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The Great Depression was hard for everyone. When it came around though, it hit black people the hardest. They were losing their jobs left and right but “Blacks faced unemployment of 50 percent or more, compared with about 30 percent for whites.” People of color had a hard time finding jobs.  If they were lucky enough to even get a job  “Black wages were at least 30 percent below those of white workers, who themselves were barely at subsistence level.”(Lee Sustar 2012)  It was a time of poverty. The liberal Roosevelt administration brought no relief in 1933 it “was soon referred to by Blacks as the Negro Removal Act. Although its stated goal was nondiscriminatory hiring and an equal minimum wage for whites and Blacks, NRA public works projects rarely employed Blacks and maintained racist wage differentials when they did.”

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THE GREAT Depression of the 1930s was catastrophic for all workers. But as usual, Blacks suffered worse, pushed out of unskilled jobs previously scorned by whites before the depression. Blacks faced unemployment of 50 percent or more, compared with about 30 percent for whites. Black wages were at least 30 percent below those of white workers, who themselves were barely at subsistence level.

There was no relief from the liberal Roosevelt administration, whose National Recovery Act (NRA) of 1933 was soon referred to by Blacks as the Negro Removal Act. Although its stated goal was nondiscriminatory hiring and an equal minimum wage for whites and Blacks, NRA public works projects rarely employed Blacks and maintained racist wage differentials when they did.

Nor did traditional organized labor offer any alternative. Although American Federation of Labor President William Green gave lip service to civil rights and claimed to oppose segregated Jim Crow locals, he did nothing to enforce this on affiliated unions.

Blacks were either excluded or forced to organize in separate unions, such as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Black workers who tried to organize often found themselves a target of lynch mobs, in both the North and South.

Only the Communist Party-led Trade Union Unity League (TUUL) seriously organized Black workers, notably in the National Miners Union. But the "red unions" of the TUUL were limited by their ultra-left tactics, which only reinforced the isolation of Blacks and leftists from the mainstream of organized labor.

THIS BLEAK situation changed with the strike wave of 1934. Virtual general strikes swept Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco, showing the potential for a new industrial union movement that would organize the unskilled, mass production workers, including Blacks, long scorned by the elitist craft unions of the AFL.

Racism was central to the debate over craft vs. industrial unionism. Industrial unionism organized a plant-wide union, regardless of particular jobs, meaning that Blacks in the most dangerous, dirty and low-paid jobs would be in the same local as better-paid whites.

But the well-entrenched bureaucrats of the AFL had long used racism to keep strict control over their membership, and could not countenance the threat of a racially united rank and file. The AFL bureaucrats' policy earned them a cozy relationship with the bosses, one they wouldn't risk on an organizing drive of the unskilled.

Following a violent debate at the 1935 AFL convention, a group of unionists led by United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis, formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), with the aim of unionizing auto, steel and other industries.

Drawing on the experience of Communist Party activists, the CIO made organizing Blacks a priority. William Mitch of the United Mineworkers had spectacular success transforming the Alabama UMW from an organization of two locals with 255 members in June 1933, to a union of 23,000 by 1935, 60 percent of whom were Black. This is a union that only a few years earlier had virtually excluded Black workers.

Another reason for CIO success in organizing Blacks was the support of the National Negro Congress, a Communist Party-initiated organization that brought the CIO together with civil rights organizations previously hostile to organized labor. The Congress played a crucial role in counteracting the influence of the antiunion, Black middle class preachers, who received financial support from corporations such as Ford, Chrysler and U.S. Steel.

But after years of experiencing racism at the hands of the AFL, Blacks were slow to join the new unions. By the end of the United Auto workers' month-long Chrysler sit-down strike in 1937, most of the 400 Black workers had left the plant. Racial divisions also persisted at the Briggs company's Mack Avenue plant in Detroit, where many white workers came from Southern backgrounds.

Since Blacks were a relatively small proportion of the workforce at Chrysler and 10 percent of the workforce at Briggs, the strike could be relatively successful even without their total support. This was not true at Ford's River Rouge plant, where 11,000 of 81,000 workers were Black.

Watching the growing strength of the UAW, Ford recruited Blacks into the company good squads that physically assaulted UAW organizers. The UAW responded by hiring several full-time Black organizers, some with CP backgrounds.

