Black America Rewind: 1930s
- Elexus Jionde
- 8 hours ago
- 13 min read
Our history will not be erased. In this weekly series, we'll focus on important Black American history from the 1920s to the 1990s. Full posts are available here, but you can follow along with the abridged versions on Instagram, too.
The 1930s for Black America were plagued with economic challenges because of the Great Depression, racism, and legal impediments. Still, Black Americans continued to enrich the culture, refine their priorities, and establish new goal-oriented solutions.
1930s Ripple Effects
Important 1930s Black American Events
The Great Depression
As the “Last Hired” and the “First Fired”, a wave of black unemployment in the months before the 1929 market crash made the Chicago Defender and other observers warn that something was afoot
More white women in the workforce meant more labor competition
Falling agricultural prices (and new technology) meant fewer sharecroppers and more ailing black farm owners
In cities, black workers faced threats and violence from white labor unions
An abundance of unemployed people meant rampant labor abuse and exploitation, like black domestic women in the “slave market” of New York
Wrote Makoroba Sow in Help Wanted: The Bronx Slave Markets and the Exploitation of Black Women Domestic Workers, "At the infamous Bronx Slave Markets, Black women gathered to find domestic work in the homes of white families. On street corners, outside shops, and in empty lots, women waited for prospective employers to approach, size them up, and bargain for day labor. Rates were as low as 15 to 20 cents an hour or one dollar a day. Comparisons to antebellum America were hard to ignore."
Journalists and activists Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke exposed the exploitative relationship between white families and black domestic laborers in a 1935 issue of The Crisis
"A woman was “permitted to scrub floors on her bended knees, to hang precariously from window sills, cleaning window after window, or to strain and sweat over steaming tubs of heavy blankets, spreads, and furniture covers.” After a day’s work, many Black women domestic workers were lucky if they left with the amount of money that they had been promised." (Tracey Johnson)
The 1932 Presidential Election
New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt vs Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover's handling of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression was a key part of the race
Marked the arrival of the Fifth Party System, or the era of Democratic Party dominance.
Not only did Hoover lose, but Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress
It was the last election in which a Republican Presidential candidate won a majority of Black votes
Neither Hoover nor Roosevelt was in favor of passing a federal Anti-Lynching law, which was becoming more important to the Black community.
The New Deals
Despite several government programs created by Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide relief, states and welfare offices initially frequently denied black Americans, gave them less money, and/or only gave aid to black women when husbands left the home. The Agricultural Adjustment Act led to black landowners losing property and the eventual end of sharecropping
At the end of the 30s, as whites returned mostly to work in private industries & housing where there was major discrimination, many black people stayed on welfare
By the mid-to-late 30s, more black people benefited from 'The Second New Deal' compared to the early years. Black Americans voted for FDR and democrats in record numbers in 1936. Noticing more black voters, over 40 Black Americans were selected by FDR in New Deal agencies & departments (they were coined “Black Cabinet”)
The WPA Narratives
An important phase of the 'Second New Deal' was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was founded in 1935 and provided millions of jobs for public works
The WPA Slave Narrative Collection was accumulated from 1936 to 1938
While an important collection of oral history, the interviews were often carried out by paternalistic white people who may have embellished or omitted details (See: Is the Greatest Collection of Slave Narratives Tainted by Racism? by Rebecca Onion)
1930s Quick Facts & Cost of Living
Black population: 11,891,143 (9.7 percent of U.S.)
National Birth Rate (1930): 27.5 per 1000 women, with black fertility higher than white fertility
Black Female Marriage Rate by Age 40: 69%
National Divorce Rate (1939): 1.9 per 1000 marriages
Interracial Marriage Rate: Statistically insignificant
Average Median Annual Income:
White men: $1,419
White women: $863
Black men: $639
Black women: $327
Common Jobs: WPA employees, sharecroppers, train porters, maids, caregivers, manual laborers, educators, and manufacturing
1930s Housing
Redlining
In 1935, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board commissioned maps for 239 cities outlining which neighborhoods were desirable for mortgage lending
These maps, completed by the Homeowners Loan Corporation, designated neighborhoods a grade from A to D-- with red areas being the least desirable. All black neighborhoods, except for six, were considered risky.
