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How did the great depression effect daily life in the 1930's

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How did the great depression effect daily life in the 1930's

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From 1929-1939 everyone had there yearly salary cut by as much as 40%. Most families barely had enough money to live at that point they even had to reuse old clothes patching them up if they had holes.

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This was a calming point because it told the people not to panic and to stay calm because it will get better.

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Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York-now a national historic site-he attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School. On St. Patrick's Day, 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt.

Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. He won election to the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.

In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit-he was stricken with poliomyelitis. Demonstrating indomitable courage, he fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the Happy Warrior." In 1928 Roosevelt became Governor of New York.

He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first "hundred days," he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.

In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy.

Roosevelt had pledged the United States to the "good neighbor" policy, transforming the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral American manifesto into arrangements for mutual action against aggressors. He also sought through neutrality legislation to keep the United States out of the war in Europe, yet at the same time to strengthen nations threatened or attacked. When France fell and England came under siege in 1940, he began to send Great Britain all possible aid short of actual military involvement.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt directed organization of the Nation's manpower and resources for global war.

Feeling that the future peace of the world would depend upon relations between the United States and Russia, he devoted much thought to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped, international difficulties could be settled.

As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt's health deteriorated, and on April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from "The Presidents of the United States of America," by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.
For more information about President Roosevelt, please visit Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum

Learn more about Franklin D. Roosevelt's spouse, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

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Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

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The Scottsboro trials was a trial that started in 1931 when 9 young black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train.

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The Scottsboro Trials were among the most infamous episodes of legal injustice in the Jim Crow South. The events that culminated in the trials began in the early spring of 1931, when nine young black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train. The cases were tried and appealed in Alabama and twice argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite evidence that exonerated the accused and even a retraction by one of the accusers, the state pursued the case and all-white juries delivered guilty verdicts that initially carried the death penalty. Several of the accused were sentenced to prison terms and all endured long stays in prison as the case made its way through the legal system. The case later served as one of the inspirations for Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

Scottsboro Trial Defendants

The saga began on March 25, 1931, when a fight broke out between groups of young black and white passengers riding a freight train through Jackson County. The white boys were forced from the train and wired ahead to the next stop on the line to have the black youths apprehended. When the train stopped just outside the town of Paint Rock, local police and a mob apprehended nine African Americans ranging in age from 13 to 20. Only four of the young men knew each other and were traveling together. The police also questioned Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, two white women who also were hitching a ride on the train looking for work. In the hope of avoiding vagrancy and morality charges, the women falsely accused the nine young black men-Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Haywood Patterson, Ozzie Powell, Willie Roberson, Charlie Weems, Eugene Williams, and brothers Andy and Roy Wright-of rape. The accused were arrested and transported to Scottsboro, the Jackson County seat, to await trial.

Over the next seven years, as the case made its way through the state and federal judicial system, "Scottsboro" became an international cause célèbre that dramatically encapsulated the American South's troubled post- Reconstruction history of legal and extralegal racial violence, the social and political upheaval of the - Great Depression, and the lingering cultural divide between North and South. In the process, the Scottsboro case in many ways inaugurated the modern civil rights movement.

The first set of trials took place in four groups over the course of just four days in early April 1931. Thousands of angry whites gathered outside the courthouse to monitor the proceedings and at the request of the local sheriff, Gov. Benjamin Meek Miller sent the Alabama National Guard to Scottsboro to prevent a lynching. Before an all-white jury and a hostile judge, the defendants' court-appointed attorney put up a meager defense, repeatedly declining to cross-examine witnesses and failing to scrutinize the prosecution's key pieces of evidence. Each of the four juries returned guilty verdicts in a matter of hours. Eight defendants were sentenced to death, but the jury split over whether to sentence the youngest defendant, 13-year-old Roy Wright, to death or life imprisonment, and a mistrial was declared. Wright remained in prison, awaiting the verdicts in the trials of his co-defendants, until 1937. The judge set the executions for July 10, the earliest possible date the law would allow.

