Robert Clifton Weaver: “The New Deal and the Negro: A Look at the Facts”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Weaver opens “The New Deal and the Negro: A Look at the Facts” by stating that an intelligent assessment of the New Deal is impossible without considering conditions that existed before its programs were implemented. If, as some argued, the New Deal made matters worse for black Americans, that would require showing that they were better off before the government initiated its relief efforts.

In paragraphs 2–4, Weaver addresses his first subject: unemployment. One of the complaints against Roosevelt’s direct relief program, the Federal Emergency Relief Agency (FERA), was that it created a huge mass of black Americans who were barely surviving on government assistance. FERA was established in May 1933, disbursing federal funds to the states for food, child care, blankets, and other forms of direct relief. With so many African Americans receiving this public assistance, some black leaders worried that government policies were contributing to the development of a permanent black underclass. Weaver argues that the chronic unemployment problem among African Americans was not the result of government policy but of demographic factors. Long-standing practices of segregation and discrimination meant that blacks were primarily employed in farming or domestic service (janitorial work for men and housekeeping for women). Once the economy began to deteriorate, workers in these industries were among the first to be idled, as Weaver notes. Worse yet, recovery in domestic service jobs typically lagged behind other types of work, as employers waited to rehire workers until they were certain of their own financial status.

Weaver shows how government policies have helped and would continue to help black Americans who were disproportionately affected by the depression. Although he states that a general recovery will eventually result in increased demand for domestic workers, he places more emphasis—in paragraph 5—on the “creation of direct employment opportunities” for those on relief, which includes agricultural and other workers. FERA included a federal jobs program; Harry Hopkins, head of FERA, was adamant that the government not merely hand out money to those in need but allow Americans to feel that they were earning their government assistance. This philosophy of maintaining the spirit of a work ethic dominated most New Deal programs. Weaver’s comments reflect this sentiment as well; using labor union statistics in paragraph 6, he emphasizes the successful reduction in the unemployment rate that federal relief provided, illustrating that many Americans found gainful employment as a result of government programs. Direct aid to the large numbers of blacks on assistance, he says, is a necessary by-product of the economic situation.

In paragraph 7, Weaver acknowledges the existence of “many abuses under the relief set-up.” Because FERA gave the states the authority to distribute funds, many states in the segregated South funneled aid only to white recipients. One program, in particular, discriminated against African Americans when it was implemented: the National Recovery Administration (NRA). Created in June 1933, the NRA sought to bring government and industry together to develop guidelines for American manufacturers. The goal was to ensure protection for workers in the form of minimum wages and maximum hours as well as to create conditions that would favor fair competition within industries. Although the majority of black Americans worked in agricultural and domestic jobs, which were excluded from the NRA, some two million black workers stood to benefit from the provisions of the NRA. Unfortunately, as southern manufacturers participated in the hearings to develop wage codes and production standards, many of them argued that the NRA codes should allow for regional differences, such as the lower cost of living in their area. In effect, this allowed southern manufacturers to exempt black workers from the codes even though this was not explicitly stated in racial terms. Weaver and fellow Harvard graduate John P. Davis attended many of the NRA hearings in Washington to testify on behalf of black workers. The NAACP and other black rights organizations soon after joined to protect the interests of African Americans in the implementation of the NRA.

In paragraph 8, Weaver points out that the plight of African Americans in the South is particularly troublesome. He notes that just as there were structural problems with respect to domestic workers before the depression, there were inherent problems with the agricultural system in the South before the beginning of the New Deal. Tenant farming, or sharecropping, was a long-standing institution in the rural South. Sharecroppers would rent land from the owner, making payments by using the proceeds from whatever crop they grew or from liens against future crop sales. As agricultural prices fell in the 1920s, sharecroppers either could not make enough money from their crop sales or were simply told by the landowner not to grow anything and leave. As Weaver points out, tenant farmers in the South were already in trouble before the depression.

Although Weaver acknowledges that the problems faced by black farmers in the South arose before the New Deal, he states in paragraph 9 that certain elements of the administration’s policies have exacerbated these problems. Specifically, Weaver mentions the crop-reduction programs that were part of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). In an effort to boost sagging crop prices and thus help farmers, the Roosevelt administration paid farmers not to grow crops on part of their land. The resulting reduction in the supply of a given crop would, it was hoped, raise the price, allowing farmers to earn more money per acre of crop produced. The problem was that tenant farmers suffered immensely: White landowners simply fired them in order to reduce their crop production. Furthermore, although landowners were required by AAA policy to share their incentive payments with their tenant farmers, few white landowners did so, keeping the money for themselves instead. Weaver remarks that these kinds of abuses were indicative of a resistance “as old as the system,” a resistance that reflects the history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation in the South. He uses another example of abuse of a federal assistance program: Following a massive flood of the Mississippi River in 1927, the government provided federal loans to southern farmers to purchase feed, seed, and fertilizer in order to get back on their feet. According to Weaver, similar violations of the law existed then, reflecting a larger problem than the AAA itself.