The maps were used to deny various loans to Black Americans, impacting their ability to generate money and improve their neighborhoods
Housing Covenants
When these upwardly mobile Black Americans attempted to buy homes in white neighborhoods, housing covenants, or promises by white homeowners not to sell to black people, kept them from doing so (These were usually codified in Homeowner Association Contracts)
Real Estate Broker Carl Hansberry (the father of playwright Lorraine Hansberry) bought a home in the white neighborhood of Woodlawn in Chicago in 1937
A white neighbor complained, and a lawsuit led to Hansberry v. Lee (1940), which opened up the legal battle for ending racist housing covenants
Thousands of American properties still have racist housing covenants in the deeds. They were made unenforceable by Shelly v Kramer (1948) but didn't become widely targeted until the Fair Housing Act of 1968
Public Housing
Major New Deal legislation was detailed in the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act
The country's first Public Housing Project was Techwood Homes in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1935. It was a whites-only project that replaced integrated housing
The homelessness and tent city problem of the Great Depression led to the 1937 Federal Housing Program, which chiefly focused on providing homes to working and middle-class white people
Hoovervilles (1929-1941)
Shantytowns of stone/wood/ tent dwellings for homeless and unemployed Americans during Great Depression
While St. Louis had the largest Hooverville (it was integrated and even had a self-appointed mayor), they existed across the country; some were integrated and others were segregated
Deliberately tied Hoover and Republicans to the crisis and helped solidify support for FDR and Democrats
Slums
In urban areas, black Americans were often packed into slums, where they were overcharged for rent and denied basic upgrades
Black Americans who managed to move away from slums sometimes found themselves fleeing white racism in their new neighborhoods... back to the slums
All- Black Communities
A number of black neighborhoods like Harlem in New York and Sweet Auburn in Atlanta were beacons of culture, activity, and prosperity.
Hayti, Durham, North Carolina
Began in 1865 and evolved to be one of the nation's most self-sufficient Black communities
Much of the town's business, commerce, and quality of life was thanks to the savvy creation of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company by Hayti's founding fathers James E. Shepard, Aaron McDuffie Moore, and John Merrick. They expanded into real estate development and helped build the neighborhood
The neighborhood (anchored by the bustling Fayetteville Street) would flourish until a period of decline in the 1940s, and ultimately fell victim to urban renewal programs
West Philly
Whites simply fled (rather than becoming violent) when black people moved into their neighborhoods
Wrote Menika Dirkson in Black Homeownership Before World War II,
"In 1900, the 32nd Ward of North Philadelphia in the area bounded by Norris Street to the North and Montgomery Avenue to the South and extending from 19th Street east to 18th Street, was an all-white neighborhood. Among the 200 English, German, and Irish American families that lived there, the only African Americans who resided there were nineteen servants in private households. By 1930, at least 50% of the neighborhood contained African American families, many of whom were renters from the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, Mississippi, and West Virginia. Among the new arrivals to the neighborhood were middle-class Black people who could afford to purchase their own home."
Important 1930s Ideas
Communism
After the Wall Street crash, more Americans became interested in hearing communist ideas & joining/forming labor unions
The Communist Party had few black members, but it was anti-lynching, anti-poll tax, and aided in the defense of the Scottsboro Boys & others
Conservative civil rights organizations worried about communist influence & focused more on poverty
Litigtion & Boycotting
Civil rights groups like the NAACP began pooling money to sue discriminatory entities and challenge racist laws
Their primary targets were graduate institutions like law schools
In response to employment discrimination, "Buying Power" and “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaigns were common in urban areas like Chicago and Harlem
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was the chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Employment in Harlem, and by boycotting businesses and leading rent strikes, he helped hundreds of Black workers get jobs
Community
Black people took care of each other with gardens, potlucks, rent parties, childcare networks, extended kinship, & church services
Participation in sex work, gambling, & illicit enterprises caused community rebuke & discourse about respectability & one’s personal obligation to the community
1930s Racism Tracker
Inspiring Nazis
When Hitler's Germany enacted the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which codified the persecution of Jewish people, the fascist regime was inspired by American racism and laws
30 of America's 48 states had anti-miscegination laws that banned interracial marriage, which was based on the One-Drop rule that classified anybody with a drop of black ancestry as Black. In Germany, Jewish people were banned from having sexual relationships with Aryans based on a rule that classified Jewish people as those who had three or more Jewish grandparents.