The UAW established an informal "Black Department" to help with the Ford organizing drive. The Black Department foundered during UAW factionalism in the 1930s, but it laid the basis for the tremendous strike victory in 1941, when the vast majority of 17,000 Black workers enthusiastically supported a strike against the company. About 1,500 Black who initially crossed the picket line were convinced to join the strike, frustrating Ford's efforts to stir up racial violence.

BLACKS JOINED the CIO as a way to fight desperate poverty and racism. Often, they were convinced by the courageous, militant anti-racism of many CIO organizers, especially socialists and communists who faced the Ku Klux Klan, company thugs and police violence in their efforts to organize Blacks.

Before the rise of the CIO, there were 100,000 Blacks in unions. By 1940, half a million were organized.

But even these tremendous steps forward could not overcome the effects of unemployment during the Great Depression. The proportion of Blacks in manufacturing actually declined from 7.3 percent in 1930 to 5.5 percent in 1940.

And Jim Crow persisted. At a 1937 strike at Atlanta Southern Bed Company, a union local agreed to a Jim Crow picket line--whites on one side of the plant, Blacks on the other. Even in the North, Jim Crow company policies persisted. Blacks were rarely upgraded to skilled jobs in the auto or steel industries. Even the CP-dominated leadership of New York's Transport Workers Union refused to risk its position by challenging racist policies in TWU locals.

A promised all-out CIO organizing drive in the South was permanently delayed, a casualty of the increasingly conservative union leadership that used enforcement of the no-strike pledge during the Second World War as an excuse to put off organizing drives. Far from being a left-wing, working class alternative, the Communist Party popular front support for Roosevelt led it to become the strongest enforcer of the no-strike pledge and to ignore Black struggles against Jim Crow practices in the defense industries.

At its best, though, the CIO showed how racist ideas promoted by the bosses and their media can be broken down in struggle. Confronted by union-busting bosses, workers come to see that racism allows the bosses to divide and rule. Through struggle, Black and white workers can learn the real source of racism--the bosses and their system--and struggle to overcome it.

First published in the January 1986 issue of Socialist Worker.

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THE GREAT Depression of the 1930s was catastrophic for all workers. But as usual, Blacks suffered worse, pushed out of unskilled jobs previously scorned by whites before the depression. Blacks faced unemployment of 50 percent or more, compared with about 30 percent for whites.

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Native Son was a novel written in 1940 by Richard Wright about a young African American man, Bigger Thomas, who was living with his family in extreme poverty in the South Side of Chicago during the 1930's. Bigger commits two horrible crimes in this story and is eventually caught by the police and put on trial. Jan, the communist boyfriend of Mary Dalton, whom Bigger murdered, visits Bigger in jail and suggests that he use the help of his lawyer, Boris Max. Max helps Bigger realize and understand his place in the world and his relationship with his family. Bigger realizes that he has lived his life through fear and anger without meaning. He starts to understand that he has the ability to live a meaningful life and he reevaluates his outlook on white people because of how accepting Jan and Boris Max are.

Boris Max defends Bigger by making the case that it was Bigger's destiny to be a failed human because of the racist oppression that he has experienced since birth. He argues that Bigger along with any other African Americans are simply products of the society that molded them and consistently told them who and what they were going to be since the day they were born. The economic and social oppression against blacks at the time gave men like Bigger no choice but to provide for himself and his family through crime. The only real jobs that they could get were serving the wealthy whites which only perpetuated the cycle of oppression. Boris says that they cannot sentence Bigger to death if they do not even consider him a human being in the first place. However, Bigger is still found guilty and sentenced to death.

Richard Wright was trying to show the effects that racism and social and economic oppression had on black communities in the 1930's in America. He wanted to show how white racism forced African Americans into a distressed and dangerous mindset. This is what drives Bigger to accidentally kill Mary Dalton; he did not want to get caught in her bedroom so he put a pillow over her face to keep her quiet and accidentally suffocated her. Wright also shows how the media played a role in this cycle of racism and black oppression. When Bigger goes to the movies, the white people are portrayed as sophisticated and wealthy while the blacks are depicted as brutish savages. These racist reinforcements in the media made African Americans more likely to act in violence and animosity because that is how they were expected to act according to social standards.

