AA The New Deal 1933-1941

Question 1

Agriculture adjustment act (AAA)

Answer 1

1933
* cut back in production reducing the quantity of food available so prices rose
* 6 million pigs slaughter and crops dug up
* initial success farm income rose 58% between 1932 and 1936
* supreme cort ruled it unconstitutional in 1936
negative impact
- sped up agriculture production changing from family run business to commercial enterprise
- many AA sharecroppers lost their jobs

Question 2

How did AAA raise farm income between 1932 and 1936?

Answer 2

58%

Question 3

Negative impact of AAA on AA

Answer 3

• Sped up agricultural production
  changing it from family run business to large commercial enterprise
• Made alredy vunrable AA more vunrable as many sharecroppers lost their jobs beacuse landoweners had to end sharecropper contracts
• 100,000 sharecroppers lost thier land by 1934
• 200,000 sharecroppers lost thier land by 1940
• lobby groups such as alabama sharcroppers union tried to prevent eviction but had very little sucess

Question 4

between 1933 and 1934 how many black sharecroppers lost thier land, how many lost by 1940? And why?

Answer 4

• 1934 100,000
• 1940 200,000
• landlords reduced thier acreage to qualify AAA financial payments

Question 5

When did the Supreme Court rule AAA unconstitutional?

Answer 5

1936

Question 6

FCA (farm credit act)

Answer 6

• 1933
• Provided loans to farmers to maintain both their homes and farms and remove fear of unemployment
• Didn’t apply to tenant farmers and sharecroppers
• It gave security for the future and enables farmers to take advantage of other government programmes to raise production

Question 7

NIRA and NRA (manufacturing) national industrial recovery act

Answer 7

• 1933
• Introduced codes to control production, prices and labour relations (defuse both aggressive employer practices and labour militancy)
• Wages set to ensure a minimum income, 40 hour week and more employment
• recognised unions having the right to collectivly bargain but this was option for employers to recogniise
• initaly popular with 2 million signing the pledge
• Ruled uncositutional by the supreme court in1935
• However racial discrimination and segregation not challenged
• Did not apply to the agriculture in which the majority of A continued to work

Question 8

Limitation of NIRA and NRA

Answer 8

• racial discrimination and segregation not challenged
• Did not apply to the agriculture in which the majority of A continued to work

Question 9

How many estimated AA lost their low paid jobs because of minimum wage

Answer 9

500,000

Question 10

What % of AA relied on sharecropping in the 1930s

Answer 10

40%

Question 11

How many AA did Hopkins work progress administration employ between 1936-1940?

Answer 11

350,000

Question 12

Banking act 1933

Answer 12

• Sperated investment banks from commercial banks ensuring that investors money could not be used/ lost in speculative ventures
• Guaranteed deposits and savings
• Only of benefit to those with savings and investment (so pretty much only the well of white male)

Question 13

PWA (public works administration)1933

Answer 13

• 6 billion invested in numerouse (34,000) projects
• Provied paid work for 4 million prieviosly unemployed
• Racial segregation and discrimination wasn’t challenged
• discontinued in 1939

Question 14

CCC 1933

Answer 14

• Provided work for 3 million young men
• Guarenteed monthly wage ($30, $25 sent back to families)
• Approxinatelv 200,000
  AA benefited
• 15,000 native americans
• Excluded women
• Racial segregation and discrimination wasn’t challenged
• disbanded in 1942

Question 15

How many men benefited from CCC and how many were AA?

Answer 15

3 million men in total
Approximately 200,000 AA

Question 16

CCC effect on AA

Answer 16

• only 10% of places were reserved for AAs: only 175,000 black men in the programme in the nine years that it ran for.
• in Clarke County, Georgia, not one black American resident was chosen to attend CCC camps, even though AAs compromised 60% of the population. They eventually received CCC places only when the federal government threatened to withhold CCC funding from the state
• CCC camps were segregated from 1935 due to complaints from local white communities and politicians in the South
• opposition against all-black camps: a local white community petitioned the CCC to cancel the creation of a black CCC camp on the grounds that local white girls might want to go out with young black men