The Nazis found inspiration in eugenics through America, with Hitler writing in 1924's Mein Kampf, "There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."
For the first half of the 1930s, American eugenicists and racists were enamored by Hitler and Nazism
The Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority was established in 1933 as one of FDR's New Deal programs. It's purpose was to modernize and bring power to the people living in the seven states (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) of the Tennessee River Valley. Of the 2 million residents in the affected region, 11% were Black.
Land was taken via eminent domain, jobs were provided to locals to build power plants, and fertilizers were developed (and distributed along with information about new techniques) for farmers
The TVA would come to be a negative symbol of "big government" and "socialism" that had crept into American policy
Wrote Joe William Trotter Jr., "The agency barred blacks from skilled and managerial positions, excluded them from vocational training programs, and reinforced patterns of segregation in housing."
Black men were kept from the well-paying and union-protected jobs
Despite the availability of power, many landlords refused to wire the homes of black tenants.
Imprisonment
From 1926 to 1940, the populations of state prisons increased by 67%, providing both employment opportunities for white law enforcement and cheap, mostly black labor for the state.
Convict Leasing
The practice of leasing out the labor of convicts had been in play since atleast 1844 in Louisiana, and would continue in the rest of the country until a general stop in the 1940s.
Black men were rounded up for petty crimes and false accusations and forced to work, serving the purpose of scaring the free population into further subservience and turning an economic profit
Many states stopped their convict leasing programs in the 1920s, while individual counties continued them through the 30s
North Carolina didn't ban convict leasing until 1933
At least ten Georgia counties used convict leasing
Louisiana State Penitentiary
Colloquially known as 'Angola', the former plantation turned Louisiana State Penitentiary has had a negative reputation for violence, racism, and corruption throughout its history
In 1933, musicologist John Lomax and his son Alan visited the prison to find the "purest form" of black music, and stumbled upon Huddie ‘Lead Belly’ Ledbetter
Upon his release, Ledbetter was publicized as the "singing convict" who had "sung his way to freedom".
'A Man Was Lynched Yesterday
After a man named A.L. McCamy was lynched in Dalton, Georgia in 1936, the headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at 69 Fifth Avenue flew a flag saying 'A Man Was Lynched Yesterday' nonstop for two years. They removed the sign when the building's landlord threatened to evict them.
The Scottsboro Boys (1931)
After a fight between white and black teens on a Tennessee train on March 25, 1931, two white girls (Victoria Price and Ruby Bates) falsely accused nine black youth of rape when the train stopped in Alabama.
The boys were Clarence Norris (19), Haywood Patterson (18), Charlie Weems ( 19); brothers Andy Wright (19) and Roy Wright (14), Olen Montgomery (17), Ozie Powell (16), Willie Roberson (16), and Eugene Williams (13)
The youth were not provided with lawyers. Eight of the boys were tried and convicted of rape in three quick trials by all white juries and sentenced to death.
The NAACP didn’t offer to help appeal the convictions until after the Communist Party USA joined the boy’s defense. Together, they formed the Scottsboro Defense Committee
In 1933, Ruby Bates admitted there was no rape
The cases went to the Supreme Court in Powell v. Alabama, where their convictions were reversed due to a lack of due process.
In 1937, four of the boys were released. The rest were eventually paroled or escaped from prison
1930s Black Education Fast Facts
The black literacy rate rose by 10% due in part to increased federal spending on education and mandatory schooling
There were nearly 20,000 black students in higher education in 1932. 1,500 degrees were granted to them that year.
In 1933, the National Urban League submitted findings to the FDR administration that 240,000 of 667,000 employed children were Black. This impacted their schooling, and they were a “generation behind” white children. The expenditure per Black child in 1928 was $8.86, which was a fourth of the expenditure made for white children.
The WPA distributed grants to HBCUs, and Howard was given over $1 million to open a state-of-the-art chemistry building in 1936
Black public schools were underfunded, crowded, and students had fewer resources-- but their teachers were black and were often deeply dedicated to students & the community.
