Analyzing the Issues and Songs of African Americans During the Great Depression

  What effects can a reform movement have on a minority population and their allegiance to a political party?  How can rights be denied to citizens in a democracy?  How does music help us gain the ability to view the world as it was seen by the people in the past ?  How can music be an agent for social change? Essential Questions

Reconstruction 13 th Amendment 14 th Amendment 15 th Amendment

 Rights Denied  Voting Rights Denied  Literacy Tests  Voter Registration Denied  Evictions from tenant farms for trying to register or vote  Poll Tax  Terrorism  Effects

 Jim Crow America

 African Americans Hardest Hit by the Great Depression  Very vulnerable: black businesses and communities affected immediately by ups and downs in the economy  Unemployment rate: 2X >whites

 Sharecroppers  Price of cotton plunges from 18 cents to 6 cents a pound. Drop in farm income.  2/3’s of black farmers earn no income or go into debt

 Black Labor: “Last Hired and First Fired”  Black workers could not join unions (job and wage security)  Blacks workers face discrimination. Hired for “Negro Jobs” only.  Black workers face competition from unemployed whites  Approximately ½ of African Americans unemployed

Relief Rolls Soar 25-40% of African Americans in urban areas on assistance Discrimination in starvation Take back American democracy by getting involved in politics

 Northern Black Voters

 1932 Election: Democrats Control the Presidency and the Congress

  Constructs  Purpose  Step Behind the Author  Journaling/Notetaking Letters to FDR

  AAA Cash benefits for crop reduction BUT landlords keep money  PWA Workers build public spaces. Black hospitals, community centers and buildings at black colleges built BUT African Americans not hired in certain areas  CCC Jobs for young men doing conservation work BUT 200,000 African American workers strictly segregated. Workers receive education, illiteracy down First New Deal Programs: Intentions, Limited Impacts for African Americans

 Second New Deal Programs: Intentions, Limited Impacts for African Americans  WPA Provide assistance and employment BUT African American paid lower wages  Social Security Old age pensions and unemployment benefits BUT agricultural and domestic workers excluded, many African Americans failed to qualify

 FDR’s “Black Cabinet”  Appointed larger number of blacks than previous presidents  “Black brain trust”  Advisers on “Negro affairs”  African American employment in the federal government: 50,000 in ,000 in 1946  Mary McLeod Bethune, Director of the Division of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Association

 Eleanor Roosevelt

 African Americans React to America During the New Deal  “His Spirit Lives On”- Big Joe Williams  “Sylvester and His Mule Blues” – Memphis Minnie  “Bourgeois Blues” – Leadbelly  “Jim Crow Train” – Josh White

  What effects can a reform movement have on a minority population and their allegiance to a political party?  How can rights be denied to citizens in a democracy?  How does music help us gain the ability to view the world as it was seen by the people in the past ?  How can music be an agent for social change? Essential Questions