,
with a flurry of legislative acts that came to be known as The Hundred Days.[1] President
Roosevelt saw work, not government relief, as a long-lasting solution to the
economic depression, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) represented the first
cog in his new system of public works related employment.[2]
The laborers for these work programs were young men, mostly white, who were
under the age of 25 and qualified for government aid.[3]
Their work was to be centered around the environmental restoration of resource
depleted regions, such as the Dust Bowl, that had been rendered uninhabitable
by years of laissez-fair business practices.[4]
The lack of government oversight on businesses and their modes of production
led to soil exhaustion, timber depletion,
forest fires, and the loss of tons of fertile farming soil due to the devastating
effects of floods.[5] However, when faced with
the reality of passing legislation for the development of the CCC, and its
250,000 man labor force, President Roosevelt was forced to make concessions
including the segregation of work camps, and the determination of government
relief eligibility on a state-by-state basis.[6]
Legislative concessions
to Southern Democratic leaders would come to represent many of the perceived
failures of the First New Deal. [7] In
his initial conception of the CCC, President Roosevelt had envisioned an
integrated work force of Americans repairing the country together. The presence
of integrated camps at the outset of the CCC program, as well as the inclusion
of 10% of the African American population among the workforce, and the equal
treatment of all CCC workers, suggest that Roosevelt was not content with
supplying government aid to whites alone.[8] However,
as public opinion about the placement of blacks in these work camps wavered,
especially in the South, Republicans and Democrats demanded changes to the New
Deal, most notably racial segregation and the unequal distribution of
government relief to black citizens. These legislative demands were made in
order to appease their own personal prejudices along with the prejudices of
their voter base. [9]
Much of the distrust
that existed between blacks and whites at this time centered around the
competition for work and government benefits.[10] Jobs
that were once seen as traditional black trades, such as waiting tables, or
porter work, became highly sought after by poverty-stricken whites.[11]
This meant that in addition to being relegated to a racially discriminate
government relief system, blacks must also compete for jobs in a racially
discriminate economy. As such, the unemployment rate for African Americans
throughout the implementation of the New Deal was double that of whites.[12]
The fact that states could determine their own eligibility standards for
government aid meant that state lawmakers could tailor a system of specificity
that extended beyond age and race into broader areas of moral comportment.[13]
With these standards, lawmakers largely excluded African Americans from work
programs, leading to the self-perpetuating cycle of joblessness and requests
for Social Security benefits to aid in unemployment.[14]
This cycle informed a false narrative that framed blacks as dependents of the
government welfare system. In truth though,
60% of all African Americans, and 85% of African American women, were exempted
from the restorative benefits of the Social Security Act.[15]
Adding to the strain of joblessness
and low eligibility for New Deal benefits, the ruinous fallout of
crop-reduction programs like the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) saw tenant
farmers and sharecroppers evicted from their homes and land.[16]
The AAA placed a bottleneck on crop production, incentivizing large farms to
downsize and centralize in exchange for monetary compensation.[17]
Rather than aiding the average farmer by driving up the price of crops, this
act created an imbalanced system that increased the income of property-owning
farmers while, simultaneously, compelling them to evict thousands of former
workers.[18] Many of the young men
evicted from these tenant farms had grown up poor, and with little education. A
large portion of those who sought employment in the CCC did so because they
lacked the professional skills and education to compete in the industrial
market.[19]
While employed, workers labored eight hours a day. In return, they received a
payment of a dollar per day, most of which was sent back home to their
families.[20] However, comprising only
10% of the entire CCC workforce, most African Americans, and their families, could
not take advantage of the aid the CCC’s precious income offered. The loss of
home and work following the AAA inflated the number of mortgage foreclosures, with
the need for affordable housing skyrocketing.[21]
The New Deal’s attempt
to address the housing issue resulted in the creation of discriminatory
legislation based upon a racially segregated framework. Sadly, the enforcement
of this legislative segregation came as the result of public outcries over
integrated living in the North and the South.[22] To
quell the dissonance, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was complicit in
racially biased practices. The FHA deliberately held back funding for
integrated communities, and even insured white neighborhood homes with
contractual parameters that excluded non-whites
from purchase eligibility if the homes ever sold.[23]
In some cases, the existence of even a single African American resident on a
city block would disqualify the region from government housing aid, making it
all but impossible for racially equal access to a home, as their meager stipend
of unemployment benefits would not provide enough income to purchase a home.
Despite protests from the NAACP and the Urban League to repeal the various
discriminatory aspects of the Social Security Act, preferring instead the
Lundeen Bill which instituted equal rights among all wage workers, the
antiquated views of Southern lawmakers prevailed.[24]
Thus, the very same home ownership that FDR claimed was the fundamental right
of American citizens, and a primary aim of the New Deal, was held beyond the
reach of homeless and destitute African American citizens.[25]
As the Great Depression wore on through the forties, unemployment vacillated between periods of rebound and reduction for white citizens. As New Deal programs like the CCC went on to employ
millions of white Americans, the struggles of African Americans remained intact, compelling many
whites to believe pejorative stereotypes casting blacks as lazy and welfare dependent. The reticence of
lawmakers to include African Americans in government relief efforts was largely driven by these stereotypes, many of which had been sown among Southerners during the 19th century. The resulting marginalized inclusion of African Americans in New Deal relief programs led to record levels of unemployment, with only 10% of black men being approved for work in the CCC. And while the CCC was a welcome change to the dire circumstances of poverty, the racial segregation of work camps inferred the prejudice nature of the American citizenry and many of its lawmakers. Despite his intention to bring the United States out of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt was forced to make constant concessions to his fellow politicians in order to get relief legislation passed. Most of these concessions were made at the expense of black citizens, severely limiting their ability to rebound from the horrors of extreme poverty through the varied programs provided by New Deal legislation.
The Civilian Conservation Corps. American Experience. Robert Stone, 2009. https://vimeo.com/150192017, (11:45-11:58)
[4] Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An
American History, vol. 2, Fifth Seagull (W.W. Norton, 2017), 825.
[5] Foner, Give Me Liberty!, 825.
[6] Foner, Give Me Liberty!, 847.
[7] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
847.
[8] The Civilian Conservation Corps.
American Experience. Robert Stone, 2009. https://vimeo.com/150192017,
(15:15-16:10)
[9] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
847.
[10]
Foner, Give Me Liberty!, 849.
[11] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
849.
[12] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
849.
[13] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
847.
[14] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
848.
[15] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
848.
[16] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
826.
[17] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
826.
[18] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
827.
[19] The Civilian Conservation Corps.
American Experience. Robert Stone, 2009. https://vimeo.com/150192017, (2:40-3:20)
[20]The Civilian Conservation Corps. American Experience. Robert
Stone, 2009. https://vimeo.com/150192017, (14:30-14:45)
[21] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
829.
[22] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
851.
[23] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
851.
[24] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
847.
[25] Foner, Give Me Liberty!,
829.
Comments
Post a Comment