# data[].attributes.body
How were Asian American affected during the Great Depression?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Great Depression had important political, economic, and cultural implications for "Asian-American" communities. In the United States, the ethnic label Asian American encompasses groups of people with diverse geographical, cultural, and historical backgrounds, and ancestral roots in a number of different countries. The earliest Asian immigrants arrived in the United States from China, with the first massive wave coming in the mid-nineteenth century. As with other ethnic minorities, the Chinese-and later the Japanese, Filipinos, Asian Indians, Koreans, and a host of other groups-emigrated to the United States to serve primarily as a source of cheap labor. These migration patterns were related to larger global transformations initiated by industrial capitalism and Euro-American colonialism. By the beginning of the Great Depression, these groups formed the largest Asian populations in the country. According to U.S. census data and other published reports, there were close to 75,000 Chinese, 140,000 Japanese, 56,000 Filipinos, and several thousand Asian Indians and Koreans living in America in 1930, most residing on the West Coast.

Like most other Americans, Asian Americans endured hardships related to and caused by the economic fallout of the late 1920s, with its effects lasting well into the 1930s. Stories of massive unemployment, housing evictions, lost savings, starvations, and in some cases suicide, were reported throughout Asian-American communities in the United States. In her autobiography, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America (1990), Mary Paik Lee, a Korean immigrant, describes the devastating impact of the Depression on her and her family. She recalls how her family's savings, generated from over a decade of operating a fruit stand in southern California, were completely wiped out during those years, forcing the family to move from place to place in search of available land to support a minimal level of subsistence. Preexisting levels of racial hostility in most industries in California led many Asian immigrants, such as the family of Mary Paik Lee, to be disproportionately represented in agriculture as laborers, farmers, and small entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, as the Depression dramatically reduced the demand for specialized agricultural goods (agricultural profits in California dropped by more than 50 percent from 1929 to 1932), the economic fallout of the Depression led to particularly harsh consequences for Asian Americans in the region. The economic effects of the Depression were also felt by Asian Americans on the East Coast. Chinese hand laundrymen, operating more than three thousand such businesses in New York City, saw their earnings and wages decline by about one-half during the Depression.

As the economic crisis of the early 1930s deepened, its impact, at least for Asian-American communities, was felt beyond the boundaries of America's borders. Many Asian immigrants, despite being separated by long distances and long periods between visits, maintained close ties to their families and villages in their homelands. In particular, the Chinese, as a result of international migration, developed what some historians have called "transnational communities." The combination of exclusionary immigration laws, cultural norms in China, and the prohibitive costs involved in the immigration process created an immigration population overwhelmingly male, leading some observers to mistakenly characterize the Chinese communities in America as "bachelor societies." Familial ties across vast physical spaces were sustained by letters, occasional visits, and scheduled remittances. These remittances went to building new homes, schools, hospitals, and orphanages for families and villages back in China. However, the Depression substantially reduced the funds that Chinese immigrants were able to send home, undoubtedly worsening conditions for their families and villages in China, which had come increasingly to rely on these remittances. In short, for Asian immigrants, the impact of the Great Depression was experienced on both sides of the Pacific.

THE IMPACT OF RACISM

For Asian Americans, the debilitating effects of the economic crisis were compounded by the historical legacy of racism. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the American public increasingly charged Asian immigrants, beginning with the Chinese, with being "unassimilable," "racially inferior," and a threat to the "American" way of life. These anti-Asiatic sentiments were eventually encoded into American law. In 1882, the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, making Chinese immigration to the United States illegal. By 1924, Asians, which by law included peoples from countries stretching from Afghanistan to the South Pacific, were effectively excluded from the United States as immigrants (with the exception of Filipinos and certain exempt classes including merchants, diplomats and students), were deprived of the right to own land, and were denied the legal right to citizenship. This history of exclusion and oppression by racial and national proscription profoundly effected the way Asians Americans and their children experienced and responded to the Depression. For example, Asian Americans, along with other ethnic minorities, occupied the bottom of a racially stratified labor market, making them especially vulnerable during times of economic crisis. Community histories describing, for instance, New York City's Chinatown, have shown that the unemployment rate among the Chinese population was considerably higher than state and national averages during the peak years of the Depression. Furthermore, racist employment practices precluded many university educated Asian Americans from entering the professional and white-collar ranks. The comments of a certain college educated Nisei (the American-born children of Japanese immigrants) reflected the frustrations of a generation of educated Asian Americans: "They go to college, learn a heterogeneous body of facts relating to anything from art to architecture and end their days in a fruit stand."

