Herbert Hoover And The Great Depression

"Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a world-wide depression all by myself." Herbert Hoover was the president in office during the beginning of the Great Depression. He said this quote when most Americans attributed him to the root of the depression. This great despair started in 1929 and persisted for a decade. Launching off from Black Tuesday or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the United States was under a national despondency. This depression was felt world-wide to nations such as Great Britain and Germany. In the United Sates, black Americans were the ones who suffered in preponderance since they were the first to be unemployed, they were racially

Although slavery had come to an end, they were still racially victimized during the Great Depression. “The lynching of blacks by white mobs increased, primarily in the South. In the United States overall there were eight lynchings in 1932, twenty-eight in 1933, fifteen in 1934, and twenty in 1935.” The fight to get occupations increased amongst the whites towards the black populations when economy debilitated. However, the whites always won that fight since most people saw blacks as inferior. Blacks tried to get out of the South where violence was at its peak, and tried to go North where they anticipated they could find some assistance. They tried anything to get away from violence. Along with unemployment, the blacks suffered in their living conditions. They lived in crowded and filthy tenements with little to no electricity and no system of heating or clean water. Their conditions were way worse than the whites who were guided by relief services that helped them live in a healthy environment. The blacks were repudiated the help from these centers due to racial discrimination. “The Federal Housing Administration, for example, constructed segregated housing for the poor and refused to make loans to blacks buying homes in white neighborhoods.” Blacks were not given loans when they told banks that they wanted to purchase a home in a place where mostly whites lived. They

Roosevelt was elected in 1932. In the First 100 Days, Roosevelt approved bills in which there were programs to aid the people through the Great Depression. These programs were a part of the New Deal. Some of these programs included, “The National Recovery Administration (NRA)…the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)…all failed to protect blacks against discriminatory employers, agency officials, and local whites. These programs were predominantly made for the white population since it did not assist or benefit the blacks in any way. Roosevelt was more focused on the economic aspect of the New Deal not so much the racial aspect. However, the Second New Deal did aid the blacks. Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady, acknowledged the treatment of black Americans. She knew how they were discriminated and unfairly treated. Together, Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt created and altered programs that were directed towards the blacks. One such program was, “The Works Progress Administration (WPA), established in 1935, [which] taught almost 250,000 blacks how to read and write.” Another program that aimed at helping the blacks was the Civilian Conservation Corps or the CCC. This program helped the citizens, not only the blacks, get vocational training. This training specifically educated blacks on real-world skills, rather than scholastically learned information, which they acquired through hands-on