Black Americans and the New Deal

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BOTH secondary and college teachers of United States history increasingly devote more classroom time to the experience of minorities in American life. This essay provides teachers material on an intriguing topic in black American history: the shift during the 1930's of black voters from the party of Lincoln to that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This upheaval in black voting patterns, combined with the great migration of southern rural blacks to cities and the civil rights activities of the last two decades, has had a profound effect on recent American history. Making the Afro-American switch to the Democrats an especially interesting teaching theme is the paradox of its occurrence during a presidential administration that passed no civil rights legislation and allowed discrimination in its relief and recovery programs. In treating this subject teachers might concentrate on black attitudes toward the Hoover Administration, black expectations of the New Deal, the economic, political and social benefits blacks received from Roosevelt's administration, and the role of the black leadership, press, and organizations. The following historical material, the newspapers