Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages and explain which you think is more
convincing as an explanation of the impact of the New Deal on African Americans.
Passage A
Before 1933 the federal government had appeared uninterested in blacks. Now New Deal programmes helped blacks by providing jobs, housing units and financial assistance and skilled occupation training for half a million black youths. As a result of federal assistance, many black sharecroppers became independent farmers. The New Deal provided jobs in the world of entertainment and culture, giving some black scholars the opportunity to increase black consciousness by getting black history into the New Deal’s state guidebooks. Black songs and oral reminiscences of slavery and hardship were recorded for posterity. Government sponsorship of culture was inevitably controversial, and federal‑funded biracial theatrical productions were criticised by a congressional committee as encouraging black and white colleagues to date.
The New Deal could not guarantee miracles. Sometimes aid did not reach the people for whom it was intended, particularly in the South where aid was distributed by whites. While it was sometimes hard for blacks to make effective protests about unfairness in the administration of the New Deal, New Dealers were often responsive to criticism and even protest, as with the 1935 Harlem riot. While the tabloids tried to blame Communist agitators, an investigatory commission blamed Harlem’s poverty and discrimination in relief given to blacks. Racist officials were transferred from Harlem and more local blacks were employed to administer relief.
New Deal agencies often discriminated against blacks, especially in the South, but blacks were getting more help and attention than ever before. Federal aid programmes helped many blacks, inspiring a dramatic change of allegiance among black voters. Roosevelt’s New Deal helped to make civil rights a political issue. Clearly the New Deal had helped improve the situation of American blacks.
Adapted from: Vivienne Sanders, Race Relations in the USA 1863–1980, published in 2006.
Passage B
New Deal programmes were often indifferent to meeting the needs of black Americans, as in the exclusion of domestic workers (a major area of black female employment) from the Social Security Act. There was also discrimination against them shown by the Federal Housing Administration’s refusal to give mortgages for black families in traditionally white neighbourhoods. There was racial segregation in the Civilian Conservation Corps and in the Tennessee Valley Authority projects. Sharecroppers, many of them black Americans, suffered particularly badly as farms went out of production and farmers reduced the number of labourers required. Around 200,000 were displaced by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration’s programme and forced to travel to towns for work at a time when jobs were scarce and prejudice still strong. More black workers were unemployed than white. Such discrimination affected their health – black American life expectancy was ten years less than that of white Americans living in the same area. Lynching increased. Overall there was little attempt to change the pattern of racism in the USA. The President relied on Southern white Democrats for support in Congress and refused, for example, to support an anti‑lynching bill.
Adapted from: Joanne de Pennington, Modern America, The USA, 1865 to the Present published in 2005.
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Answer
