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How Did The Great Depression Affect African Americans

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The Great Depression was a very life changing time for all of the people who were affected by this. Everyone during this time went through a lot of suffering just to be able to survive. Although everyone was affected African Americans were greatly affected the any other race. The color of their skin and because they were not American led them to fighting difficulty for survival during the Great Depression. Unemployment, food and shelter were all the things that African Americans suffered from the most. They not only had to deal with all of this because they were different they had to deal with the violence that came with it. Through this hard time African Americans had to deal with the violence, but they also had to fight back and fight for …show more content…

The unemployment rate was increasing more and more. The conflict that started between the blacks and white was because of the loss of jobs. Since African Americans were not Americans, Americans felt as though they had a lot of the power during this time. The color of their skin is what made them looked at like they were lower than everyone else. A lot of Americans did not see them as being equal, and they felt as though if jobs were available it should be for the Americans first. “By 1932, approximately half of black Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for blacks to be fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work” (Race During the Great Depression). African Americans had an awful experience during this time not only were they losing jobs, white Americans were making sure they did not have a job at all. This lead to a lot of black Americans to not have a job since they had a different color of skin. “They were the first to be laid off from their jobs, and they suffered from an unemployment rate two to three times that of whites.” (Life during Great Depression). This shows that they were hit worse than any other race. It was not fair at all, they suffered from losing their jobs more than anyone. During this time they had to find every way they could to make some money whether it be to send their children to …show more content…

Violence started occurring more and more between the whites and blacks. The blacks started to see the whites as a threat because they started to take everything away from them. The whites would fight with them about anything because they wanted to make sure the blacks did not get anything of what they had. African Americans knew that they needed to put a stop to this so there could be change. “This led to riots and mobs demanding food for their families especially African Americans who were farmers in the south” (Life during Great Depression). It started to get really violent between the blacks and the whites because blacks started to realize that it really was not fair what they were doing. “As mentioned earlier African Americans did not just sit there, they fought back with protests and Riots and marches.” (Life during Great Depression). This shows that African Americans wanted this all to stop and get the rights that should have been put in place before that. Once everyone saw the riots going on they knew there needed to be a change. “Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28 in 1933” (Race During the Great Depression). When lynchings started to happen it got more serious, because people were getting killed over this. It started to get scary for a lot of black Americans because there life became at risk when all they wanted was

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But unfortunately the reality was that the minorities had much harder times than white Americans. In 1933, the general unemployment rate in the United States was over 25 percent; at the same time, unemployment rates for various American minorities ranged up to 50 percent or more (“Great Depression and the New Deal Reference Library”1). Racial discrimination was high and minorities were the first to loose their jobs during the Great Depression. They were denied to work. They were often denied employment in public works programs, they were sometimes threatened at relief centers when applying for work or assistance, and even some charities refused to provide food to needy minorities, especially to blacks in the South.

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Unlike Tennessee, Mississippi suffered from decreased farm prices throughout the depression. The great depression caused many farms to go into debt, and also a lot of banks lost many people to go hungry, because of their life savings gone to waste. . One reason that the banks went into debt is that they had loss of income. As a result a lot of African American people lost their jobs, because the owners would not be able to pay the employees their money. People who had farms had to do the most work , they had to grow their own food, rather then “ cash crop “ like cotton or tobacco .

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The Great Depression era was one of the most severe hardships in United States history. The amount of suffering that ordinary Americans endured during the Depression was unprecedented. The Depression caused big businesses like Ford to layoff much of their workers during the Depression. This massive unemployment caused millions of workers to lose their homes and their livelihoods, puting Americans in destitute situations of extreme poverty. During the Depression the contemporary safety nets that existed to help take care of people when disaster struck had dried up and was unable to assist everyone.

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The experience that the majority of urban and rural Americans shared together during the depression was a flat out lack of income. The differences were very few, but in the cities, the depression was more prominently visible because of a higher percentage of the population (Schultz 2014). Besides the lack of income and employment, most Americans underwent periods of time being extremely hungry. In the cities, people spent hours waiting in breadlines and were losing their homes to only end up living on the streets in communities referred to as "Hoovervilles" nicknamed after the president (Schultz 2014). In the country, families suffered because of unusual droughts of the 1930 's that caused crops to fail miserably meant the already indebted farmers commonly lost their properties.

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The percentage of Americans that were losing jobs was outrageous “25 percent of all workers and 37 percent of all nonfarm workers were completely out of work. ”(Great Depression) and that only increased. The people moved and were kicked out of their lands feed to find work elsewhere but work was scarce and was no where to be found. The african americans also had a harder time finding work as the whites were given unfair priority. Their was a substantial gap between the rich and the poor and the poor was the lowest percentage of people in the Americas.

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The years prior to World War II little hope or improvements for Blacks. It was a time characterized by the realities of Jim Crow and poverty. The Great Depression of the 1930's had double the impact on many Blacks, who were already living below the poverty level before it began. For Southern Blacks, the burden of day-to-day struggle to survive in a society of sanctioned racism had gotten heavier.

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1931 was perhaps the hardest years of depression. The unique convergence gence of personalities and institutions responsible for a luminous decade of African American creative expression centered in New York was quickly unraveling. "The Depression, Arna Bontemps, recalled, "brought instant havoc to the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties .The Depression had devastated the South Side and made a distant, painful memory of the employment boom that had fueled the Great Migration. " Last hired, first fired," black workers suffered the ravages of joblessness sooner and longer than whites.

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They yearned for “racial purity” and inflicted upon the fairness of government and politics due to their biased outlooks. Especially in the South, African American people were harshly discriminated against and society was slow to progress when compared to the North and other more diverse parts of the United States. During the Great Depression, they endured the most struggles surrounding employment and were prone to living conditions that were lesser than wealthy politicians that were commonly

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America was than a segregated country, whites had the majority of the population and ruled the states. Civil rights had not been in act yet, but the incident of the southbound railroad car, spurred the

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The Great Depression was without a doubt, a rough time for America and the American economy. Whilst the economy was severely damaged, it affected the people the most. The vast majority, if not all of the citizens had been forced into poverty, struggling to support themselves, where others have family to care for. A wide majority of the citizens resorted to getting multiple jobs. Yet despite this, those whom participated in multiple careers had no reliable income.

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In what ways did the Great Depression affect the American people? After a decade of economic prosperity, what seemed like an era that defined the concept of the American dream, quickly came to an end when the stock market on Wall Street collapsed in 1929. The aftermath of the events that occurred on Wall Street would put its heavy mark on the years to follow among the citizens of the United States. Banks closed down, unemployment rose and homelessness increased. It was a widespread national catastrophe that had its impacts on both poor and rich.

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They had many more rights than they had before however they still experienced a large amount of hate. African Americans migrated during the Great Migration due to poor living conditions and treatment in the Southeast of the United States (Phillips 33) . “For many blacks, their departure from the South was a response to, and a defiance of, the coercions used to keep them bound to segregation” (Phillips 39). In the 1920’s, treatment of African Americans was different, blacks were able to do more such as getting a job however, some felt as though the hate they would get for it wasn 't worth it. Although, there would always be challenges that African Americans would have to face such as landowners supporting the passing of laws meant to control the mobility of blacks, limit their wages, and minimize their chance to purchase and own land (Phillips 33).

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1930s life for black people was difficult due to racism. Racial discrimination was not illegal in 1930s America, therefore racism was still rampant at the time. Whites and blacks were segregated in 1930s America and blacks were considered as 2nd class citizens. Black people were paid less than their white counterparts and they had to work harder than everyone else, often given the more 'dirty work'. The lynching (hanging) of black people was common in 1930s

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