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How Did The New Deal Affect African Americans In The 1930's

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“When the Great Depression collapsed the U.S. economy in 1929, America's black population had already been living with harsh economic conditions, discrimination, and gross exploitation” (Bush). After the stock market crashed things only got worse for African Americans. During the 1930's African Americans faced discrimination, such as not having equal opportunities for jobs. Employment, when it could be found, was usually accompanied by racism and lower wages than their White Counterparts. New deal programs implemented by the government were suppose to help the entire unemployed population of the United States. “They encountered various forms of discrimination in New Deal Agencies, many African Americans concluded that the so-called New Deal was indeed a "raw deal” (Trotter). Clearly this wasn’t necessarily the case. The NRA or National Recovery Act was known commonly as the Negro Removal Act (Suster). Whites even thought that Blacks …show more content…

Another major Form of racial discrimination was unfair wages. When it came to public works programs paying for wages, African American wages were 30 percent lower than the white workers, who at the time barely had enough money for subsistence (Sustar). For the most part African Americans were classified as “Unskilled”, even when they were skilled, stereotypes kept them from earning fair wages in most urban workplaces (Rose). One of the worst parts of the whole situation was that Working class White women, yes i said working class not rich, employed Black women for as little as 5$ per week for full time laborers in northern cities (Trotter). These White women had enough money to pay for, essentially what was a maid or housekeeper. The same White women who were also facing the same discrimination from the Public Work Programs as the Blacks. This shows how drastically the wage difference was between Whites and

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