ABSTRACT
When Franklin D. Roosevelt became President of the United States on March 4, 1933, the economic condition of the nation could best be described as alarming. Everywhere there were signs of economic decay and deterioration as unemployment figures mounted and as the nation’s major industries and financial houses closed their doors. 1 For some groups, such as farmers and Negroes, the suffering brought on by the crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression was not a new experience. All during the previous decade they had felt the pinch of economic privation, the farmers as a result of the collapse of world markets and declining prices and the Negroes as a result of the persistent rejection of their services as industrial laborers and the exploitation of them as agricultural workers. By 1933 the Negro’s position in American life was more than critical. It was desperate. Added to the economic sufferings were the humiliating denials of the elemental rights as American citizens, denials as old as the nation itself. 2 Now, in the midst of the worst depression in modern times, ingenious Americans had come forward with techniques by which Negroes were discriminated against, even among the unemployed. The shabby treatment they received in the improvised bread lines and soup kitchens was enough to disillusion even the most sanguine among them. 3