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Native Son was a novel written in 1940 by Richard Wright about a young African American man, Bigger Thomas, who was living with his family in extreme poverty in the South Side of Chicago during the 1930's. Bigger commits two horrible crimes in this story and is eventually caught by the police and put on trial.

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Propaganda was present a lot during the Great Depression, causing racism to be even more prominent.  Although anti-racism groups had appeared, the newspapers and magazines gave people of color a bad name. In the New Yorker, the front page of the magazine depicted a drunk black man on the streets of New York, with a supposedly pure, white man walking by. In a white man's perspective, this would cause them to disrespect and hate any black person.Also, the Great Depression took place in this time period, where many American people were laid off or unemployed. Non-white people, such as African Americans, suffered the most during these times. “ By 1932, approximately half of Black Americans were out of work ( LOC).” White people pushed for African Americans to get laid off, just so that they, White people, wouldn’t. Lynchings also happened a lot, surging from 8 to 23 lynches between a year.
On the other hand,the president at the time, FDR, tried to stop the discrimination, racism, and hatred by having more Black and White interactions, such as having Black advisors. He did all that to change the point of view the White public had on black people.  FDR also issued an act that allowed everyone, regardless of their ethnicity. " President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United States (LOC)."  The propaganda used in this setting caused white people to do the opposite: become familiar with black people and not engage in racist acts.

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The 1930's were a turbulent time for race relations in America. Despite the decline of such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan (which had enjoyed renewed support during the 1910's and 1920's) racism was as strong as ever in the Southern states. Furthermore, as this picture alluedes to, the increased presence of Black Americans in Northern cities (where many had migrated during WWII and especially during the Depression) resulted in increased tension between the races there as well. This image of a drunken African-American passed out in the middle of the city reflects the apprehension which many rich white New Yorkers felt at the the presence of so many blacks in what they considered to be their city.

Many New Deal programs gave black Americans opportunities they had often lacked in the past, while also helping to bring their daily struggles to light for Northerners. Such federal programs as The Federal Music Project, Federal Theatre Project, and Federal Writers project enabled black artists to find word during the depression, often times creating art or stories which portrayed the historic and present situation of blacks in the South. Projects chronicling the lives of former slaves were also begun under the auspices of these programs. At the same time competition for WPA (Works Project Administration) jobs in the South during the thirties also brought to light the persisitence of inequality even in the government. Since the WPA required that eligibile employes not have refused any private sector jobs at the "prevailing wage" for such jobs, African-Americans (who were paid less on average then whites in the South) might be refused WPA jobs which whites were eligible for. Such discrimination often extended to Hispanic-Americans in the Southwest as well. Despite such difficulties, WPA head Harry Hopkins worked with NAACP leaders to prevent discrimination whenever possible resulting in general support for the programs (and the government) by the black community.

Black Americans also received increased visibility during this decade for less auspicious reasons, resulting in bitter political conflict within the Democratic Party. While the South had been solidly Democratic since the Civil War, the Roosevelt administration actively appealed to African-Americans to join their party, thus alienating many Southerners. The growing divide between Northern and Southern Democrats over the issue of race came to a head in April 1937, when a bitter fight over an anti-lynching bill took place in the House of Representatives. In the wake of a gruesome double lynching in Mississippi (only one of more than a hundred which had taken place since 1930) The House passed the anti-lynching resolution, despite the opposition of all but one Southern member. Declaring that the South had been "deserted by the Democrats of the North" former Roosevelt supporters in the Senate carried out a six week long filibuster which resulted in the withdrawel of the bill in February 1938. This bitter political fight was indicative of the racism and regional conflict still firmly instrenched in America in the 1930s.

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The 1930's were a turbulent time for race relations in America. Despite the decline of such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan (which had enjoyed renewed support during the 1910's and 1920's) racism was as strong as ever in the Southern states.

