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Chapter 23: Great Depression and the New Deal (1929–1939)
Important Keywords
Hoovervilles: Settlements of shacks found on the outskirts of many American cities beginning in the early 1930s.
Dust Bowl: Name given in the 1930s to regions of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Texas, where severe drought and poor farming practices caused massive dust storms.
By the end of the decade, nearly 60 percent of all farms there were either ruined or abandoned.
Many from the Dust Bowl ended up moving westward in search of jobs.
Hawley-Smoot Tariff (1930): Tariff act that imposed severe tariffs on all incoming goods; European countries responded with their own high tariffs.
Most historians say this tariff did little to help the American economy and probably deepened the depression.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC): Federal agency established during the “First Hundred Days” of the New Deal in 1933 in an effort to halt panic over bank closings.
The FDIC insures the bank deposits of individual citizens.
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC): Also established in 1933, the CCC eventually provided jobs for 2.5 million young Americans in forest and conservation programs.
National Industry Recovery Act: New Deal legislation requiring owners and labor unions in various industries to agree upon hours, wages, and prices; as a result, wages did go up for many workers but so did prices.
Tennessee Valley Authority: Agency created in the New Deal to oversee the construction of dams, providing electricity and flood control for many in the Tennessee River Valley; for many in the region, this was the first time their homes had electricity.
Works Progress Administration (WPA): New Deal program that employed nearly 8 million Americans; WPA projects included the construction of schools and roads. Unemployed artists and musicians were also employed by the WPA.
Wagner Act: Critical piece of New Deal legislation that protected the right of workers to form unions and utilize collective bargaining.
Social Security Act (1935): New Deal legislation providing pensions for workers reaching retirement age.
Both workers and employers pay into the fund that provides this benefit. Initially, farm workers and domestic workers were not covered by Social Security.
New Deal Coalition: The political coalition created by Franklin Roosevelt that, by and large, kept the Democratic Party in power from the 1930s through the 1960s.
This coalition consisted of workers in American cities, voters in the South, labor unions, and blacks.
Scottsboro Boys: Nine black defendants in a famous 1931 case; they were accused of raping two white women on a train, and despite the lack of evidence, eight were sentenced to death.
The American Communist Party organized their defense.
Key Timeline
1929: Stock market crash
1930: Hawley-Smoot Tariff enacted
1931: Ford plants in Detroit shut down
Initial trial of the Scottsboro Boys
1932: Glass-Steagall Banking Act enacted
Bonus marchers routed from Washington
Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president
Huey Long announces “Share Our Wealth” movement
1933: Emergency Banking Relief Act enacted
Prohibition ends
Agricultural Adjustment Act enacted
National Industrial Recovery Act enacted
Civilian Conservation Corps established
Tennessee Valley Authority formed
Public Works Administration established
1935: Beginning of the Second New Deal
Works Progress Administration established
Social Security Act enacted
Wagner Act enacted
Formation of Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO)
1936: Franklin Roosevelt reelected
Sit-down strike against GM begins
1937: Recession of 1937 begins
Roosevelt’s plan to expand the Supreme Court defeated
1939: Gone with the Wind published
The Grapes of Wrath published
Harbingers of Crisis: Economic Weaknesses of the 1920s
In 1929, most Americans believed prosperity would continue. President Herbert Hoover pledged to end US poverty when he took office in March. It wasn't a crazy goal. New York Stock Exchange stocks reached a new high in September. Many Americans believed that the modern economy of the 1920s had eliminated sharp economic downturns.
Despite the general well-being, some observers doubted that economic laws had been overturned. They observed worrying economic trends that could lead to bigger issues. Examples:
Agricultural prices: World War I boosted farm prices in rural America.
After the war, prices dropped, hurting farmers who had invested in land and equipment to increase production.
Many farms failed due to the price collapse of agricultural goods.
6,200 rural banks closed as a result.
Congress passed farmer support legislation, but President Coolidge twice vetoed it.
Buying on the installment plan: Easy credit enabled the 1920s shopping spree.
Most Americans couldn't pay cash for cars, refrigerators, radios, and other products.
They paid monthly installments for these goods.
By 1928 and 1929, many were paying for products they already owned. They couldn't afford more.
Consumer goods were still manufactured, but inventories grew.
1928 saw some industries cut staff.
The gap in the distribution of wealth: Wealthier Americans prospered in the 1920s.
By 1929, 0.02% of Americans owned 40% of the nation's savings.
