ABSTRACT
New Deal relief programs-which primarily aided northern and urban blacks, who could vote, rather than southern and rural blacks, who could not-partially, but not fully, explain this shift. During the 1930s the American Communist Party gained a fairly wide influence, certainly wider than its membership (which hovered around 50,000) or its voting strength (which fell from 103,000 in the 1932 presidential election to 80,000 in 1936) would indicate. In 1935, as part of its expanded relief program, the Roosevelt administration initiated various projects to aid unemployed writers, artists, and actors. To head the Federal Theater Project, Harry Hopkins selected Hallie Flanagan, whom he had first met while both were undergraduates at Grinnell College in Iowa. In 1939, Congress killed the Federal Theater Project. From Roosevelt's vantage point, administrative reform was hardly less important than judicial reform. Lacking any security, people often lost their homes as hard times settled over the countryside.