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Racism has been around for a very long time. In fact, it has been around since the colonial era. This was when white people were given exclusive rights that no other race was. In the 1930’s people were only getting use to becoming more equal to P.O.C. While segregation was definitely a thing slavery was no longer a thing. Inequality was only beginning to disappear. However, during the Great Depression which was the worst economic downfall America had ever experienced. Everyone was suffering from the Economic downturn. Of course though, black people had it harder. There was “The Communist Party taught that a racially-divided society and workforce benefited only the elite, since people of color were employed as strikebreakers” (Pickney 2002)  They tried their best to be anti racist which didn’t work out. “  Initially the Party had advocated a separate state for African Americans, calling for complete self-determination in the “Black Belt” region of the South where African-Americans comprised a near majority of the population.   This proved to be an unpopular goal for both blacks and whites, and later the CP moved away from the notion of black self-determination.” (Pickney 2002)

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Not even the slightest degree of oppression, or the slightest injustice in respect of a national minority- such are the principles of working class democracy."

The Communist Party of Washington State struggled diligently to fulfill Lenin's pledge, working to improve conditions for people of color in the Pacific Northwest. The CP was one of the first Left groups to take up the issue of racism and oppression. During the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the CP made great strides in the areas of union desegregation, public education about racial injustices, and legal support for civil rights activities.

The Communist Party taught that a racially-divided society and work force benefited only the elite, since people of color were employed as strikebreakers during the great strikes before and after World War I, including the general strike of 1919 in Seattle. In the 1920s the Party began actively working within the community to change the conditions of workers of color, and broadened this activism in the decades that

followed. While Communist did not believe racism could be ended completely without the end of capitalism, they did believe that changes could occur that would help move society towards a more egalitarian structure. Stressing the common struggle for all workers against an unfair economic system, the Party tried to break the pattern of white supremacy that had long plagued the American labor movement.

The Communist Party's civil rights activities came at a time of racial antagonism. Washington State experienced a rapid growth in its communities of color when many people came to the Pacific Northwest during World War I for jobs on the waterfront and in the steel industry. At that time non-whites were barred from most unions, had considerably lower pay scales, almost twice the unemployment rate, and were frequently abused on the job. With no union protection and a racially hostile environment, African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and other Asians, were easily exploited.

Racial tensions in the 1920s were coming to a head in the area. A huge Ku Klux Klan rally was held in Issaquah, Washington, in 1924; reports state that anywhere from 13,000 to 55,000 attended. All of this activity, backed by federal and state legislation that was expressly anti-immigrant and anti-person of color, was the context in which the Communist Party of Washington State began working on issues of racism.

Although the Communist Party had consistently adopted tenets intended to be anti-racist, integration was not necessarily the goal. Initially the Party had advocated a separate state for African Americans, calling for complete self-determination in the "Black Belt" region of the South where African-Americans comprised a near majority of the population. This proved to be an unpopular goal for both blacks and whites, and later the CP moved away from the notion of black self-determination.

Most people of color were understandably wary of the Communist Party. Shadowed by the experience of racist unions, the CP of Washington State had to overcome the racist attitudes of the white community while struggling to win the trust of the communities of color. The Party fought these barriers with a program of progressive action, recruiting leaders of color, as well as rank-and file workers. The Communist Party's official platform was to end capitalism and to eradicate 'chauvinism' that was directed at women and people of color.

In the 1930s the Party helped publicize the Scottsboro Boys rape case. In 1931, nine young African American men were charged with the rape of two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama. The men were charged, tried, and sentenced to death for the crimes. The case was based on false testimony and the men were essentially convicted because of their race. The International Labor Defense, the legal organization of the Communist Party, was involved in the multiple appeals of the case. The Young Communist League of Seattle (YCL) published and distributed several pamphlets to raise awareness of the denial of equal justice to African Americans. The legal involvement of the Communist Party and the growing national pressure led to the original verdict being overturned in 1934. But then the defendants were convicted again.

Communists in Seattle used their newspaper, the Voice of Action, as a tool to uncover similar cases and publicize the plight of people of color nationally as well as regionally. In 1933 the paper published a series of articles about a similar court case where a black man had been wrongly accused of murdering a white railroad conductor in Portland, Oregon, and sentenced to death. This, the Ted Jordan case, attracted regional attention thanks to the publicity provided by the paper. The Party's legal defense organization was responsible for the appeal processes. Led by Revels Cayton, an African-American Communist, a delegation of over 200 people marched on the capitol in Salem, Oregon, demanding that Ted Jordan's sentence be converted to life in prison. A month later the governor met their request.