Three-quarters of American families earned less than $3,000.
By the 1920s, most Americans could no longer afford the decade's consumer binge due to economic disparity.
Wealthy Americans cannot support the economy.
Wealthy Americans cut back on spending as the economy faltered, worsening manufacturers and retailers' consumption problem.
A stock market out of control: Many Americans bought American company stock during the 1920s economic boom.
Stock investing made some rich.
Many investors speculated on high-return ventures like Florida real estate.
The 1920s stock market had few regulations.
Stockbrokers sold margined shares.
Buyers could buy stock with as little as 10% down.
As long as stock prices rose, as they did for most of the 1920s, buyers could pay back their broker loans with the profits from their appreciating stocks.
Prices falling could hurt buyers and lenders.
Brokers demanded investors pay the full stock price after the market crashed, which many could not do.
Black Tuesday and the End of the Bull Market
The bull market peaked in September 1929.
From September to early October, stock prices fell slowly.
Wall Street speculated that the market had peaked and would correct.
Due to unsold inventory, smart investors noticed that some factories were laying off workers.
In the last hour of trading on Wednesday, October 23, stock shares fell 20 points. It caused panic.
The next day, selling drove stock prices down.
Investors were reassured by stockbrokers.
The stock market and economy were “sound and prosperous,” according to President Hoover.
Influential bankers and brokers formed a consortium to buy stock and stop share values from falling.
Prices fell further on Monday, October 28. The following day was Black Tuesday.
Investors lost over $20 million as prices fell 40 points.
Banks and stockbrokers called in loans that market speculators couldn't repay, showing the folly of buying on margin.
Bankrupt investors began jumping from tall buildings, two people committed suicide this way.
Many Americans invested in the stock market lost money, which led to the dramatic mythology of financially ruined suicides.
The Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression
The stock market crash didn't immediately cause a global recession. Many saw October 1929's stock market correction as inevitable. President Hoover reaffirmed his confidence in the US economy. He reminded people that the economy was more than just a volatile stock market. The production of goods and services, he believed, was the economy's core.
Unfortunately, the stock market crash was a direct and indirect cause of the Great Depression:
An increase in bank failures: Rural banks were closing rapidly in the 1920s.
Urban banks failed.
Credit crisis followed stock market crash.
Lenders called loans to protect themselves.
Vulnerable banks failed when creditors defaulted.
Bank "runs" during the Great Depression occurred when rumors spread that a bank was failing, prompting customers to withdraw their savings.
Panic withdrawals destroyed banks.
Depositors lost money when banks failed.
5 million Americans lost their life savings when 5,000 banks closed by 1932.
An industrial contraction: Credit crunch hurt industry.
The market crash hurt many large companies.
Businesses cut jobs and closed factories to make up for losses and fewer customers.
Workers cut their spending due to job loss or lower pay.
By 1933, the unemployment rate was almost 25% due to a vicious cycle of business closures and layoffs caused by a drop in consumption.
Global repercussions: Credit shrank globally after the stock market crash.
German economic recovery depended on American loans.
Market collapse halted American loans.
This caused a European recession and German political upheaval.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party took power after the stock market crash because Germany was in chaos.
The Great Depression and American Society
The Great Depression impacted all Americans.
White-collar and hourly workers lost their jobs. Other Americans were underemployed.
Women were fired first to protect male family breadwinners.
Minority workers were easy targets for bosses making tough decisions.
Many men were depressed because they couldn't support their families.
Men took jobs previously held by women, minorities, and teens out of necessity.
Many Americans' expectations and hopes were dashed in the 1930s.
In the early 1930s, private and local groups provided shelters and soup kitchens for the unemployed and homeless.
Some homeless people built ramshackle homes out of wood, metal, and cardboard on the outskirts of cities and called them Hoovervilles after the man they blamed for their problems.
Young people hid in empty railroad cars and hit the road.
During the Dust Bowl, natural disasters exacerbated economic hardship.
Poor soil conservation in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Texas worsened erosion during a prolonged drought.
The 1930s saw massive dust storms.
Nearly 60% of Dust Bowl farms were destroyed by decade's end. Most affected families left their farms.
Many immigrated to California to work in its rich agricultural industry and rebuild their lives.
Californians despised these country "Okies" who worked in the fields from dawn to dusk as migrant agricultural workers.
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck immortalized their plight.
Great Depression survivors formed lifelong mentalities.
Even after prosperity returned in the 1940s, many preferred to buy cars and other products with cash.