The case might have ended there were it not for the intervention of the International Labor Defense (ILD), a radical legal-action organization sponsored by the Communist Party USA. The ILD recognized the case's potential to become a lightning rod for a national struggle against racism, as well as a powerful propaganda vehicle and recruitment tool for the Communist

Ruby Bates

Party. ILD lawyers quickly won the trust of the defendants and their parents, as well as a stay of execution until the case could be reviewed by the Alabama Supreme Court. This action was aided by a flood of letters from non-Communists, black and white, from across the country who learned of the case through ILD promotional efforts. The participation of the Communist-affiliated group significantly intensified the already charged atmosphere in Alabama and around the nation. Meanwhile, the nation's leading African American civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), reacted slowly to the case because of initial doubts about the defendants' innocence. Bitter rivals, the ILD and NAACP would battle for control of both the legal defense and the hearts and minds of African Americans for the duration of the case. For their part, Alabama officials defended the verdicts and wanted no interference by either outside organization in what they considered a local affair.

The ILD pursued the case through the conventional legal channels of state and federal courts of appeal. However, it did not believe that justice could be secured through litigation alone. As a result, the group mounted a relentless media campaign, sponsoring rallies, parades, and nationwide speaking tours designed to raise money for the defense and to expose the gross inequities in the Alabama justice system to the court of public opinion. ILD publicity efforts transformed the case from a local matter into an international spectacle. "Scottsboro" united radicals, liberals, and moderates, as well as blacks and whites, in a common-if often contentious-alliance and inspired a host of songs, dramas, artwork, and poetry from left-wing artists around the world.

In the courtroom, the ILD appealed the case before the Alabama Supreme Court, which upheld the convictions. The group then turned to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in November 1932 overrode the Alabama decisions and granted new trials to all of the defendants. In the process, Powell v. Alabama, as the Supreme Court's ruling was labeled, established a key precedent for enforcing African Americans' right to adequate counsel under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Scottsboro Trial

At the state and circuit court levels however, the legal campaign to free the Scottsboro defendants met with repeated frustration and disappointment despite overwhelming evidence of the defendants' innocence. The most persuasive evidence came from one of the accusers herself, Ruby Bates. In the break between the first set of trials and lead defendant Haywood Patterson's second trial, which began in March 1933, Bates recanted her story and agreed to testify for the defense, admitting that Price concocted the story to avoid charges for vagrancy and crossing state lines for "immoral purposes" in violation of the Mann Act. She later marched in protests and spoke at rallies for the accused. In addition, Samuel Liebowitz, the ILD's non-Communist lead attorney, found numerous inconsistencies in Price's testimony and highlighted the medical examinations of Price and Bates, which refuted the pair's charge of rape. But once more the jury returned a guilty verdict and recommended the death penalty. Then, in an act of incredible courage, Judge James Horton overrode the jury's verdict. Horton had carefully reviewed the evidence and met privately with one of the medical examiners, who told him he thought the girls were lying. Lawyers for the state, however, continued to pursue the case, this time under a judge sympathetic to the prosecution. In December 1933, Haywood Patterson and Clarence Norris were convicted of rape and sentenced to death for a third time by another all-white jury. Five other defendants remained in prison, awaiting new trials, while the remaining two were removed to juvenile court and later convicted. In June 1934, the Alabama Supreme Court once again upheld the convictions of Patterson and Norris.

Scottsboro Defendants

Following this latest round of guilty verdicts, ILD attorneys attempted to bribe Victoria Price in a foolish act of desperation. When the bribe came to light, Liebowitz, whose relationship with the ILD was always tenuous, severed ties with the group and established his own rival defense organization, the American Scottsboro Committee (ASC). The attempted bribe and the departure of Liebowitz marked the beginning of the end for the ILD as the leader of the Scottsboro legal defense. Eventually, the ILD would become a junior partner in a third organization, a liberal coalition called the Scottsboro Defense Committee (SDC).

In January of 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the third convictions of Patterson and Norris. Three months later, the court once again overturned the guilty verdicts and ordered new trials, ruling in Patterson v. Alabama and Norris v. Alabama that the defendants were denied a fair trial because African Americans had been systematically excluded from Jackson County jury rolls. The landmark decision paved the way for the integration of juries across the nation.

Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center

Patterson was convicted of rape for a fourth time in January 1936, but this time his sentence was set at 75 years in prison. Following the verdict, another of the defendants, Ozzie Powell, was shot in the head after attacking a deputy sheriff in an apparent escape attempt. After Patterson's conviction was upheld in the Alabama Supreme Court, the prosecution and the Scottsboro Defense Committee agreed to a strange compromise in an effort to end the long ordeal. Clarence Norris was convicted of rape and sentenced to death; Norris' sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment by Alabama governor Bibb Graves. Andy Wright and Charlie Weems also were convicted of rape and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Rape charges were dropped against Powell, but he was convicted of assaulting the deputy sheriff and sentenced to 20 years. Meanwhile, all charges against the other four defendants-Roy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, and Eugene Williams-were dropped. Thus, on the basis of the same body of evidence, four defendants were freed and four convicted. In 1938, a final attempt to win the remaining prisoners' freedom failed when both the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Graves denied pardon applications. Charlie Weems was paroled in 1943; Clarence Norris and Andy Wright were paroled a year later but both were sent back to prison shortly thereafter for violating the terms of their probation; Ozzie Powell was paroled in 1946; Haywood Patterson escaped from prison in 1948. Norris, the last surviving defendant, was finally pardoned in 1976. On April 19, 2013, Alabama governor Robert Bentley signed historic legislation exonerating the nine men of all guilt in the case at the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center in Scottsboro. Clarence Norris Jr. was in attendance. On November 21, 2013, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to pardon Haywood Patterson, Charlie Weems, and Andy Wright, the last of the accused to still have convictions in their records.

In human terms, the Scottsboro trials were an unmitigated tragedy. The defendants' lives were shattered by the long legal battle and the horrific conditions in the Alabama prison system. Most of the so-called Scottsboro Boys struggled to adapt to life as free men. In legal terms, the case was likewise a gross miscarriage of justice, despite the important precedents established by the U.S. Supreme Court. As a political and social movement and a cultural symbol, however, the Scottsboro case played an immeasurable part in undermining the structures of white supremacy in Alabama, the South, and throughout the nation.
Additional Resources
Acker, James R. Scottsboro and Its Legacy: The Cases that Challenged American Legal and Social Justice. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2008

Anker, Daniel, et al. "Scottsboro: An American Tragedy." DVD. The American Experience. Alexandria, Va.: PBS Home Video, 2005.

Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984.

Goodman, James. Stories of Scottsboro. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

Kelley, Robin D.G. "Scottsboro Case," in Buhle, Mari Jo, Paul Buhle, Dan Georgakas, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Left. New York: Garland Publishing, 1990.

Norris, Clarence, and Sybil D. Washington. The Last of the Scottsboro Boys. New York: Putnam, 1978.

Patterson, Haywood, and Earl Conrad. Scottsboro Boy. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1950.

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The Scottsboro Trials were among the most infamous episodes of legal injustice in the Jim Crow South. The events that culminated in the trials began in the early spring of 1931, when nine young black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train.

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where was harper lee from and how did it affect her writing?

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where was harper lee from and how did it affect her writing?

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Harper lee was from Monroeville, Alabama and it affected her writing because she grew up around controversy.

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HARPER LEE'S VIEW OF THE 1930'S AS A CHILD Harper Lee is well known for her great contributions towards modern society through her astounding book, To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel is read world-wide, in high schools and colleges because of its in-depth look at the social classes in the south during the 1930's. The book was influenced by society, in particular the social order of the south during her childhood. Lee grew up during this time of controversy which is why she writes so passionately about the topic. Lee wrote the novel to make a point about race while basing much of the plot off a trial from her young age, her own father, and the society she grew up in. Harper Lee lived in the small southern town, of Monroeville, in Alabama. ...show more content...
Scout Finch, who is the narrator, has a brother named Jem, and a father names Atticus. Atticus is widowed; however the family is still fairly well off because of his job as a prominent lawyer in the town. Because the story takes place in the south during the 30s, discrimination of Blacks is a major theme of the novel. Because it is during the depression, everyone is poor, which leads to the blacks population to receive extraordinary low wages; which also puts lots of pressure on their community. Scout Finch is the narrator of the book; she is very mature in her opinions and actions. She is a tomboy, which leads her to be very competitive and to get in fights with her male classmates. However, Scout is a very good kid; she always has the best intentions for her actions. Scout's primary role model is her father, Atticus who's main concerns while raising her was for her to become an intelligent, conscientious, individual while also being innocent to the social pressures of her town as a child. Harper Lee's childhood was troubled with many of society's racial issues especially a trial in Alabama referred to as the Scottsboro trial of 1931. Lee was only five years old when the trial occurred but she was deeply affected by the trial. Amasa Lee was a lawyer and so he became very interested in the trial like many other people in the community, which lead to Lee being interested. The trial in the book, Tom Robinson's rape case, is a reflection of