The Party also engaged in activities to improve the conditions of people of color in the Seattle area. Cayton started the Seattle Chapter of the League for Struggle for Negro Rights (LSNR) in 1934. This was a Party sub-group directed at organizing a mass movement among African Americans to demand equal rights. While the local chapter was successful in recruiting more African Americans into the Seattle Communist Party, it had limited success meeting its other goals and was disbanded in 1936. Nevertheless, before it dissolved, the LSNR was responsible for organizing various protests against segregation and discrimination and generally increasing the public's awareness about the issues.In 1934 Revels Cayton campaigned for Seattle City Council on the CP ticket.. His entire platform, which gained some community support, was based on the issues of racism and discrimination in Seattle. The Party stood firmly behind Cayton by organizing several small marches around the city collecting "Whites Only" signs and removing them from local businesses. While Cayton was not successful at winning the City Council seat, the Party did raise the racial consciousness of the general public.

The Party persisted in its resolve to publicize conditions. For example, in the 1940s members acted to uncover
Revels Cayton (on right), in 1934 became a leader of the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union, which later became affiliated with the ILWU. In the 1940s Cayton becomes head of the west coast CIO. (courtesy ILWU Dispatcher) businesses that were discriminating in hiring practices.[ix] Lonnie Nelson, a current member of the CP, recalls testing businesses by being paired with an African-American to jointly apply for work. The Party also continued the legal battle for equal rights. John Daschbach, a lawyer and an active member of the Communist Party, founded the Washington Civil Rights Congress in 1946 to stand in the "defense of constitutional rights and civil liberties of the American people, including Communists and Negroes." The organization was active in the courts until 1956 when it dissolved after being investigated by the Subversive Activities Control Board as a Communist-front group.

While the Party was involved in community, legal, and political actions around the issue of race, the vast majority of its work occurred in the labor sector. Because unions had exclusionary practices and were frequent initiators of racist actions, most people of color did not feel any loyal to unions and justifiably resisted attempts to enforce closed shops in traditional industries. A closed shop would establish a union as the only hiring system and would often exclude non-whites. This combination of class exploitation and racism made for a volatile situation as people of color from outside the community were brought in to break strike lines. The Party, seeing how a racially divided workforce was weakening the workers' movement, became involved in desegregating unions.

The Communists' greatest success was influencing integration of the International Longshoremen's Association, one of the more progressive unions. This union had been instrumental in organizing the general strike of 1919; and, after the strike, because of extreme pressure from Communists and members of the IWW, actively began recruiting people of color. Frank Jenkins, an African-American Communist, became a leader in the Longshoremen's Union, joining when membership was opened African Americans. He helped design what he called a "truly democratic union" that allowed the general membership to make the decisions. Jenkins, with the help of other Communists and labor leaders, pushed include anti-discrimination language in the Longshoremen's constitution. As a result of his efforts the Longshoremen adopted a policy that banned discrimination based on a person's race or political affiliations.

Earl George
, another African-American Communist who was a leader in the Longshoremen's Union, fought tirelessly for the rights of workers regardless of race or political affiliation. In the late 1930s he was elected president of the then ILWU, Local 9, becoming the first African American to be president of a local union in Washington State. George actively worked in the labor community to raise awareness and promote change in other unions around issues of race.

Lonnie Nelson and other Young Progressives of Washington campaigning for Henry Wallace in the 1948 campaign.
New World April 22, 1948. See her discussion of "testing" and other anti-discrimination activities in her video interview. The ILWU leadership was becoming increasingly radical and Communist. Under leaders like Earl George and Frank Jenkins, the communist factions within the ILWU continued to work on issues of equality within the union. Despite the non-discrimination language in the constitution, seniority for people of color was often denied and preferential job placements for white workers continued. The Communist faction within the ILWU addressed these inequities within the union system, although success was marginal. Nevertheless, some of the greatest changes made in the ILWU, on a local level, occurred when the majority of the Local's leadership was Communist.