Others saved paper, string, and bags, retaining Depression-era frugality.
Young people who grew up in the 1930s were determined that their children would not suffer similar deprivations, which had serious consequences for baby boomers.
President Hoover and the Depression
President Herbert Hoover did help people during the Great Depression, contrary to popular belief. To alleviate his fellow citizens' desperation, he worked hard.
Conservative critics say he did too much and that, along with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, his actions prolonged the crisis.
Hoover used his office to persuade business leaders to maintain payrolls and wages.
As the crisis worsened, he coordinated charities and local relief organizations.
Hoover believed that neighbors should help neighbors during the Great Depression.
He worried that direct federal payments to the unemployed would make them dependent on the government.
Hoover supported Depression-relief legislation.
In June 1929, he signed the Agricultural Marketing Act, creating the federal Farm Board to lend farmers and buy crops to boost farm prices.
This bill preceded New Deal efforts to boost agriculture.
In 1930, Hoover supported the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, which raised tariffs to near-record levels.
By raising the cost of foreign goods, the tariff protect American jobs.
Other nations raised their tariffs on American goods in response.
The Great Depression likely spread globally due to the drop in international trade.
The tariff may have helped domestic producers, but exporters were hurt.
Reviving the American economy with the tariff failed.
President Hoover authorized many public works projects, including the construction of the Colorado River dam that was later named after him, to stimulate the American economy and create jobs for the unemployed.
He backed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932.
The RFC gave banks federal credit to lend to railroads and other businesses.
Similar legislation allowed the federal government to lend to failing banks.
In 1932, Hoover authorized federal loans to the states so they could fund relief programs.
Hoover refused to provide direct federal support to the poor and unemployed despite all this legislative activity to fight the Great Depression.
He still worried that federal "welfare" would undermine the American character and federalism.
The president's political opponents accused him of caring only about banks and big businesses and ignoring the "common man."
Hoover was known as a philanthropist and problem solver before becoming president, but he lacked the charisma and oratory skills to win over many ordinary people.
Instead, as the Depression continued, he was reviled and blamed for a phenomenon beyond his control.
President Hoover's treatment of the Bonus Army confirmed his uncaring image.
In the summer of 1932, thousands of unemployed World War I veterans gathered in Washington to lobby for early bonuses that were legally due them in 1945.
Veterans' demands were rejected by Hoover and Congress.
The majority returned home.
Several thousand veterans, many with their wives and children, set up an impromptu encampment along the Anacostia River.
Hoover ordered Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur to use federal troops to clear protesters from downtown Washington after police clashes killed two veterans.
MacArthur went beyond his orders and stormed the veterans' encampment with fixed bayonets and tear gas, injuring dozens and destroying their shelters.
As the nation prepared for a presidential election, President Hoover was haunted by the Bonus Army's brutal dispersal.
The Election of 1932
1932's election result was predetermined. President Hoover became a symbol of hardship after failing to end the Great Depression.
In a listless convention, Republicans renominated Hoover.
Hoover believed his volunteerism-based policies would revive the economy.
Concerned about Americans' growing impatience, he warned them against "mindless experimentation" that would lead to an overpowerful government.
The orthodox economic theory of the time and Republican success in the 1920s shaped Hoover's distrust of intensive government involvement in the economy.
Hoover's economic platitudes were unconvincing because he was saying them.
The Democrats had more confidence in the election.
New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the Democratic presidential nominee.
A wealthy relative of former president Theodore Roosevelt, led New York State's anti-Tammany Hall Democrats.
He was Woodrow Wilson's assistant secretary of the Navy and the 1920 Democratic vice presidential candidate.
In 1921, Roosevelt contracted polio.
For the rest of his life, he was wheelchair-bound.
Roosevelt's long battle with polio was thought to have made him more empathetic.
Before entering politics, Roosevelt married Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin and niece of Theodore Roosevelt.
As he recovered from polio, she kept his name in New York politics.
When he became president, Eleanor Roosevelt traveled the country and investigated the problems facing ordinary Americans.
She advised the president to act faster and further to combat the Depression.
Herbert Hoover opposed direct government aid to the unemployed, but Franklin Roosevelt did.
Roosevelt created a large relief program as governor of New York during the Great Depression. Public works employment was his main focus.
He said this relief “must be extended by Government, not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of social duty.”
Roosevelt campaigned for a sound currency and smaller government in 1932.
Roosevelt promised the American people a "New Deal," but most importantly, the promise of change and his buoyant optimism were enough.
Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election by 7 million votes.
President Hoover won only six Northeastern states' electoral votes.
The Democratic Party maintained control of both houses of Congress.
In voting for Roosevelt during the Great Depression, Americans rejected political radicalism.
The Hundred Days
In his inaugural address, President Roosevelt set the tone for his administration.
He declared, “So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” to rally his fellow citizens against the Depression.
He used radio to explain his policies and reassure millions in the first of his fireside chats within a week.
He appointed able but often contentious men and women to his cabinet and other top posts.
A "brain trust" of scholars and reformers advised him.
Roosevelt's early policies were ad hoc and experimental because he ordered his officials to "do something."
In the first hundred days of the new administration, Roosevelt's team proposed many new programs, which Congress approved.
In March 1933, as frightened depositors withdrew their money, banks were failing rapidly when Roosevelt took office. The banking system was saved first.
On March 5, the president closed all banks for four days to allow the federal government to inspect their assets.
By March 15, most banks resumed operations. People felt safe after the "Bank Holiday."
The Banking Act of 1933 established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to insure savings accounts and prevent "bank runs."
Starting with the Hundred Days and continuing through the "First" New Deal, large amounts of federal money went to relief agencies.
States received loans from Harry Hopkins' Federal Emergency Relief Administration to hire unemployed people.
The Public Works Administration, under Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, built highways, bridges, dams, and schools.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) employed 2.5 million young men on forest and conservation projects during the New Deal.
Since most of their small salary was mailed to their homes, the CCC gave these youths much-needed work opportunities at a difficult time.
CCC veterans were grateful for their experiences.
The New Deal sought to revive industrial production to revitalize the American economy.
Deflation, or a drop in prices, was also blamed by President Roosevelt and his New Dealers for business closures and job losses.
Business conditions were stabilized by the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA).
In each industry, businessmen and labor leaders set prices, wages, and hours.
Unions and collective bargaining were protected by the NIRA.
New industrial policies were implemented by the NRA.
Blue Eagle posters advertised a business's compliance with the new regulations.
Politically and economically, the NIRA failed.
Workers' wages increased, but so did prices, negating any benefit.
In 1935's Schecter vs. United States ruling, the Supreme Court declared the NIRA unconstitutional.
The Roosevelt administration's first hundred days addressed agriculture.
By raising agricultural prices, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) helped farmers.
Farmers were encouraged to bring fewer crops and livestock to market by the government.
Millions of pigs were slaughtered, shocking many hungry people.
The federal government's Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was an innovative regional economic development experiment.
The TVA's dams provided electricity and flood control to the Tennessee River Valley.
This modernization brought prosperity to an economic backwater.
The Great Depression wasn't ended by these programs. 20% of American workers were unemployed in 1935.
The 1934 midterm elections increased Democratic majorities in Congress because Americans supported the New Deal despite its flaws.
Ending Prohibition was a popular non-New Deal initiative.
Before Roosevelt took office, Congress passed a repeal amendment in February 1933.
By December 1933, enough states had ratified the Twenty-First Amendment to end Prohibition's ambitious but failed experiment.
The Second New Deal
By 1935, the first New Deal had failed and new measures were needed to address Depression-exacerbated issues.
Left and right critics attacked Roosevelt's record.
In 1936, the president needed a strong program to reelect.
Legislation and the Second New Deal followed.
Rural America's problems weren't solved by the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act.
Farmers were losing land due to mortgage defaults.
The Resettlement Administration (RA) was established in May 1935 to resettle exhausted farmers. RA camps housed Dust Bowl migrants.
The 1937-founded Farm Security Administration (FSA) helped farmers get loans.
Roosevelt supported labor during the Second New Deal.
Union protections ended with the NIRA.
The Wagner Act of 1935 guaranteed workers the right to organize unions and collectively bargain.
The Wagner Act also outlawed unfair labor practices and created the NLRB to enforce them.
The 1935 Social Security Act was the most significant Second New Deal law.
This act established a pension for 65-year-old workers.
Employers and workers contributed.
Retiree payments began in January 1942.
Agricultural and domestic workers were initially exempt from Social Security.
The Social Security Act established unemployment insurance for involuntary job loss.
Payroll taxes on employers with eight or more employees funded this.
With federal funds, states administered unemployment insurance.
The Social Security Act established programs for disabled, blind, and dependent children.
The Social Security Act changed Americans' views of government, even though it didn't cover everyone.