Top 1930s Trends, People, & Performers
1930s Figure Spotlight: Mary McLeod Bethune
Born the fifteenth child of formerly enslaved sharecroppers in 1875, Bethune defiantly learned to read after being told by a white girl that she couldn’t. She started a school for girls in 1904 in Daytona, Florida, that trained them for the workforce. Girls could attend for 50 cents (approximately $18 in today's money). The Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls later merged with an all-boys school (The Cookman Institute) to eventually become Bethune–Cookman University. While she ran the school, she made quality investments in newspapers, life insurance companies, a motel, and Paradise Beach, Daytona's first and only waterfront for the black community.
She was a selfless giver to her community, as exhibited when she made her school's library free to the public. In 1911, Bethune created the first black hospital in Daytona. After the passage of the 19th Amendment, Bethune helped black people prepare for literacy tests, raised funds to cover poll taxes, and organized voter drives. She was a charismatic woman and very skilled at persuasion, with Robert Weaver saying, "She had the most marvelous gift of effecting feminine helplessness in order to attain her aims with masculine ruthlessness."
Dr. Bethune was appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt to be the head of the Negro division of the New Deal’s National Youth Association, making her the most powerful member of the 'Black Cabinet.' Bethune partnered with churches, schools, and businesses to make jobs and education more accessible for black youth, and particularly black women-- with over 300,000 young adults utilizing the program. Bethune organized the National Council of Negro Women in 1935, bringing together the leaders of 27 black women’s groups to lobby for change and uplift black women.
Bethune was a fierce advocate for Civil RIghts and Black History. She wrote in 1939,
"Not only the Negro child but children of all races should read and know of the achievements, accomplishments, and deeds of the Negro. World peace and brotherhood are based on a common understanding of the contributions and cultures of all races and creeds"
In 1944, Bethune co-founded the United Negro College Fund with Frederick D. Patterson ad William J. Trent, aiming to provide scholarships and mentor programs to black youth attending HBCUs.
1930s Figure Spotlight: Thurgood Marshall
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Thurgood Marshall's father nurtured his interest in the law, challenging him to engage in debate and reason with logic. He received his law degree in 1933 from Howard University and passed the Maryland Bar with ease. Though he initially started a private practice, his success came from his work with the NAACP, initiating lawsuits to challenge racism-- like 1935's Murray v Pearson.
In 1938, he was one of the lawyers representing Lloyd L. Gaines before the Supreme Court, who had been rejected by the University of Missouri School of Law because he was Black. In Gaines v. Canada, the Supreme Court ruled that a state that provides in-state education for white people must give comparable in-state education for Black people. Rather than admit Gaines, Missouri chose to turn a former cosmetology school into the Lincoln University School of Law for minorities. Unfortunately, Gaines disappeared in 1939-- and it is unknown what happened to him. Some said he grew tired of being 'exploited' by the NAACP as an activist, others said he intentionally disappeared and left the country to avoid violence, and others believe he was one of many black people who met a violent and unknown end at the hands of racists.
Said Marshall on Gaines v Canada later, "I remember the Gaines case as one of our greatest legal victories....But I have never lost the pain of having so many people spend so much time and money on him, just to have him disappear." The case set the framework for challenging Plessy v Ferguson, which legalized 'Separate but Equal' accommodations.
As director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall raised money for the NAACP and successfully litigated against discriminatory pay for black workers. His reputation as a legal mastermind grew, and he eventually took 32 Civil Rights cases before the Supreme Court, winning 29 of them. During World War II, Marshall was an opponent of FDR's Japanese-American internment camps. After the war, Marshall re-prioritized challenging segregation in American schools, eventually leading to 1954's Brown v. Board of Education.
1930s Black Artists
Do you want to conduct your own research on the Black 1930s? Check out this list from A-Z for inspiration!
Check out Intelexual Media Guides for details on how to do your own research.
In Black America Rewind: 1940s, we'll discuss:
The Impact of War II and GI Bill
The Double V Campaign
The Rape of Recy Taylor
Harry Truman and Black Americans
Black Media
& More!
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