During the Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the ILWU was investigated for un-American activities and for harboring Communists. The president, Harry Bridges, arrested multiple times for suspected Communist membership, was later found not guilty after several investigations. The ILWU was eventually disaffiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations based on the CIO's opinion that ILWU was full of Communists. According to Frank Jenkins, the CIO action was less due to Communist-Party status than to the ILWU's history as a radical, democratically-run union.

During the ILWU's struggle with radicalization and integration the Longshoreman became increasing aware of the conditions that workers endured in the canneries of Alaska. Cannery plants at the time essentially worked on a slave-labor system. Young, primarily Filipino, men were taken to Alaska, usually to pay off their passage from the Philippines or other inflated debts. They endured terrible conditions to work off a 'debt' that was greater then the amount they would ever be able to pay. In an attempt to improve the working conditions of all maritime employees, a massive organizing campaign took place, and in 1933 the Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union (CWFLU) was formed. This was the first Filipino-dominated union, and one whose membership was primarily people of color. The union later affiliated with the ILWU becoming ILWU, Local 7 in 1950.

The majority of the CWFLU leadership was Communist. They struggled with the working conditions in the plants and with persecution based on race and political affiliation. CWFLU was successful in changing the working conditions of the plant workers while also building a solidarity movement along the Pacific Coast. In 1949 all the officers of CWFLU were arrested for being Communist, and, being foreign born, were set to be deported. The CP successfully protected these leaders from deportation. In 1950 the arrested leaders of then ILWU, Local 7, were released because the Philippines was a United States territory and, therefore, citizens of the Philippines were United States nationals. The release was based on the landmark United States Supreme Court Decision, Mangaoang v. United States, which was won by Party lawyers paid with Communist-Party funds.

The Communists of Washington State were also instrumental in the integration of the local chapter of the Steelworkers of America. Like the Longshoremen, the Steelworkers had encountered problems when trying to build a solidarity that was limited to white workers only.. Pushed by Communist members to be more inclusive, the Steelworkers acted to open membership to all workers. Eugene Dennett, one of the known Communists in the Steelworkers union, encouraged African-American workers to join the Party, and, at the same time, focused on eliminating discriminatory practices of his union.

The foregoing is an incomplete list of Communist Party efforts to integrate unions. The Party was also very involved in racial struggles within the Communication Workers of America, the International Woodworkers of America, and the Musicians Union. In fact, Party members, both individually and collectively, were actively involved in the racism issue in most of the Pacific Northwest unions.

But, while the Party struggled on issues of racism and discrimination and contributed positively to the civil rights struggle, it appears that its involvement was at times more about strengthening the workers' movement than from a genuine interest in improving the lives of people of color. Even after the Party began working on integration within the unions and the community, it continued to advocate separate organizations within the Party for people of color, rationalizing that these would provide an outlet for empowerment through self-determination; However, these sub-groups were not well supported and eventually faded away, as was the case with the League for Struggle for Negro Rights. The Party, concerning itself with the ending of capitalism, used issues of discrimination as a catalyst for inciting larger support for its original goal, opportunistically using racism to highlight the wrongs of the economic system. The Party never adopted a different framework for analysis of racism that addressed issues outside of economics, as, for instance, when the Party did not contest the internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. This discrepancy between adopted tenet and practice led to the disillusionment of those several Party members who were working on issues of racism. Revels Cayton, one of the best-known advocates against racism, left the Party after realizing it was only interested in talking about race when that issue applied to Party strategy.

Although the Communist Party of the Northwest in the decades of the 1930s through the 1950s did significantly contribute to the improvement of the lives of people of color, its legacy should not be uncritically assessed. While the Party was one of the first primarily-white organizations to become involved in the issue, it did so from the standpoint of bettering the struggle for workers. Its narrow focus on issues that related directly to Marxian theory and Party platform caused it to ignore issues it should have addressed, while claiming to support principles on which it actually had not taken a stand.

© 2002 Shelley Pinckney
Next: War and Red Scare: 1940-1960
Notes:

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Communis Party in Washington State: History

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Not even the slightest degree of oppression, or the slightest injustice in respect of a national minority- such are the principles of working class democracy." The Communist Party of Washington State struggled diligently to fulfill Lenin's pledge, working to improve conditions for people of color in the Pacific Northwest.

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Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s | Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No group was harder hit than African Americans, however.

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Works Cited Page