Most Americans once believed "government is best which governs least."
Under the Great Depression, many Americans believed that government should care for the needy. This changed Americans' government-citizen relationship.
US welfare began with the 1935 Social Security Act.
This heightened New Deal critics' concerns that it was leading America in the wrong direction.
The Election of 1936
The 1936 election was seen as a referendum on the New Deal by both President Roosevelt and his opponents.
Roosevelt claimed that business leaders opposed his policies because the New Deal cut into rich people's profits.
Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas, a moderate who supported the New Deal, was the Republican nominee to counter Roosevelt's claims.
Landon ran for president on balancing the budget and shrinking government.
Roosevelt's New Deal was well received.
Roosevelt's 523-to-8 Electoral College victory was one of the most decisive in presidential history.
Maine and Vermont were Landon's only states.
From the 1930s to the 1980s, Roosevelt's electoral coalition allowed Democrats to rule the nation.
Since Al Smith's 1928 presidential campaign, white city dwellers had been strongly Democratic, and whites in the Solid South had been Democratic since the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Roosevelt added labor unions grateful for New Deal support.
African Americans joined the Rooseveltian Democratic Party in increasing numbers.
African Americans, who had traditionally voted for Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party, increasingly joined the party of Southern segregationists and race baiters due to Roosevelt's charisma and New Deal antipoverty programs.
Roosevelt's agricultural policies also helped Democrats gain ground in Republican agricultural areas.
Critics of the New Deal
Even though Franklin Roosevelt won in 1936, many Americans opposed the New Deal.
Upper-class New Deal opponents saw Roosevelt as a traitor to his class.
His policies angered them and businessmen, who called him a Socialist or Communist.
Left-wing critics believed Roosevelt and his New Deal were more concerned with propping up American capitalism and the current social system than addressing the root causes of suffering across the country.
These leftists wished Roosevelt was a Socialist or Communist.
The American Liberty League argued that the New Deal was undermining traditional values.
This group attracted wealthy Republicans. Al Smith, a former Democratic presidential candidate, was its most prominent spokesman.
The Du Pont family and other prominent businessmen led it.
The Revenue Act of 1935 raised taxes for high-earners, infuriating the American Liberty League. American Liberty League publications called the New Deal "bolshevism."
New Deal opponents criticized it for not challenging American institutions more. Dr. Francis Townsend believed he had a plan to end the Great Depression and solve the elderly indigent problem.
His Old Age Revolving Pension Plan proposed paying every American over 60 $200 per month. This would be funded by a national sales tax.
The pension recipient had to spend $200 per month.
Townsend claimed that older Americans' massive consumer spending would end poverty and end the Depression.
Roosevelt's Social Security Act was inspired by Townsend's plan.
The Jungle author Upton Sinclair ran for California governor in 1934 on the Democratic ticket.
His "End Poverty in California" (EPIC) plan called for state control of factories and farms.
Sinclair's program was so radical that Roosevelt and other establishment Democrats joined with Republicans to undermine his campaign and defeat him at the polls that fall.
Father Charles Coughlin's radio ministry had become increasingly political.
After initially supporting Roosevelt, Coughlin publicly called him a "liar" and "the great betrayer."
In his radio speeches, Coughlin supported Hitler and Mussolini and was anti-Semitic.
Coughlin's church superiors ordered him to stop broadcasting in 1942 due to government pressure.
Huey Long was Louisiana's governor and senator.
He became Louisiana's virtual dictator.
Because he built schools, hospitals, and gave kids free textbooks, he was a popular political boss.
Long, who wanted to be president in 1936 or 1940, said Roosevelt and the New Deal weren't helping Depression victims enough.
He promoted his "Share Our Wealth" program, which would redistribute wealth in the US by capping personal fortunes at $50 million and limiting the rich's annual income to $1 million.
The surplus from taxes would be used to give every household a $5,000 grant and then guarantee families an annual income of $2,000.
Long received national support for this controversial plan.
A Louisiana political opponent assassinated him in 1935, ending his political career.
Twilight of the New Deal
Franklin Roosevelt overconfidently ended the New Deal's legislative phase in 1937 after his 1936 victory.
In 1935 and 1936, the Supreme Court declared parts of the first New Deal unconstitutional, angering the president.
Roosevelt introduced the Justice Reorganization Bill shortly after his second inauguration.
The president proposed legislation that allowed him to nominate a new Supreme Court justice when a sitting justice turned 70.
