Impact of New Deal on Society

• Roosevelt had support in the racist South and needed to keep it. The New Deal had no civil rights legislation
• NRA codes allowed African-Americans to be paid less than others for the same work
• The CCC was run by a racist who didn't encourage African-Americans to join and enforced segregation
• Roosevelt did nothing to stop 1934 and 1937 anti-lynching legislation from being defeated in government
• Roosevelt employed more African-Americans in government and the Secret Service increased its numbers to 150 000 in 1941
• Women had more important roles in government, such as Frances Perkins (Secretary of Labour) and Ruth Bryan Owens (Ambassador to Denmark)
• The 1933 Economy Act allowed only one member of a family to work in government, so many women lost their jobs
• 75% of job losses from the Economy Act were women
• The NRA allowed women to be paid less than men. During the 1930s, women earned $525 per year, half of men
• The CCC banned women entirely
• Conservatives accused many popular, pessimistic authors of supporting communism
• Communists rejected these authors. The party newspaper, New Masses, actually stifled creativity
• John Dos Passos was a journalist and novelist who wrote USA. It tackled the slow abandonment of the American Dream and descent into despair
• Thomas Wolfe wrote a series of autobiographical novels from 1929 to 1939 exploring the diversity of America, the frantic energy of urban life and the vulnerability of Americans. One title was Look Homeward Angel
• William Faulkner was a Nobel Prize winner who focused his writing on Mississippi, its southern pride and racism. It explored the weight of southern history
• John Steinbeck wrote about the despair of the depression in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath, which follows the migrating Jones family. A Nobel Prize winner, he wrote dramatic tragedy and unforgettable prose
• The Federal Writers' Project was set up to provide employment for authors. It employed 6 000 and the project compiled local oral history, photographs and made a detailed guidebook for each state
• James Agee and Walker Evans were commissioned by Fortune Magazine in 1936 to record the lives of poor tenant farmers. The piece, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, was not published until 1941
• Movies depicted an idealised reality, like the epic Gone With the Wind (1939), the sentimental Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938)
• Movies like I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) showed the American problems. These were less popular
• The Grapes of Wrath was adapted into a Hollywood movie in 1940
• Radios brought the escapism of the cinema into people's homes
• NBC received $21 452 732 from sponsors in 1933
• Radio stations broadcast serious programmes, concert recitals and soap operas
• Famous songs included Yip Harburg's Brother Can You Spare a Dime, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson's Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries and Al Dubin and Harry Warren's We're in the Money
• Victims of the depression were often photographed
• Photographers compiled 80 000 images of life during the depression
• Migrant Mother, a 1936 photo of Florence Owens Thompson taken by Dorothea Lange, is one of the most iconic photos of the depression