Shandell+History

For the historical part of my paper I chose to research racial discrimination during the 1930s and 40s. I thought it would be interesting to find out about racial tensions before the peak of the civil rights movement. Here's what I found out:

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, African Americans may have been hit the hardest, more than any other minority in the country, and certainly more than white people. The unemployment rate among African Americans was over 50%, that's twice the unemployment rate of Caucasians. Many businesses would only hire blacks if there were no white applicants for the position, and they would pay African Americans less than they would a white person. However, when FDR released his "New Deal" in 1933, it seemed like there would be hope for everyone. Unfortunately for African Americans though, the "help" didn't quite include them. Some New Deal programs only aided African Americans the bare minimum that they had too, many programs excluded African Americans from their relief completely. Such programs were the National Recovery Administration (NRA), who offered whites jobs before blacks, and would pay black people less than their white counterparts, the Federal Housing Authority, who refused to guarantee mortgages for African Americans who bought houses in white neighborhoods, and the Social Security Act, which excluded popular African American job categories. However, the New Deal programs did offer some relief to African Americans, even if it was very minute.

In the 1940s, racial tension between blacks and whites subsided. Everyone was worried about the war, and not so much about each other. White people needed African American people to fill in the job positions from white men who were in the army. They also needed them to join the military as well. Although racial problems went on the back burner, they were not completely solved. African Americans who took over white jobs were often paid less, and were sometimes segregated from their white coworkers. In the military, African Americans were also discriminated against. They weren't allowed to fight along side white soldiers, and they often times never even served on the front lines, only about 5% of the soldiers actually fought in the war. Instead, they held jobs that nobody else wanted. During World War II, African Americans launched the "Double V" campaign. It called for a "Double Victory", victory against fascism abroad, and victory against racism at home. Ultimately, the campaign forced Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 8802, which prohibited employers from discriminating based on race, color, or ethnic background.

These are some interesting websites I found over this topic:

[|www.digitalhistory.uh.edu] [|PBS]