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How Harper Lee's life and childhood influenced her writing... | Bartleby

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HARPER LEE'S VIEW OF THE 1930'S AS A CHILD Harper Lee is well known for her great contributions towards modern society through her astounding book, To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel is read world-wide, in high schools and colleges because of its in-depth look at the social classes in the south during the 1930's.

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What was the ¨new deal¨ that Franklin Delano introduced?

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What was the ¨new deal¨ that Franklin Delano introduced?

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He acted swiftly to the great depression and the government was doing projects and experimenting on permanent changes.

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New Deal - Programs, Social Security & FDR

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The New Deal was a series of programs and projects instituted during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that aimed to restore prosperity to Americans. A Second New Deal was put in place shortly thereafter as a way to continue the country’s economic recovery.

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Give 2 examples of Jim Crow Laws and consequences if broken.

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Give 2 examples of Jim Crow Laws and consequences if broken.

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Two examples of Jim Crow laws was that African Americans couldn't have jobs and they were denied the right to vote. If those laws were broken people faced being arrested, with fines and jail time. As well as death and violence.

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Black Codes

The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.

Black codes were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.

The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former Confederate soldiers working as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensuring they were subject to Black codes.

These codes worked in conjunction with labor camps for the incarcerated, where prisoners were treated as enslaved people. Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equals, and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence.

Ku Klux Klan

During the Reconstruction era, local governments, as well as the national Democratic Party and President Andrew Johnson, thwarted efforts to help Black Americans move forward.

Violence was on the rise, making danger a regular aspect of African American life. Black schools were vandalized and destroyed, and bands of violent white people attacked, tortured and lynched Black citizens in the night. Families were attacked and forced off their land all across the South.

The most ruthless organization of the Jim Crow era, the Ku Klux Klan, was born in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a private club for Confederate veterans.

The KKK grew into a secret society terrorizing Black communities and seeping through white Southern culture, with members at the highest levels of government and in the lowest echelons of criminal back alleys.

Jim Crow Laws Expand

At the start of the 1880s, big cities in the South were not wholly beholden to Jim Crow laws and Black Americans found more freedom in them.

This led to substantial Black populations moving to the cities and, as the decade progressed, white city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans.

Jim Crow laws soon spread around the country with even more force than previously. Public parks were forbidden for African Americans to enter, and theaters and restaurants were segregated.

Segregated waiting rooms in bus and train stations were required, as well as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows.

Laws forbade African Americans from living in white neighborhoods. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped.

Some states required separate textbooks for Black and white students. New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race. In Atlanta, African Americans in court were given a different Bible from white people to swear on. Marriage and cohabitation between white and Black people was strictly forbidden in most Southern states.

It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning African Americans that they were not welcome there.

Ida B. Wells

As oppressive as the Jim Crow era was, it was also a time when many African Americans around the country stepped forward into leadership roles to vigorously oppose the laws.

Memphis teacher Ida B. Wells became a prominent activist against Jim Crow laws after refusing to leave a first-class train car designated for white people only. A conductor forcibly removed her and she successfully sued the railroad, though that decision was later reversed by a higher court.

Angry at the injustice, Wells devoted herself to fighting Jim Crow laws. Her vehicle for dissent was newspaper writing: In 1889 she became co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and used her position to take on school segregation and sexual harassment.

Wells traveled throughout the South to publicize her work and advocated for the arming of Black citizens. Wells also investigated lynchings and wrote about her findings.

A mob destroyed her newspaper and threatened her with death, forcing her to move to the North, where she continued her efforts against Jim Crow laws and lynching.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a North Carolina-born, Massachusetts-raised Black woman who returned to her birthplace at the age of 17, in 1901, to work as a teacher for the American Missionary Association.

After funding was withdrawn for that school, Brown began fundraising to start her own school, named the Palmer Memorial Institute.

Brown became the first Black woman to create a Black school in North Carolina and through her education work became a fierce and vocal opponent of Jim Crow laws.