As with previous periods of economic crisis in American history, racial antipathies toward Asian Americans were expressed more frequently and with greater intensity during the Depression. In the face of an ever-diminishing labor market, white Americans throughout the West Coast systematically and violently drove out Asian-American laborers, with Filipinos being the most frequent targets. As colonial subjects, Filipinos were given the juridical status of U.S. nationals, which allowed them, unlike other Asian groups, to move freely back and forth from the Philippines to the United States. However, Filipinos did not began to arrive on American shores in significant numbers until the 1920s and 1930s. During this period, Filipinos experienced the same pattern of treatment as previous generations of Asian immigrants; initially, they were frequent victims of physical violence, and eventually, they were excluded through governmental legislation. During the Depression, the U.S. government offered to repatriate Filipinos with the stipulation that they forfeit the right to reentry into the United States; not surprisingly, few Filipinos took up the offer, though there were reported cases of coerced repatriation. In 1935, Filipino immigration to the United States was all but halted with the passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act. Economic uncertainty also produced similar efforts to discriminate against Asian Americans on the East Coast. For example, in 1933, a group of businessmen in New York City, in an attempt to eliminate Chinese competition from the industry, unsuccessfully advocated for a city ordinance that would require U.S. citizenship to obtain a laundry license.

ASIAN-AMERICAN RESPONSE TO THE DEPRESSION

Asian-American communities responded to these difficult times in a variety of ways. Like many Mexican Americans, some Asian immigrants simply decided to return to their homelands; some returned with the hope of finding better prospects, and others returned as a temporary strategy, at least until the situation improved in the United States. A small number of Asian immigrants and their children relocated to Central and South America. The vast majority of Asian Americans, however, looked to ethnic institutions and organizations to survive the Depression. Long before the 1930s, mutual aid societies, welfare agencies, and business organizations provided resources and services, such as relief, job placement services, and legal counsel. Such organizations were generally located in ethnic enclaves in large cities-the most notable being in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle-where, due in part to racism in the housing and employment markets, the highest concentration of Asian Americans resided. In addition, there were informal community networks through which families and friends could mutually assist one another in times of emergency. These institutions and networks worked to shelter Asian-American communities from the most debilitating effects of the Depression. In San Francisco's Chinatown, for example, the expanding tourist industry (which was facilitated by the repeal of prohibition laws in 1933), together with New Deal federal assistance, helped dramatically reduce Chinese unemployment in the city by the late 1930s. Growing numbers of Chinese men and women began finding jobs in newly renovated restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. Similarly, in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, Japanese merchants and community leaders organized the "buy in Lil' Tokio" campaign, through which they hoped to revive slumping Japanese-American businesses by appealing to the community's sense of ethnic loyalty.

However, the depth of the Depression crisis severely tested the limits of ethnic institutions and networks, leaving them, in many instances, unable to adequately address the unprecedented levels of need to be found in their respective communities. As a result, Asian Americans, many for the first time, turned to the federal government for assistance. Government reports indicate that the rate at which Asian Americans participated in public assistance varied widely from city to city. For example, San Francisco's Chinatown had the highest percentage of Chinese receiving relief benefits, nearly approaching the national average. On the other hand, in Chicago and New York, only 2 to 5 percent of the Chinese population was on relief. In general, Asian Americans were less likely to seek relief assistance for a number of reasons. First, as frequent victims of state powers in the past, Asian Americans understandably feared government authorities. Moreover, discriminatory federal policies excluded them from certain government programs and benefits. One clear example of this was the statutory requirement that an individual must be an American citizen to be eligible for a job through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Consequently, Asian Americans, many of whom by law were ineligible for citizenship, composed a disproportionately small percentage of people on WPA employment rolls. Based on the calculations of one historian, among the three largest Asian-American groups in California in 1940, less than 14 percent of their unemployed had jobs with the WPA as compared to more than 60 percent of unemployed black Americans. In addition to all of this, many Asian Americans were simply unaware that they were entitled to relief assistance, which also helps to explain their lower participation rates.

Despite these shortcomings, the federal government did make positive contributions to Asian-American communities during the Depression, and in doing so, may have helped to bring about a change in these groups' attitudes and perceptions of the state. In San Francisco's Chinatown, for example, New Deal legislation improved housing conditions, established public health clinics, and expanded educational and job-training programs, in addition to traditional public relief allowances. Furthermore, many of these federal programs provided professional opportunities for Asian-American women in the fields of education and social work in a time when few professional occupations were considered suitable for women.

