The New Deal Movement In Days Of Hope By Patricia Sullivan

In Days of Hope, Patricia Sullivan discusses the rise and fall of the New Deal movement. She uses oral interviews and documented sources to show how the New Deal era motivated liberals, African American activists, labor organizers, and members of the Communist Party who set out to take advantage of the New Deal's social and economic promises. The reformers increased political participation in the South by initially setting out to abolish the poll tax. They soon noticed, however, that in order to be successful in abolishing the tax, they must first fight for democracy in the South. During this fight, they were able to lobby Congress to elect more liberals and expand the right to vote to not just one city, but to the whole southern region with

Although the movement did significantly increase black voter registration, the movement eventually weakened due to fear of Communism during the Cold War and a lot of backlash from segregationists. Nonetheless, the story of this movement helps people understand the opportunities and limitations that shaped the struggle for racial democracy in America during that time period. This essay will discuss the emergence of the New Deal, the effects of World War II, poll tax, and the fight for equality.

The New Deal was launched as a solution for the Great Depression in the South. This New Deal came with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term in office. He proposed a lot of promises and a solution to getting America back on track. However, the solution would benefit African American as well. Many Southerners were not on board with the recovery at all. The Southerners established an Anti-New Deal Coalition led by conservative Southern Democrats. Weber helped to get the New Dealers ready to counter the Anti- New Dealers. The New Deal administrators and lobbyists strategized a defensive

This, in turn, caused presidential elections to be swayed in favor of those in the antidemocratic movement.African Americans were unable to vote because of their inability to pay for the poll tax. Also, only the men of the house were allowed to vote—not the women. Activists were fighting to eliminate the poll tax and though this fight was unsuccessful, the activists were successful in finding members of Congress that saw their vision and believed in it—like Senator Pepper and Senator Barkely. The relationship with Joseph Gelders and Virgina Durr with Congressman Lee Geyer on the anti-poll tax legislative campaign (114) is incredibly important because it meant that there were politicians in office willing to stick their necks out for this cause and really bring the discussion on to the national stage. Other organizations also emerged to fight the poll tax. The Southern Conference of Human Welfare and National committee to Abolish the Poll Tax were two groups that were very active in influencing congressional action. support among other Civil Right organizations and grassroots movements (115). "The all-white Democratic primary, racially discriminatory voter-registration procedures, and intimidation often combined to take precedence over the poll tax in blocking black voter participation."(Sullivan 106. The poll tax not only stifled the black vote, it also