Roosevelt oddly claimed that he wanted to help elderly justices with their workload, but critics pointed out that his plan would allow him to name six new justices and "pack" the Supreme Court.
The president's attack on the Supreme Court enraged opponents and alienated many supporters. Roosevelt was accused of arrogantly dismantling the separation of powers between government branches for partisan gain.
Editorials and political cartoons compared the president to Mussolini and Hitler.
Congress killed Roosevelt's Supreme Court bill.
The 1938 elections failed the president's purge of Southern Democrats.
From then on, an unofficial coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats blocked New Deal legislation.
Despite the bill's failure, Roosevelt was able to appoint liberal Supreme Court justices after several retired.
The mid-1937 recession hit the New Deal again.
In early 1937, unemployment was still around 14% despite the New Deal's improvement.
Industries cut production during the recession, increasing unemployment.
Some blamed the recession on Roosevelt administration budget cuts, while others worried that Social Security payroll deductions cut consumer spending.
Employment reached 1937 levels only after World War II.
Impact of the New Deal
The New Deal empowered organized labor.
Union activity surged after the Wagner Act legalized unions and collective bargaining. Autoworkers resisted unionization.
Sit-down strikes in the late 1930s held expensive machinery hostage as workers refused to leave manufacturing plants.
The Flint, Michigan General Motors plant began a major sit-down strike in December 1936.
General Motors accepted United Automobile Workers (UAW) representation after a two-month standoff.
In 1937, Chicago police killed 10 Republic Steel strikers.
Union membership grew steadily in the 1930s despite the tumultuous labor organizing battles, which disturbed many, including President Roosevelt.
The decade's industrial unionization was driven by the CIO's creation.
The American Federation of Labor (AFL), a coalition of unions representing cigar makers, miners, and construction workers, had been the leading labor organization.
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its first president, John L. Lewis, wanted to organize unskilled workers industry-wide, which clashed with the AFL, which still grouped workers by craft.
By 1938, the CIO represented 4 million auto and steel workers.
Women struggled during the Great Depression.
Many were fired to make room for male "breadwinners."
Others worked low-paying jobs to support their families.
New Deal women achieved greatness.
Frances Perkins, the first female cabinet secretary, served throughout Franklin Roosevelt's presidency as Labor Secretary.
The Depression hurt African Americans.
African Americans, like women, were fired first.
New Deal relief programs shortchanged Southerners.
Southern lynching continued.
In 1935, liberal Democrats and Republicans in Congress tried to pass an anti-lynching law, but President Roosevelt opposed it because he worried it would cost him Southern Democratic support in the 1936 election.
The Scottsboro Boys, nine young African-American men, raped two white women on a train in 1931. Eight of the nine were executed for rape after rushed and unfair trials.
The American Communist Party helped overturn some Scottsboro Boys convictions. All young men were acquitted.
Despite Jim Crow laws in the Democratic South, African Americans valued Roosevelt's Depression-fighting efforts and believed he supported their civil rights goals.
Roosevelt appointed some black government officials.
Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women and director of the Division of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration in 1936, was one of his most influential African-American advisors.
American Culture During the New Deal
Many American authors wrote about the Great Depression's hardships. American life was captured by these writers.
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston depicted African Americans living in a small Florida town.
Studs Lonigan (1932–1935) by James T. Farrell chronicled the life of a South Side Chicago middle-class Irish-American youth.
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) chronicled a family's Dust Bowl escape.
Tobacco Road (1932) by Erskine Caldwell depiction of Georgia sharecroppers shocked readers.
Gone With the Wind (1936), Margaret Mitchell's first novel, chronicled a feisty Southern belle's life and loves during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Radio entertainment was affordable and accessible for most Americans.
Radio networks like National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS) offered dramas, comedies, and soap operas.
Popular music and symphonies and operas were broadcasted.
Orson Welles' 1938 adaptation of The War of the Worlds, based on Munich Crisis journalistic dispatches, showed radio and modern mass media's power.
American life in the 1930s included moviegoing.
Nearly 70% of adults went to the movies weekly, and kids were especially devoted to their movie heroes.
Americans could easily escape their daily worries at the movies, which were cheap.
42nd Street, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers comedies were popular.
Shirley Temple, a child star, was the decade's most beloved.
Popular dramas like Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) reinforced American democracy.
In the 1930s, moviegoers were marketed as events.
Air-conditioned theaters, contests with dishes and other prizes, cartoons, newsreels, and double features, and sometimes live entertainment preceded the main attraction.