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

  Assess the impact of a reform movement on minority populations and political affiliations.  How can rights be denied to citizens of a democracy?  How do the arts help us gain historical empathy?  How are the arts an agent for social change? Essential Questions

 Jim Crow America

 African Americans Hardest Hit by the Great Depression  Most vulnerable to fluctuations in the economy- black businesses and their communities affected immediately  Unemployment rate double that of whites

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

 Black Labor: “Last Hired and First Fired”  Black workers excluded from unions (job and wage security)  Blacks relegated to “Negro Jobs”  Faced competition from unemployed whites  Approximately ½ of African Americans out of work

Relief Rolls Soar 25-40% of African Americans in urban areas on relief Discrimination in starvation Retrieve American democracy through political influence

Reconstruction 13 th Amendment 14 th Amendment 15 th Amendment

 Rights Denied

 Northern Black Voters

 Democrats

  AAA Cash benefits for crop reduction > landlords keep money  PWA Federal public works> black hospitals, community centers, buildings at black colleges BUT African Americans did not secure employment in certain localities  CCC Employment of young men, conservation> strict segregation, 200,000 African Americans work and receive education, illiteracy eliminated First New Deal Programs: Intentions, Limited Impacts for African Americans

 Second New Deal Programs: Intentions, Limited Impacts for African Americans  WPA Provide relief and employment > wage differentials  Social Security Old age assistance, unemployment benefits > agricultural and domestic workers excluded, African Americans failed to qualify

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

 FDR’s “Black Cabinet”  Appointed larger number of blacks than previous presidents  “Black brain trust”  Advisers on “Negro affairs”  50,000 in 1933 > 200,000 in 1946  Mary McLeod Bethune, Director of the Division of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Association

 Eleanor Roosevelt

 African Americans React to the New Deal

 Lynching  Definition  American Lynching Culture  Historical Developments  Types  Statistics*  4,743 Americans lynched  3,446 African Americans *Provided by Archives at Tuskegee Institute

 A Lynching in Marion, Indiana, 1930

 Eyewitness Accounts

 Anti-Lynching Crusader: Ida B. Wells

 Anti-Lynching Crusader: NAACP

 The Arts: Agent for Social Change

 “Strange Fruit”

 “A Song for a Dark Girl” Langston Hughes

 Liberty and Justice for All? The Scottsboro Case

 The Trials

 A Mass Movement

 The Arts Respond

 “Scottsboro Boys” Leadbelly

 Scottsboro Limited Langston Hughes

 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

  Assess the impact of a reform movement on minority populations and political affiliations.  How can rights be denied to citizens of a democracy?  How do the arts help us gain historical empathy?  How are the arts an agent for social change? Essential Questions