Social Effects of the Great Depression By Angela Brown
Social Effects of the Great Depression
By Angela Brown
Hoovervilles
• 15,000 homeless in New York City
• Homeless built shanty towns called Hoovervilles
• Mocked President Hoover – blamed for crisis
• Lived in piano boxes, rusted – out cars etc.
Farm Distress
• Low food prices cut income
• Lost farms, expelled tenant farmers and sharecroppers
• In protest farmers dumped thousands of gallons of milk-destroyed other crops
• Actions shocked a hungry nation
The Dust Bowl
• A region in the Great Plains where drought and dust storms took place for much of the 1930s = Dust Bowl
• 440,000 left Oklahoma in 1930s
• 300,000 left Kansas
• Many migrated to California as laborers
Dorothea Lange
• Taught the nation to see the realities of the Depression in the faces of suffering Americans
• Photographer – portrait studio in San Francisco
• Left studio for streets = photo journalist
• Attention of Farm Security Administration (FSA) - set up by FDR
• Hired by FSA to document the lives of migrant farmers
• Most famous photograph “Migrant Mother”
• Lange’s work helped creation of government migrant camps
• Inspired John Steinbeck’s Depression – novel The Grapes of Wrath
Impact on Health
• Some starved, some committed suicide
• Country people grew food, ate berries and wild plants
• City residents, sold apples and pencils – begged –fought over contents of restaurant garbage cans
• “relief gardens” planted to eat or barter
Stress on Families
• conditions declined – families moved in together
• divorce rate dropped (couldn’t afford separate households)
• men felt like failures especially if wives/children could find work
• working women accused of taking jobs from men – had to worry about feeding hungry children
• Ford and many others would not hire married women
• AFL endorsed practice
• Worked as domestic servants, typing, nursing “women’s work”
Discrimination Increases
• Rise in suspicion/hostilities against minorities
• While labors filled low paying jobs typical of minorities – blacks no rights to jobs if whites out of work
• 56% African Americans unemployed in 1932
Photographer Gordon Parks documented plight of African Americans – first African American photographer on staff of Life Magazine – joined Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to counteract hopelessness of breadlines
• Relief programs discriminated – black churches, and organizations like National Urban League gave private help – Father Divine opened soup kitchens
• Denied civil rights – education, voting, health-care
• Lynchings increased• Hispanics – Asian – Americans deported
(many born in U.S.)
• “Scottsboro Boys” – 9 black boys riding rails arrested and accused of raping (2) white women on the train – 8 of 9 convicted sentenced to die
• Communist party supplied legal defense and organized demonstrations – helped overturn convictions
Bibliography
• www.Snap-shot.com/picpages
• www.runestone.net
• www.//history1900’s.about.com