New Deal Policies and African Americans

• What were alphabet agencies?


  Agencies created by the New Deal to deal with problems from the Great Depression.
• What was the Civilian Conservative Corps?


  jobs for young men - 275,000 by 1933, $30 a month, headed by Robert Fechner (racially conservative), restricted to low skilled jobs
• What did Roosevelt to about the problem of lynching and Jim Crow laws?

  - Eleanor Roosevelt publicly spoke out against lynching

  - Roosevelt denounced lynching as murder

  - Senator Costgian and Wagner attempted anti-lynching bill in 1934 by it was delayed and unsupported
• What voting restriction policy did Roosevelt criticise?

  poll tax - but he didn't do anything to resolve this
• What % of eligible black voters were registered in 1941?

  only 3%
• What was the Works Progress Administration?

  between 1936-40 provided 350,000 jobs for black people a year, $52 a week, ran education programmes, taugh 250,000 African Americans how to read and write
• What was the National Youth Administration?

  provided education, jobs, counseling, and recreation for young people, skills training for 500,000 young black Americans
• What was the Tennessee Valley Authority?

  brought hydroelectric power to Tennessee Valley = jobs, segregated facilities for black workers and discriminatory practices
• What was the Public Works Administration?

  created jobs by paying unemployed to complete projects, replaced WPA, headed by African American Robert Weaver, grants of $45 million for projects that African Americans would benefit from
• What was the National Recovery Administration?

  aims to increase wages and conditions, $13 minimum wage/week, 40 hour working week, though 3/4 of African Americans working in agriculture were excluded, declared unconstitutional in 1935
• What was the Fair Labour Standards Act 1938?


  fixed 25c an hour minimum wage, excluded cooks, janitors etc.
• What was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration?

  helped poor with services, headed by Harry Hopkins who was sympathetic to black plight, relief checks were discriminatory $32.66/month for white, $19.29 for blacks
• What was the Agricultural Adjustment Act?


  control and stabilise farm production, reduced production in exchange for subsidies, dominated by powerful landowners, evicted sharecroppers - 200,000 black sharecroppers evicted
• What was the Social Security Act?

  funding for pensions, excluded domestic servants and agricultural workers, unemployment benefits of $18 a week for 16 weeks, first national system of benefitd
• What was the impact of the New Deal of black poverty?

  racially inclusive, not equal, provided aid, didn't always reach African Americans, high amount on relief