Weaver argues in paragraph 10 that the solution to the problems facing black tenant farmers in the South lies in changing the sharecropping system itself by providing African Americans with broader opportunities for land ownership. Until the cycle of dependency was broken, Weaver states, government aid programs would not be successful. He mentions “the new program for land utilization, rural rehabilitation, and spreading land ownership” as a possible first step in the right direction. The Roosevelt administration initiated a number of programs aimed at reforming land use and ownership. The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 set aside twenty-five million dollars for developing “subsistence homesteads,” which were family farms located near urban centers. Specifically designed not to compete with commercial agricultural enterprises, these homesteads were intended to allow workers to produce enough to feed themselves and their families while finding part-time employment in a nearby industrial center. The subsistence homestead was one New Deal approach to ending the cycle of rural poverty in the South.

In 1934 FERA created its Submarginal Land Purchase Program. Under this aid program, the federal government would help farmers who were living on poor-quality land to relocate, allowing the government to retire land that was no longer productive for agricultural purposes. Another program was the Tennessee Valley Authority, created to bring a number of improvements to the Tennessee River valley area, including flood control and electrical power for the region. In addition to these infrastructure projects, the Tennessee Valley Authority set aside funds for building planned communities that were envisioned as being self-sustaining through a mix of agricultural and industrial production.

The “new program” to which Weaver refers is the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, passed in March 1935. This law created the Resettlement Administration, a new agency that took over the Subsistence Homestead program, FERA’s and AAA’s land use functions, and other programs related to rural rehabilitation and land distribution. Weaver comments that these programs would help African Americans only if they could sidestep the kind of systemic patterns of discrimination historically experienced by other such reforms. In fact, the Resettlement Administration became highly controversial by 1936, as charges of government efforts to socialize land distribution led the agency to abandon many of its more ambitious efforts to change patterns of land ownership in the South.

Weaver then states in paragraph 11 that the New Deal benefited African Americans in three key areas: housing, employment, and education. The first agency he singles out as an example of success is the PWA, created in 1933 as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The PWA invested federal funds in infrastructure projects, such as road and bridge building, in order to create jobs for unemployed urban Americans. Another important component of the program was its development of public housing. As Weaver notes in paragraphs 12 and 13, several of these housing developments were targeted for poor urban black communities. Weaver’s statements regarding the planned projects illustrate the segregated nature of American society during the 1930s. The first federal housing projects in the nation were developed in Atlanta. The University project, located near Spelman and Morehouse colleges, was designated for black residents only. At this point in the article, Weaver does not mention Techwood, which was a whites-only project built at the same time. Thurman Street was another blacks-only project located in Alabama. Some black activists, notably John P. Davis, criticized the PWA for perpetuating segregation in the South through these kinds of housing projects.

As a Department of the Interior employee, Weaver was actively involved in devising policies related to the implementation of PWA programs. Largely as a result of his efforts, PWA housing contracts were modified to include the clause he describes in paragraph 14, which required that these contracts employ a certain percentage of black skilled workers. The percentage for each contract was based on the percentage of African Americans who belonged to a given occupational category in the 1930 census. Weaver and his staff calculated the required quota for each contract based on the census data for a given community and monitored contractors to ensure compliance. Weaver’s efforts were highly successful, allowing African Americans to have access to union jobs that had formerly remained closed to them. Here, he uses the Techwood development, the all-white housing project in Atlanta, as a case study. Even though the project employed a significant number of black workers, it failed to mirror the actual proportion of skilled black workers in the area. Still, Weaver remains positive in his assessment of his efforts to promote what later became known as affirmative action.

Beginning with paragraph 15, Weaver addresses the second of the key benefits of New Deal programs for African Americans: education. FERA included funding for an Emergency Education Program aimed at helping unemployed teachers. Like many New Deal benefits, this program sought to provide alternative work opportunities rather than direct financial aid. The program reemployed teachers in a number of areas, including literacy education, vocational training, and general education courses for adults in a wide variety of subjects that might help them develop outside interests or new skills. Some of the funds, however, were used as direct aid in the form of emergency salaries to particularly impoverished rural communities. These communities were predominantly populated by African Americans. Weaver notes that government spending on emergency aid in these rural southern areas breaks the trend seen in other New Deal programs, where the “status quo,” the result of the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, led to abuse and discrimination. The fact that the South spent proportionately more on this type of assistance than the percentage of blacks in the population shows Weaver that, at least in the area of education, southern states saw the need for overcoming these legacies.

In paragraph 16, Weaver mentions the FERA college scholarship program, which made funds available to employ some 10 percent of students part time at public universities. These funds were administered by each university’s administration and allowed many students who could otherwise not afford to attend college to do so. He states that black and white students appear to have benefited equally from this particular program.

Last, Weaver turns to New Deal programs designed to spur employment. In paragraph 17, he reiterates many of his earlier arguments, returning to his case for structural forces causing the economic woes facing African Americans; in his words, “the New Deal has been more helpful than harmful to Negroes.” Weaver changes the tenor of his argument in the latter part of his essay; he states that African Americans have found jobs within the Roosevelt administration, making the point that the New Deal programs themselves have created new and lucrative positions for African Americans like himself. He notes the fifteen jobs created by his own Department of the Interior and the PWA and then extends his evidence to include the various staffers and clerical workers in the White House. Weaver was also concerned with providing benefits to black professionals through his role with the Department of the Interior and the PWA. He comments that federal housing projects have included the services of black architects and technicians, arguing that the New Deal programs have increased employment opportunities for professional blacks. Weaver closes with a claim of the promises of the New Deal to help African Americans and calls for an “intelligent appraisal” of the facts in order to accurately assess the recovery plan’s efficacy as well as the areas for improvement.