Isaiah Montgomery

Not everyone battled for equal rights within white society-some chose a separatist approach.

Convinced by Jim Crow laws that Black and white people could not live peaceably together, formerly enslaved Isaiah Montgomery created the African American-only town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in 1887.

Montgomery recruited other former enslaved people to settle in the wilderness with him, clearing the land and forging a settlement that included several schools, an Andrew Carnegie-funded library, a hospital, three cotton gins, a bank and a sawmill. Mound Bayou still exists today, and is still almost 100 percent Black.

Jim Crow Laws in the 20th Century

As the 20th century progressed, Jim Crow laws flourished within an oppressive society marked by violence.

Following World War I, the NAACP noted that lynchings had become so prevalent that it sent investigator Walter White to the South. White had lighter skin and could infiltrate white hate groups.

As lynchings increased, so did race riots, with at least 25 across the United States over several months in 1919, a period sometimes referred to as " Red Summer." In retaliation, white authorities charged Black communities with conspiring to conquer white America.

With Jim Crow dominating the landscape, education increasingly under attack and few opportunities for Black college graduates, the Great Migration of the 1920s saw a significant migration of educated Black people out of the South, spurred on by publications like The Chicago Defender, which encouraged Black Americans to move north.

Read by millions of Southern Black people, white people attempted to ban the newspaper and threatened violence against any caught reading or distributing it.

The poverty of the Great Depression only deepened resentment, with a rise in lynchings, and after World War II, even Black veterans returning home met with segregation and violence.

Jim Crow in the North

The North was not immune to Jim Crow-like laws. Some states required Black people to own property before they could vote, schools and neighborhoods were segregated, and businesses displayed "Whites Only" signs.

In Ohio, segregationist Allen Granbery Thurman ran for governor in 1867 promising to bar Black citizens from voting. After he narrowly lost that political race, Thurman was appointed to the U.S. Senate, where he fought to dissolve Reconstruction-era reforms benefiting African Americans.

After World War II, suburban developments in the North and South were created with legal covenants that did not allow Black families, and Black people often found it difficult or impossible to obtain mortgages for homes in certain "red-lined" neighborhoods.

When Did Jim Crow Laws End?

The post-World War II era saw an increase in civil rights activities in the African American community, with a focus on ensuring that Black citizens were able to vote. This ushered in the civil rights movement, resulting in the removal of Jim Crow laws.

In 1948 President Harry Truman ordered integration in the military, and in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional, bringing to an end the era of "separate-but-equal" education.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended the segregation that had been institutionalized by Jim Crow laws.

And in 1965, the Voting Rights Act halted efforts to keep minorities from voting. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended discrimination in renting and selling homes, followed.

Jim Crow laws were technically off the books, though that has not always guaranteed full integration or adherence to anti-racism laws throughout the United States. Several recent pieces of legislation-such as House Bill 1020 in Mississippi, which aimed to disenfranchise the majority-Black capital city of Jackson by creating a new judicial district overseen by white leaders-are often compared to Jim Crow laws.

Sources

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Richard Wormser.
Segregated America. Smithsonian Institute.
Jim Crow Laws. National Park Service.
"Exploiting Black Labor After the Abolition of Slavery." The Conversation.
"Hundreds of black Americans were killed during 'Red Summer.' A century later, still ignored." Associated Press/USA Today.
"Here's What's Become Of A Historic All-Black Town In The Mississippi Delta." NPR.

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Jim Crow Laws: Definition, Facts & Timeline | HISTORY

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Jim Crow laws were state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Enacted after the Civil War, the laws denied equal opportunity to Black citizens.

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What were 3 expectations of southern women in the 1930’s?

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What were 3 expectations of southern women in the 1930’s?

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-The women of the house were expected to keep the their family's together and once they married they stopped working and only continued doing house chores.
-They where expected to keep a lady like behavior at all times.
-The only time women could work was if they had a family to support and they where widows, but they also had to make sure they keep up with the responsibilities they had in their homes.

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The Roles of Southern Women in the 1930'S

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How did Franklin Delano Roosevelt expand the rights and freedoms of the American people during his presidency?

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How did Franklin Delano Roosevelt expand the rights and freedoms of the American people during his presidency?

