3. Roosevelt had slight personal interest in race relations or civil rights, as a result he appointed Mary McLeod Bethune, a prominent black education, as a special adviser on minority affairs and a variety of other blacks to important federal positions (Foner 839). His wife Eleanor, and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, a former president of the Chicago chapter of the NAACP, served as key members of his administration (Foner 839). Additionally, they directed national attention to the inequalities of segregation, disenfranchisement, and lynching (Foner 839). Thanks to the New Deal. Bethune exclaimed, a “new day” had risen when Blacks could finally obtain “the promised land of liberty.” The decade witnessed a historic shift in black voting
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Even though the building of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River flooded thousands of acres where Indians had hunted for fish for many years. Yet, the government failed to make any of the irrigation water readily available to the region’s reservations (Foner 837). In particular, the Depression for Mexican-Americans was a heart wrenching experience. The demand for their labor decreased more than 400,000 went back to Mexico, some willingly, others at the intense urging of local authorities in the Southwest (Foner 837). A vast majority that remained worked in deplorable conditions in California’s fruit and vegetable fields, whose corporate farms benefitted immensely from New Deal dam construction that provided them with inexpensive electricity and water for irrigation. When workers would attempt to orchestrate a union as part of the decade’s labor upsurge, they were brutally subdued. Mexican Americans were faced with low wages, insufficient housing, and political suppression under which migrant laborers suffered, which the New Deal did nothing to help (Foner 837). Mexican-American leaders had a difficult time developing a strategy for their people that was consistent. For one thing, they sought greater rights by claiming to be white Americans in order to not suffer the same discriminations as African- Americans but also
Even though the building of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River flooded thousands of acres where Indians had hunted for fish for many years. Yet, the government failed to make any of the irrigation water readily available to the region’s reservations (Foner 837). In particular, the Depression for Mexican-Americans was a heart wrenching experience. The demand for their labor decreased more than 400,000 went back to Mexico, some willingly, others at the intense urging of local authorities in the Southwest (Foner 837). A vast majority that remained worked in deplorable conditions in California’s fruit and vegetable fields, whose corporate farms benefitted immensely from New Deal dam construction that provided them with inexpensive electricity and water for irrigation. When workers would attempt to orchestrate a union as part of the decade’s labor upsurge, they were brutally subdued. Mexican Americans were faced with low wages, insufficient housing, and political suppression under which migrant laborers suffered, which the New Deal did nothing to help (Foner 837). Mexican-American leaders had a difficult time developing a strategy for their people that was consistent. For one thing, they sought greater rights by claiming to be white Americans in order to not suffer the same discriminations as African- Americans but also