Activity 1: Voices of Freedom – The Great Depression and New
Deal[1]
General Information:
Chapter 21 – Historical Context
Voices of Freedom:
Questions on Roosevelt & Steinbeck:
1.
What does
Roosevelt consider the main threat to American freedom?
2.
According to Steinbeck,
how do Depression-era migrant workers differ from those in earlier periods?
3.
Do the migrant
workers described by Steinbeck enjoy economic liberty as Roosevelt defines it?
Questioning Freedom: How
did the New Deal embrace economic security as a new component of American
freedom?
The Great
Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted until 1940 or 1941, really put the
QUESTION of economic security on the public agenda. Millions and millions of
people were out of work; millions lost their life savings and were plunged into
poverty. Nobody knew where the economy was going. The idea of economic
security, that people were entitled to at least a minimal standard of living
guaranteed by the government if necessary, became a central element of liberty
in the New Deal. President Roosevelt explicitly and consciously defined the New
Deal as the embodiment of freedom, but of freedom of economic security rather
than freedom of contract, or freedom of every man for himself. So Roosevelt
really tried to shift the ideas of liberty or freedom to encompass a public
role in maintaining a decent standard of living. Later on this would be one of
his Four Freedoms. Freedom from want was one of the essential liberties in
Roosevelt's view.
Questioning Freedom: Who benefited from the programs of the New
Deal, and who was let down?
In some ways, New
Deal programs benefited everybody. Economic relief, public employment, efforts
to improve the economy—all sorts of people benefited from those. But because of
the way Congress was structured and because southern democrats had a
stranglehold on control of the key committees in Congress, many New Deal
programs were shaped so as to exclude African-Americans, basically because the
southern democrats didn't want these programs to undercut the white supremacy
system of the South and the cheap labor force that blacks represented. So, for
example, Social Security (a core New Deal program), old-age insurance, unemployment
insurance, etc., excluded agricultural workers and domestic workers, which made
up the large majority of the black workers in the country, so most blacks were
just excluded from Social Security. They were also not helped by the Fair Labor
Standards Act, which set minimum wages, because those occupations were not
covered by the minimum-wage law. Other New Deal programs did not explicitly
exclude nonwhites but were administered in a local way, and therefore often in
a discriminatory manner. The CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps, had camps in
the South that were segregated or often didn't allow blacks in at all. The
Federal Housing Authority actually promoted housing segregation in the country.
They refused to give mortgage loans or mortgage guarantees in any integrated
neighborhood. They only assisted housing in segregated neighborhoods. So many
New Deal programs ended up being entitlements for white Americans, and
nonwhites, not only blacks but Hispanics in the West and Asians, didn't benefit
nearly as much as whites from these New Deal programs.