Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women's Political Activism by Joyce A. Hanson

Author:Joyce A. Hanson [Hanson, Joyce A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Social Science, General, Women's Studies, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies
ISBN: 9780826264046
Google: KQKSE5QgePcC
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Published: 2003-03-14T02:33:51+00:00

By the 1930s, African Americans were in dire need of a “New Deal,” and many black leaders eagerly looked to the Roosevelt administration for the support they needed to achieve economic, political, and social equality. Roosevelt inspired many blacks when he appointed a number of men as agency heads who openly and aggressively committed themselves to the cause of social justice and civil rights for black Americans. They included Harold Ickes, secretary of the Interior and director of the Public Works Administration (PWA); Clark Forman, special adviser on the Economic Status of Negroes; Daniel C. Roper, secretary of Commerce; Harry Hopkins, head of the Civil Works Administration (CWA); Henry Wallace, secretary of Agriculture; and Aubrey Williams, executive director of the National Youth Administration (NYA). Other young policymakers, lawyers, and social workers streamed into Washington to “help right the wrongs that had befallen our country.” Despite the fact that Roosevelt never initiated or passed civil rights legislation, did not offer executive support for any antilynching bill, and never publicly associated himself with African American issues before 1935, many black leaders had already worked with several of these appointees in southern interracial organizations and knew of their commitment to equality. Many of these appointees began hiring blacks as assistants. For example, Clark Forman hired Robert C. Weaver, a black economist and doctoral candidate at Harvard, as his assistant and likely successor. These actions, in concert with FDR’s campaign for using the resources of the federal government as a tool for achieving human betterment, prompted Robert Vann, editor of the black weekly Pittsburgh Courier, to advise blacks to “go home and turn Lincoln’s picture to the wall. The debt has been paid in full.”11 African Americans expected the Roosevelt administration to support their continuing struggle for increased employment opportunities, economic security, and the protection of civil rights; however, the implementation and effects of many early New Deal programs did not always reassure them.

Black leaders such as John P. Davis and Walter White were openly critical of the early New Deal programs, calling the New Deal “slogans for the same raw deal” for African Americans. In fact, before 1935 many of the benefits of the New Deal programs rarely reached African Americans. An assessment of two years of relief programs under the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) clearly shows that the number of black Americans on relief rolls increased from 17.8 percent in 1933 to 29 percent in 1935, or from 2,117,000 persons to 3,500,000 persons. Rather than indicating that relief measures were becoming more humane, according to Davis, these figures clearly show that African Americans were rapidly losing ground. Black workers did not have access to the small number of available jobs. Instead, employers gave unemployed white workers the first opportunity to fill available positions, and white workers even began taking the menial jobs normally reserved for black workers.12 National Recovery Administration (NRA) programs excluded black industrial workers from minimum wage and maximum hour benefits through exemptions. For example, in the cotton textile

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