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how he gave us the four freedoms of speech

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FDR and the Four Freedoms Speech - FDR Presidential Library & Museum

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The famous Four Freedoms paragraphs did not appear in the speech until the fourth draft. One night as Hopkins, Rosenman, and Sherwood met with the President in his White House study, FDR announced that he had an idea for a peroration (the closing section of a speech).

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Give‌ ‌3‌ ‌facts‌ ‌about‌ ‌Harper‌ ‌Lee’s‌ ‌background.‌

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Give‌ ‌3‌ ‌facts‌ ‌about‌ ‌Harper‌ ‌Lee’s‌ ‌background.‌

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-Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. The youngest of four children, she grew up as a tomboy in a small town.

-She couldn't have cared less about fashion, makeup or dating. Instead, she focused on her studies and writing. Lee was a member of the literary honor society and the glee club.

-Pursuing her interest in writing, Lee contributed to the school's newspaper and its humor magazine, the Rammer Jammer, eventually becoming the publication's editor.

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When was Harper Lee considered a successful writer?

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When was Harper Lee considered a successful writer?

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1960 with her novel To Kill a Mockingbird

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The Bittersweet Story Behind Harper Lee's Success

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Author Harper Lee made a fortune off of the 1960 novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'

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What were "Hoovervilles" and what was life like for people living in them?

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What were "Hoovervilles" and what was life like for people living in them?

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a hooverville was little towns on the outskirts of a bigger town that consisted of poor low class people that would be starving and wouldnt have nothing to live off of. these towns were very dirty and disgusting, not many people would go near them. this took place around the 1930s as the great depression was roaring.

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The Great Depression Sets In

The Great Depression was the most severe and enduring economic collapse of the 20th century, and included abrupt declines in the supply and demand of goods and services along with a meteoric rise in unemployment. 1933 is generally regarded as the worst year of the Depression: One-quarter of America's workers-more than 15 million people-were out of work.

Did you know? As America's housing and economic crisis worsened through 2009, homelessness was on the rise. Encampments and shantytowns often referred to as tent cities-with similarities to Hoovervilles-began appearing in parts of California, Arizona, Tennessee, Florida, Washington and other states.

Multiple factors led to the Great Depression, including the U.S. stock market crash in October 1929 and the widespread failure of the American banking system, both of which helped destroy confidence in the nation's economy.

Additionally, although the 1920s, also known as the Roaring Twenties, had been a decade of prosperity, income levels varied widely and numerous Americans lived beyond their means. Credit was extended to many so that they could enjoy the new inventions of the day, such as washing machines, refrigerators and automobiles.

As the optimism of the 1920s gave way to fear and desperation, Americans looked to the federal government for relief. However, the country's 31st president, Republican Herbert Hoover, who took office in March 1929, believed that self-reliance and self-help, not government intervention, were the best means to meet citizens' needs.

In his estimation, prosperity would return if people would simply help one another. And although private philanthropy increased during the early 1930s, the amounts given were not enough to make a significant impact. Many Americans in need believed the resolution to their problems lay in government assistance, but Hoover resisted such a response throughout his presidency.

Hoovervilles Appear Nationwide

As the Depression worsened and millions of families lost their jobs and depleted their savings, they also lost their homes. Desperate for shelter, homeless citizens built shantytowns in and around cities across the nation. These camps came to be called Hoovervilles, after the president. Democratic National Committee publicity director and longtime newspaper reporter Charles Michelson is credited with coining the term, which first appeared in print in 1930.

Hooverville shanties were constructed of cardboard, tar paper, glass, lumber, tin and whatever other materials people could salvage. Unemployed masons used cast-off stone and bricks and in some cases built structures that stood 20 feet high.

Most shanties, however, were distinctly less ambitious: Cardboard-box homes did not last long, and most dwellings were in a constant state of being rebuilt. Some homes were not buildings at all, but deep holes dug in the ground with makeshift roofs laid over them to keep out inclement weather. Some of the homeless found shelter inside empty conduits and water mains.

Life in a Hooverville

No two Hoovervilles were quite alike, and the camps varied in population and size. Some were as small as a few hundred people while others, in bigger metropolitan areas such as Washington, D.C. and New York City, boasted thousands of inhabitants. St. Louis, Missouri, and Seattle, Washington, were home to two of the country's largest and longest-standing Hoovervilles.