Question 17

TVA (Tennessee valley authority) 1933

Answer 17

• Regional planning in severley deprived area
• Aimed at reinvigorating area of deprivation via state intervention on a mass scale
• 1936 nine dams were being/ were built
• Most significantly it provided employment by attracting new industires
• Racial segregation and discrimination wasn’t challenged

Question 18

Fair labour standards act

Answer 18

1938
* Set a minimum wage of 40 cent an hour
* set a max working week of 40 hours
- This raised the wages of 12 million workers by 1940
* opposed in the south as fear southern industries relied on low wages for its competinvnesss
* under 18s couldn’t be in hazardous situations
* to be accepted by souterjners had to make acceptions to the law for domestic servants and farm labourers who were mainly AAs

Question 19

FLSA on AA

Answer 19

• exclusion of domestic workers and agricultural workers (provided 65% of work for AAs) from it

Question 20

Why did the south critsise the minimum wage

Answer 20

The south realised an low wages for its competitiveness

Question 21

American liberty league

Answer 21

• Formed in 1934 from disaffected conservative businessmen, it argued that the welfare payments were too generous and took away the American virtue of individualism and self-reliance
• felt that the essential American spirit of enterprise was being lost by federal regulation, which was unconstitutional and posed a threat to democracy by ‘sovietising’ America

Question 22

2. WPA (1935) including the Federal Writer’s Project: Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright and Slave Narrative Collection
   · 1941: Great Migration (second stage); unprecedented level of black integration into Norther industrial economy; Randolph ‘March on Washington’ (strategy of non-violent mass demonstration) and Executive Order 8802: non-discrimination in defence industrie

Question 23

How many houses were built in Icke’s program and how many occupied by AA?

Answer 23

29,000
1/3 occupied by AA

Question 24

Federal housing administration impact on AA

Answer 24

1938
- Established the United States Housing Authority and set up housing projects for low income families
FHA impact on African Americans
- introduced racial quotas for its construction projects, and by 1940, AAs occupied one third of its housing units
- however, it refused to give mortgages to black families in traditionally white neighbourhood

Question 25

limmitaiton so the new deal on AA

Answer 25

1. New Deal legislation dependent on Southern Democrats – no extension of civil rights, no challenge to Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination, and voter disenfranchisement

Question 26

Wagner act

Answer 26

• 1935
• legalised collective bargaining - no longer an option for employers but was compulsory
• legalised the right to strike
• abolished company unions and yellow dog contracts
• legalised closed shop unions
• NLRB was created to enforce the Wagner Act
• caused an increase in union members: from 4 to 9 million

Question 27

Impact of wagner act on AA

Answer 27

• AAs were under-represented in trade unions:
• In 1930, 19 major trade unions excluded AAs from membership.
• The NAACP estimated that in 1930 the total AA union membership was 50,000 out of a national total of 3.4 million.
• Half of those were in the all-black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters on the railways.
• therefore very little impact on the welfare of AAs
• but this changed with the establishment of the CIO

Question 28

WPA

Answer 28

• Established work relief programmes funding a vast range of projects, using local officials to administer the projects
• Ran for eight years and employed 8.5 million people
• established the National Youth Administration, which focused on the education and training of young people. It disbanded during WWII

Question 29

WPA impact on African Americans

Answer 29

• known for being ‘colour blind’ with 1 million AAs working for it by 1939
• the National Youth Administration, led by Mary Bethune, employed over 5,000 AA teachers and taught 250,000 AAs how to read and write.

Question 30

FSA

Answer 30

• 1937
• Gave guaranteed loans to 900,000 small farmers and tenants to buy small properties or to rehabilitate farms, which enabled more farmers to stay on their farms. About 40,000 bought farms, 10,000 of those were African Americans
• loans also helped farmers to purchase equipment, seed and livestock

Question 31

FSA on AA

Answer 31

• Of the FSA’s 150 rural projects, 115 were all white, 9 all black and 26 mixed-race projects.
• In Alabama, an all-black community received community cattle, seeds and fertiliser to help them become self-sufficient
• In 1937 the Administration bought land worth $122,000 and subdivided this among the community’s black farming population
• also made efforts to give black farmers a voice in financial assistance by appointing them to agency committees
• however, opposition from Southern Democrats in Congress and state governments forced the administration to withdraw AA representation on FSA committees
• also the administration closed down in 1938, only a year in, because it lost funding

