New Deal Dbq

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“I’m going where there’s no depression, to the lovely land that’s free from care (The Carter Family).” The Great Depression was the serious and worldwide economic decline of the1930’s. It crushed the hopes and dreams of many Americans. A plunge in stock market prices marked the beginning of the Great Depression. Theodore Roosevelt was the U.S. president at the time and he tried hard to help his country out of this depression through a program called the New Deal. It assured citizens that their country could be prosperous once again. There were two New Deals. The First New Deal lasted from 1933 to 1935 and focused on relief, recovery, and reform. The Second New Deal was launched in 1935 and lasted until 1937 and focused on social reform (The …show more content…

It was not a total success because its programs and laws discriminated against African Americans, unemployment rates were still high, and it created a struggle between the president and the Supreme Court.
The first reason that the New Deal was not a total success was because it discriminated against African Americans. Roosevelt's goal and vision in creating the New Deal programs and laws was to reform America and make it prosperous again, but it only helped certain groups of people more than it helped Black Americans. The laws and programs that were created did not benefit the African Americans as much as the other American citizens, or at all. For example, “The National Recovery Administration, not only offered whites the first crack at jobs, but authorized separate and lower pay scales for blacks” (“African Americans and the New Deal”). This gave specific races higher values than other, which did not reform America and …show more content…

“Most of the nine judges of the Supreme Court did not support FDR’s programs (“The Great Depression and the New Deal”). Those judges who disagreed with the President’s programs thought they gave the government too much power in controlling the economy. The judges did not want this to happen because they believed it was not good for the government to have too much power. So they struck down the laws which they believed gave the government this excess power which then destroyed the New Deal programs. Then, “his attempt to pack the Supreme Court with allies damaged his image and gave ammunition to his critics” (“The Great Depression and the New Deal”). This led to the New Deal program not having as much success as Roosevelt hoped it would have in two ways: first, it created disagreement between the President and the Supreme Court judges, and second, it destroyed the President’s image, causing him to lose support from the American people. This struggle proved that the New Deal was not completely

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