Whenever possible, Hoovervilles were built near rivers for the convenience of a water source. For example, in New York City, encampments sprang up along the Hudson and East rivers. Some Hoovervilles were dotted with vegetable gardens, and some individual shacks contained furniture a family had managed to carry away upon eviction from their former home.

However, Hoovervilles were typically grim and unsanitary. They posed health risks to their inhabitants as well as to those living nearby, but there was little that local governments or health agencies could do. Hooverville residents had nowhere else to go, and public sympathy, for the most part, was with them.

Even when Hoovervilles were raided by order of parks departments or other authorities, the men who carried out the raids often expressed regret and guilt for their actions. More often than not, Hoovervilles were tolerated.

Most Hoovervilles operated in an informal, unorganized way, but the bigger ones would sometimes put forward spokespersons to serve as a liaison between the camp and the larger community. St. Louis' Hooverville, built in 1930, had its own unofficial mayor, churches and social institutions. This Hooverville thrived because it was funded by private donations. It maintained itself as a free-standing community until 1936, when it was razed.

Although a common factor among Hooverville residents was unemployment, inhabitants took any work that became available, often laboring at such backbreaking, sporadic jobs as fruit picking or packing. Writer John Steinbeck featured a family who lived in a California Hooverville and sought farm work in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel " The Grapes of Wrath," published in 1939.

Hoover Mocked

In addition to the term "Hooverville," President Hoover's name was used derisively in other ways during the Great Depression. For example, newspapers used to shield the homeless from the cold were called "Hoover blankets," while empty pants pockets pulled inside out-demonstrating no coins in one's pockets-were "Hoover flags."

When soles wore out of shoes, the cardboard used to replace them was dubbed "Hoover leather," and cars pulled by horses because gas was an unaffordable luxury were called "Hoover wagons."

Bonus Army

Tensions between destitute citizens and the Hoover administration climaxed in the spring of 1932 when thousands of World War I veterans and their families and friends set up a Hooverville on the banks of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C.

In June, many of the so-called Bonus Army marched to the Capitol to request early payment of the government bonuses they had been promised for their military service-money that would have alleviated the financial problems of many families.

The government refused to pay, citing Depression-era budgetary restrictions. When most of the veterans refused to leave their shacks, Hoover sent in U.S. Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur to evict the Bonus Army.

MacArthur's troops set fire to the Hooverville and drove the group from the city with bayonets and tear gas. Hoover later claimed that MacArthur had used excessive force, but his words meant little to most of those affected.

Hoover Out, Roosevelt In

Hoover also received criticism for signing, in June 1930, the controversial Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which imposed a high tariff on foreign goods in an effort to prevent them from competing with U.S.-made products on the domestic market. However, some countries retaliated by raising their tariffs, and international trade was hampered. Between 1929 and 1932, the value of world trade declined by more than half.

By 1932, Hoover was so unpopular that he had no realistic hope of being re-elected, and Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York won that year's presidential election in November by a landslide.

Roosevelt's recovery program, known as the New Deal, eventually reduced unemployment, regulated banking and helped turn the ailing economy around with public works projects and other economic programs. By the early 1940s, with the economy rebounding during World War II, many Hoovervilles had fewer residents and most were torn down.

Sources

Hoovervilles and Homelessness. University of Washington: The Great Depression in Washington State.
Hoovervilles in Seattle. City of Seattle.
Americans React to the Great Depression. Library of Congress.

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Hoovervilles: Definition & Great Depression - HISTORY

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Hoovervilles, named after unpopular President Herbert Hoover, were encampments of crude dwellings for poor and homeless people during the Great Depression.

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The Great Depression was caused by a stock market crash that happened in 1929.

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National Archives, Washington, D.C. (12573155)

The Great Depression of the late 1920s and '30s remains the longest and most severe economic downturn in modern history. Lasting almost 10 years (from late 1929 until about 1939) and affecting nearly every country in the world, it was marked by steep declines in industrial production and in prices (deflation), mass unemployment, banking panics, and sharp increases in rates of poverty and homelessness. In the United States, where the effects of the depression were generally worst, between 1929 and 1933 industrial production fell nearly 47 percent, gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 30 percent, and unemployment reached more than 20 percent. By comparison, during the Great Recession of 2007-09, the second largest economic downturn in U.S. history, GDP declined by 4.3 percent, and unemployment reached slightly less than 10 percent.