Question 32

SSA

Answer 32

• 1935
• Guaranteed retirement payments for over 65s, set up federal insurance for the unemployed and provided additional assistance for the disabled, for public health and for dependent women and children
• pension did not start until 1942 and payments varied between $10-85 a month
• the unemployment insurance was for the future, not those currently unemployed
• all contributors had to pay the same rate, regardless of income

Question 33

SSA on AA

Answer 33

• excluded domestic servants and agricultural workers which provided 65% of the work available for AAs

Question 34

opposition to new deal Sumpreme court

Answer 34

• Many critics, especially Republicans, felt that Roosevelt had over-extended the power of the executive, and they began to question the extent of power given to the executive
• By the end of 1936, it had ruled against seven out of nine New Deal cases. Having already denied states the right to set minimum wages, it now also denied the federal government this right

Question 35

opposition to new deal Huey Long

Answer 35

• Governor of Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the USA, felt that there had been too little help for the poor.
• Created the Share Our Wealth Society which aimed to limit personal fortunes with taxes for the highest earners, which would go towards social welfare. He believed the maximum anyone should be allowed to earn in a year should be $1 million
• by 1935 the society had 7 million followers

Question 36

Critics of the New Deal - Congress

Answer 36

• By 1938 many Democrats were no longer committed to Roosevelt. They felt that he had curried too much favour with organised labour and Southerners even feared that the government might ultimately enforce civil rights for AAs.
• The alliance of conservative Democrats and Republicans meant that Roosevelt no longer had a compliant Congress
• they regarded the New Deal as a threat because because it threatened their social hierarchy, with Southern Democrats supporting the white supremacist racial hierarchy and big business Republicans needing workers to stay in their place. Thus giving workers more freedoms would change this power imbalance

Question 37

Southern Democrats and Congress seniority principle

Answer 37

• In November 1932 congressional elections, the Democrats won all the seats to the House of Representatives in all the former Confederate states and every Senate seat that was up for election. All former Confederate states now had Democrat-controlled state governments
• Allocation of a committee chairperson was made under the seniority principle: members of Congress with the longest continuous service are chosen. In the Democratic Party, this was usually the white supremacist Southern Democrats.
• Therefore from 1933, the committee system of Congress was dominated by southern Democrats. For example, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee in 1937 was an opponent of any attempt to introduce an anti-lynching law and used his authority to thwart most attempts

Question 38

anti-lynching legislation

Answer 38

• number of lynchings per year had had risen from single figures to 28 in 1933
• Wagner and Costigan introduced an anti-lynching bill in the Senate in 1934. Robinson of Arkansas, a southern Democrats and Senate majority leader, tried to kill the proposal and the Senate adjourned with no vote on the issue.
• Northern Democrats including FDR did not want to push for it, as they feared challenging the power of the Southern Democrats and splitting apart the party in the middle of passing important New Deal legislation

Question 39

Eleanor Roosevelt

Answer 39

• Her intelligence, powerful personality and social and political links gave her influence.
• she regularly advised her husband on aspects of federal policy and championed the position of women and ethnic minorities - she was an unofficial member of FDR’s advisory team
• She held 348 press conferences during the New Deal years
• She pressured National Recovery administrator Donald Richberg to investigate race-based wage differentials. However, her efforts achieved very limited success
• She resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution when they would not allow a black woman to sing at their Easter celebration, and instead she arranged for Marion Anderson to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where 75,000 people turned up.

Question 40

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Black Cabinet

Answer 40

• She insisted that her husband made Mary McLeod Bethune his special adviser on minority affairs in 1935. Bethune founded the National Council of Negro women that year.
• The following year, Bethune became the chairperson of an informal ‘Black Cabinet’, a group of federally appointed black American officials to help plan priorities for the AA community.

Question 41

• The 1936 elections was the first time where the Democrats received the majority of AA votes.
• 2/3rds of AAs voted for FRD overall, 76% in northern cities
• Many voted for FDR as a person rather than for the Democrat party

Answer 41

Change in voting pattern