The growing emergence of women professionals was part of a larger trend in which Asian-American women were gradually to become more visible in the workplace and in the public more generally. As a result of the Depression, many Asian-American women were forced to find employment outside of the home, mainly in low-wage, service-oriented industries. For some, this development only created additional work-wage labor during the day and household chores in the evening. Asian-American women, like many women across the country, had to work increasingly hard to keep the family together in these trying times. Yet, for other women, some of whom became household breadwinners, the Depression presented opportunities to challenge traditional gender roles. Indeed, some Asian-American women, albeit a limited number, actively participated in public affairs such as local politics, union organizing, and community reform.

As all this suggests, Asian Americans were active participants in the unfolding drama that was the Great Depression. Certain everyday scenarios-Japanese-American families applying and receiving federal aid, Chinese-American women walking to the garment factory to begin their workday, and Filipino-American workers organizing in California's strawberry fields-reflected important social and cultural changes taking place within Asian-American communities at this time. Yet these developments, prompted by the Great Depression, were only a prelude to even larger changes and struggles that lay ahead for Asian Americans. Nevertheless, the crisis of the 1930s prepared them for a future that included World War II, wartime internment, and the postwar struggle for equality.

See Also: ASIA, GREAT DEPRESSION IN; MIGRATORY WORKERS; RACE AND ETHNIC RELATIONS.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850. 1988.

Friday, Chris. Organizing Asian American Labor: The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry, 1870-1942. 1994.

Fugita-Rony, Dorothy B. American Workers, Colonial Power: Philippine Seattle and the TransPacific West, 1919-1941. 2003.

Haney-Lopez, Ian. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. 1996.

Hsu, Madeline Yuan-yin. Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and South China, 1882-1943. 2000.

Ichioka, Yugi. The Issei: The World of First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924. 1988.

Kurashige, Ron. Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934-1990. 2002.

Kwong, Peter. Chinatown, New York: Labor and Politics, 1930-1950, rev. edition. 2001.

Lee, Mary Paik. Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America. 1990.

Matsumoto, Valerie J. Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American Community in California, 1919-1982. 1993.

McKeown, Adam. Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900-1936. 2001.

Saxton, Alexander. The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California, rev. edition. 1995.

Sayler, Lucy E. Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law. 1995.

Shah, Nayan. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown. 2001.

Yoo, David K. Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924-49. 2000.

Yu, Renqui. To Save China, To Save Ourselves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York. 1992.

Yung, Judy. Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. 1995.

Kornel S. Chang

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
impact of the great depression onthe great depression had important political

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
and cultural implications for "asian-american" communities. in the united states

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
the ethnic label asian american encompasses groups of people with diverse geographical

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
and ancestral roots in a number of different countries.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asian Americans, Impact of the Great Depression on

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ASIAN AMERICANS, IMPACT OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION ONThe Great Depression had important political, economic, and cultural implications for "Asian-American" communities. In the United States, the ethnic label Asian American encompasses groups of people with diverse geographical, cultural, and historical backgrounds, and ancestral roots in a number of different countries.

# data[].attributes.body
Were people with disabilities allowed to be married during the great depression?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Roosevelt's Polio Wasn't A Secret: He Used It To His 'Advantage'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In The Man He Became , historian James Tobin says, despite misimpressions to the contrary, Americans of Franklin Roosevelt's day were well-aware of his disability - it was an important part of the personal narrative that helped him win the presidency.

# data[].attributes.body
If you were black and disabled, were you allowed in the same institution as white people who were disabled?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Lasting from 1929 to 1939, the Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the industrialized world. While no group escaped the economic devastation of the Great Depression, few suffered more than African Americans. Said to be "last hired, first fired," African Americans were the first to see hours and jobs cut, and they experienced the highest unemployment rate during the 1930s. Since they were already relegated to lower-paying professions, African Americans had less of a financial cushion to fall back on when the economy collapsed.

The Great Depression impacted African Americans for decades to come. It spurred the rise of African-American activism, which laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The popularity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal program also saw African Americans switch their political allegiances to become a core part of the Democratic Party's voting bloc.

African-American unemployment rates doubled or tripled those of whites.

Prior to the Great Depression, African Americans worked primarily in unskilled jobs. After the stock market crash of 1929, those entry-level, low-paying jobs either disappeared or were filled by whites in need of employment. According to the Library of Congress, the African-American unemployment rate in 1932 climbed to approximately 50 percent.

As historian Cheryl Lynn Greenberg writes in To Ask for an Equal Chance: African Americans in the Great Depression, black unemployment rates in the South were double or even triple that of the white population. In Atlanta, nearly 70 percent of black workers were jobless in 1934. In cities across the North, approximately 25 percent of white workers were unemployed in 1932, while the jobless rates among African Americans topped 50 percent in Chicago and Pittsburgh and 60 percent in Philadelphia and Detroit.