There is no consensus among economists and historians regarding the exact causes of the Great Depression. However, many scholars agree that at least the following four factors played a role.

The stock market crash of 1929. During the 1920s the U.S. stock market underwent a historic expansion. As stock prices rose to unprecedented levels, investing in the stock market came to be seen as an easy way to make money, and even people of ordinary means used much of their disposable income or even mortgaged their homes to buy stock. By the end of the decade hundreds of millions of shares were being carried on margin, meaning that their purchase price was financed with loans to be repaid with profits generated from ever-increasing share prices. Once prices began their inevitable decline in October 1929, millions of overextended shareholders fell into a panic and rushed to liquidate their holdings, exacerbating the decline and engendering further panic. Between September and November, stock prices fell 33 percent. The result was a profound psychological shock and a loss of confidence in the economy among both consumers and businesses. Accordingly, consumer spending, especially on durable goods, and business investment were drastically curtailed, leading to reduced industrial output and job losses, which further reduced spending and investment.

Banking panics and monetary contraction. Between 1930 and 1932 the United States experienced four extended banking panics, during which large numbers of bank customers, fearful of their bank's solvency, simultaneously attempted to withdraw their deposits in cash. Ironically, the frequent effect of a banking panic is to bring about the very crisis that panicked customers aim to protect themselves against: even financially healthy banks can be ruined by a large panic. By 1933 one-fifth of the banks in existence in 1930 had failed, leading the new Franklin D. Roosevelt administration to declare a four-day " bank holiday" (later extended by three days), during which all of the country's banks remained closed until they could prove their solvency to government inspectors. The natural consequence of widespread bank failures was to decrease consumer spending and business investment, because there were fewer banks to lend money. There was also less money to lend, partly because people were hoarding it in the form of cash. According to some scholars, that problem was exacerbated by the Federal Reserve, which raised interest rates (further depressing lending) and deliberately reduced the money supply in the belief that doing so was necessary to maintain the gold standard (see below), by which the U.S. and many other countries had tied the value of their currencies to a fixed amount of gold. The reduced money supply in turn reduced prices, which further discouraged lending and investment (because people feared that future wages and profits would not be sufficient to cover loan payments).

The gold standard. Whatever its effects on the money supply in the United States, the gold standard unquestionably played a role in the spread of the Great Depression from the United States to other countries. As the United States experienced declining output and deflation, it tended to run a trade surplus with other countries because Americans were buying fewer imported goods, while American exports were relatively cheap. Such imbalances gave rise to significant foreign gold outflows to the United States, which in turn threatened to devalue the currencies of the countries whose gold reserves had been depleted. Accordingly, foreign central banks attempted to counteract the trade imbalance by raising their interest rates, which had the effect of reducing output and prices and increasing unemployment in their countries. The resulting international economic decline, especially in Europe, was nearly as bad as that in the United States.

Decreased international lending and tariffs. In the late 1920s, while the U.S. economy was still expanding, lending by U.S. banks to foreign countries fell, partly because of relatively high U.S. interest rates. The drop-off contributed to contractionary effects in some borrower countries, particularly Germany, Argentina, and Brazil, whose economies entered a downturn even before the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States. Meanwhile, American agricultural interests, suffering because of overproduction and increased competition from European and other agricultural producers, lobbied Congress for passage of new tariffs on agricultural imports. Congress eventually adopted broad legislation, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1930), that imposed steep tariffs (averaging 20 percent) on a wide range of agricultural and industrial products. The legislation naturally provoked retaliatory measures by several other countries, the cumulative effect of which was declining output in several countries and a reduction in global trade.

Just as there is no general agreement about the causes of the Great Depression, there is no consensus about the sources of recovery, though, again, a few factors played an obvious role. In general, countries that abandoned the gold standard or devalued their currencies or otherwise increased their money supply recovered first (Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931, and the United States effectively devalued its currency in 1933). Fiscal expansion, in the form of New Deal jobs and social welfare programs and increased defense spending during the onset of World War II, presumably also played a role by increasing consumers' income and aggregate demand, but the importance of this factor is a matter of debate among scholars.

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What brought about the worst economic downturn in modern history?