New Deal or Raw Deal for Blacks?

by Liberty and Power

I am been asked to give a lecture on blacks during the New Deal, entitled"New Deal or Raw Deal?" I am drawing on David Bernstein's excellent chapter about the impact of New Deal labor regulations on blacks in Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal .

I have been also been scanning microfilm of the Chicago Defender from 1933 to 1936 and have already found some fascinating references to the New Deal, much of it negative. Some show a perceptive understanding of the political economy of discrimination. Of particular interest are a series of hard hitting cartoons by L. Rogers.

One of the them is titled"How the South Interprets the New Deal." In the first panel, it shows a man speaking to his wife,"Dear, the Old Factory is Now a Member of the 'NRA' which means better wages and better hours!" The next panel depicts a crowd of men arriving to the factory for work. On the door is this sign:"UNDER THE 'NRA' THIS FACTORY SHALL ADVANCE WAGES AND MINIMIZE HOURS OF ALL EMPLOYEES. HENCEFORTH WE SHALL EMPLOY WHITE HELP ONLY." A giant question mark is shown over the crowd of confused men.

I would like to find out more about L. Rogers.

Does anybody have additional suggestions on how to approach the topic of New Deal or Raw Deal for Blacks?

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More Comments:

David T. Beito - 6/13/2004

Very interesting. Thanks!

Kenneth R Gregg - 6/13/2004

One of the areas of research that I have done is on the cooperative movement of the 1920's. During that time period there were many black coops that were vibrant and part of the black economy (there are reference sources on my CLASSical Liberal blog in the Charles T. Sprading article that you can reference to). As the coop movement was "co-opted" (pardon the pun) by Franklinstein (as he was referred to by the monetary radical E.C. Riegal) and his minions (the much-beloved Democrat, Mark Hannah was a leading figure w/FDR in this) beginning in the mid-1930's through REA and other programs, the black involvement came under rules and regulations which gradually destroyed the economic power of these coops.

Just a thought.
Ken Gregg
kgregglv@cox.net
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com/

Keith Halderman - 6/13/2004

On this topic I think Nancy Weis's book Farewell to the Party of Lincoln is essential. Among the other things I learned from her were two of the nicknames that Blacks had for the NRA, Negroes Ruined Again and Negro Removal Act. Also, the journal of the Urban League, Opportunity, which was published up into 1936 had a great deal of pointed on target criticism directed at the New Deal.

Steven Horwitz - 6/12/2004

David - you might extend that point to talk about the rise of minimum wage laws around that time. Certainly their impact on black Americans was, and continues to be, pretty negative.

Of course Social Security has turned out to be a pretty bad deal for blacks as well, with negative rates of return thanks to their shorter-than-whites life expectancies. The reasons for the difference in life expectancy are another issue, but given those, SS is another New Deal item that was largely a raw deal. If only SS were truly an annuity...