During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of African-American sharecroppers who fell into debt joined the Great Migration from the rural South to the urban North. According to Greenberg, by 1940 1.75 million African Americans had moved from the South to cities in the North and West.

African Americans formed grassroots organizations, uniting for economic and political progress.

From the Great Depression's earliest days, African Americans mobilized to protest for greater economic, social and political rights. In 1929, Chicago Whip editor Joseph Bibb organized boycotts of city department stores that refused to hire African Americans. The grassroots protests against racially discriminatory hiring practices worked, resulting in the employment of 2,000 African Americans. The "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" boycotts and pickets soon spread to other cities across the North.

The decade of the 1930s saw the growth of African American activism that presaged the Civil Rights Movement. In 1935, Mary McLeod Bethune organized the National Council of Negro Women, and the following year saw the first meeting of the National Negro Congress, an umbrella movement of diverse African-American organizations that fought for anti-lynching legislation, the elimination of the poll tax and the eligibility of agricultural and domestic workers for Social Security. Young African Americans in 1937 formed the Southern Negro Youth Congress registered voters and organized boycotts.

The African-American vote helped elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the first time switching to the Democratic Party.

For decades prior to the Great Depression, African Americans had traditionally voted for the Republican Party, which was still seen as the party of emancipation from the days of Abraham Lincoln. The presidential election of 1932, however, saw a sea-change as African Americans began to switch their political allegiance to the Democratic Party. "My friends, go turn Lincoln's picture to the wall," Pittsburgh Courier editor Robert Vann implored African Americans in 1932. "The debt has been paid in full."

In an oral interview, historian John Hope Franklin said African Americans were drawn to Franklin D. Roosevelt after years of inactivity under Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. "He had a purpose, had a message, had a program. And it seemed that was better than the inertia that preceded things," he said.

Franklin also said African Americans could identify with Roosevelt's personal struggles. "Roosevelt inspired large numbers of blacks, I think in part because he was handicapped himself. And although was not publicized as much as it might have been, blacks knew that he was a victim of polio, that he couldn't walk, and that he had overcome these handicaps."

Since Roosevelt needed the support of Southern Democrats to pass his New Deal agenda, he did not advocate for the passage of federal anti-lynching law or embrace efforts to ban the poll tax that prevented many African Americans from voting. Yet, the economic support received by African Americans under the New Deal solidified their newfound loyalty to the Democratic Party. By 1936, more than 70 percent of African Americans voted for Roosevelt, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

What was the 'Black Cabinet' during Roosevelt's presidency?

Roosevelt appointed far more African Americans to positions within his administration than his predecessors, and he was the first president to appoint an African American as a federal judge. According to the Roosevelt Institute, FDR tripled the number of African Americans working in the federal government.

New Deal officials appointed African Americans as special advisors. Although none actually filled Cabinet-level positions, these public policy advisors were referred to as the "Black Cabinet" and the "Black Brain Trust." Perhaps the best-known member of the Black Cabinet was its only woman, Bethune, a close friend of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and founder of Bethune-Cookman University.

New Deal programs, however, still discriminated against African Americans.

Although New Deal programs provided African Americans with badly needed economic assistance, they were administered at a state level where racial segregation was still widespread, and systemically, enforced. The New Deal did little to challenge existing racial discrimination and Jim Crow laws prevalent during the 1930s.

The Civilian Conservation Corps established racially segregated camps, while the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages in African-American neighborhoods. The Agricultural Adjustment Association gave white landowners money for keeping their fields fallow, but they were not required to pass any money to African-American sharecroppers and tenant farmers who farmed the land and were not eligible for Social Security benefits.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Last Hired, First Fired: How the Great Depression Affected African Americans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lasting from 1929 to 1939, the Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the industrialized world. While no group escaped the economic devastation of the Great Depression, few suffered more than African Americans. Said to be "last hired, first fired," African Americans were the first to see hours and jobs cut, and they experienced the highest unemployment rate during the 1930s.

# data[].attributes.body
How were Puerto Rican people affected during The Great Depression?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Puerto Rican / Cuban - Migrating to a New Land - Immigration...- Classroom Presentation | Teacher Resources - Library of Congress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The story of the Puerto Rican people is unique in the history of U.S. immigration, just as Puerto Rico occupies a distinctive-and sometimes confusing-position in the nation's civic fabric. Puerto Rico has been a possession of the U.S. for more than a century, but it has never been a state.