This paper examines the African American experience from the Great Depression through the Civil Rights era, covering multiple dimensions of community life and resistance. It discusses how New Deal programs such as the Federal Writers' Project and Federal Art Project provided limited economic relief, while sharecropping, domestic labor, and informal economies helped sustain rural and urban communities. The paper also analyzes the polarizing roles of religion — including the Nation of Islam and Father Divine — and the appeal of communist ideology in northern Black communities. Finally, it addresses the underrecognized contributions of women to the Civil Rights movement, arguing that sexism systematically marginalized female leaders despite their central participation.
To a large degree, African Americans were able to survive the Great Depression the way most Americans did — by utilizing whatever forms of federal relief they could access and by sharing what they had and helping one another as much as possible. African Americans were able to take advantage of some of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs, which created temporary, tenuous sources of revenue. One such initiative was the Federal Writers' Project, which created job opportunities for both novice and experienced writers, many of whom interviewed people during the Great Depression about various aspects of their lives.
African American writers who participated in this program and later achieved nationwide literary prominence include Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Margaret Walker, and several others. Another federal program that aided African Americans was the Federal Art Project, which was designed to employ those working in the visual arts. African Americans who took advantage of the financial opportunities offered by this initiative include Charles White and William Henry Johnson.
In rural areas, sharecropping continued and was exacerbated whenever white landowners lost their farms. Nevertheless, African Americans were able to supplement their incomes through subsistence farming. In urban areas, African Americans found work in unpopular occupations such as manual labor, domestic service, and struggling industries such as steel mills, railroads, and coal mines. African American entertainers — such as Duke Ellington — remained as popular as ever and continued to tour, while a number of African Americans earned academic degrees and made notable contributions to science and scholarship.
Religion tended to have a polarizing effect on African Americans in both the northern and southern regions of the country. The Nation of Islam, for instance, galvanized many African Americans — particularly in northern communities closer to the East Coast — with its rhetoric vilifying white Americans and asserting the divine nature of African Americans, especially African American men. However, this same ideology alienated many other African Americans, particularly those who viewed Nation of Islam supporters as challenging established laws and the pervasive significance of Christianity, which has long been central to African American life, especially in the South.
Father Divine had a similarly polarizing influence on the African American population. Some supported him for his religious views and his advocacy of civil rights, while others reviled him for his frequent arrests, blatant sensationalism, and radical proclamations of being God incarnate.
"Communism appealed to northern African Americans seeking self-determination"
"Women were central but largely unrecognized Civil Rights participants"
"Sexism systematically marginalized prominent Black women leaders"
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