Aspects Of Aaron Douglas's Contribution To The Social Realism Era?

Both equality and liberty are important qualities for a nation to rise to prosperity and peace in any country. In Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Fredrick Douglass’s Fourth of July speech, the importance of voicing one’s concern is central to improving society. Alexis De Tocqueville shows that the quality of condition is more important than liberty in our American Democracy. While on the other hand, Douglass notes that our known 4th of July is a time to consider those who are inferior, and that liberty is just as important as equality in American society.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, " Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." The people who do not allow others to have their rights, do not deserve the rights they are withholding. This applies during the American Renaissance. This time period was filled with women's rights speakers, black's rights speakers, and authors who right on the topic of society's responsibility for the homeless and poor. Frederick Douglass argues for black's rights, Herman Melville discusses how the homeless are treated in society, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fights for the equality of men and women. The author and speakers all focus on the issue of moral struggle and social justice and fight for what they believe is right.

When the Great Depression hit, no other minority group had it worse than the African Americans. Unemployment for African Americans was fifty percent or more, and even ninety percent in certain cities, while white unemployment ranged around thirty percent (Sustar). Aid was scarce from the Roosevelt Administration, where his NRA, National Recovery Act, was referred by blacks as the Negro Removal Act (Anderson). The NRA claimed that its goal was nondiscriminatory hiring and equal wages for blacks and whites, but they rarely employed blacks and when they did maintained racist wages (Sustar). It became more of a tool to keep African Americans from competing with white workers. Blacks were usually excluded from unions so they had to organize their own such as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (Sustar). But, those who tried to organize unions became targets for lynch mobs. Only the Communist Party actually took black workers seriously and helped organize a union for them (Sustar). Still, many blacks were forced to migrate out of the South and to the northern cities for a better opportunity, where the conditions were a little better. Patterns of segregation and racism in the South during the Depression remained relatively unchanged. Take for example the famous Scottsboro case. Nine black teenages that were on a train in Alabama were accused by two white women of rape, a crime that was unthinkable in 1930s Alabama. However, there was no evidence whatsoever that the women were raped. But nevertheless, the all-white jury in Alabama convicted all of the nine boys where eight of them were sentenced to death (Blunder). Clearly, being an African American in the early twentieth century was not ideal in a country where racist views were relatively normal. It didn’t matter if they were a decorated Olympian like Jesse Owens, or

Robert Newton’s novel Runner successfully recreates the hardships, joys and lives of ordinary people making the most of their lives in 1919. Discuss.

Following his inauguration, Roosevelt's attitude toward African Americans changed little. He not only opposed vital civil rights legislation like the anti-lynching bill, designed to make lynching a federal offense, but showed little interest in challenging even the most blatant manifestations of racial injustice in the proliferation of New Deal agencies. The National Recovery Administration (NRA), Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), to name only a few, all failed to protect blacks against discriminatory employers, agency officials, and local

African Americans lifestyle did not see much change from before the depression and during the depression in the sense of the capital dollar. They assumed the New Deal brought up by president Roosevelt at the time would bring change to their life, but the white public would not stand to be on equal terms with a person of color. “Unemployment was rampant, and many whites felt that any available jobs belonged to the whites first.”i Many white Americans did not want African Americans to be paid minimum wage, but be paid lower than minimum wage. Industry’s also wanted to pay their employers a different wage depending on the color of their skin. “Negro unskilled labor,

The book starts out addressing the problem with the New deal and Great Depression. Black Americans suffered the most because they were mostly in agriculture and would be hit the hardest. Black urban unemployment reached well over 50 percent, more than twice the rate of whites. In my own opinion that wasn’t a coincidence. In southern cities, white workers rallied around such slogan “back to the cotton fields city jobs are for white folks." The most violent times took place on southern railroads, as unionized white workers intimidated, attacked, and murdered black firemen in order to take their jobs. Throughout African Americans lost their jobs in various parts of the South. Ku Klux Klan practices were being resumed and it became more and more dangerous for Blacks to live daily lives.

Douglas takes an amoral stance upon the question of slavery within the union and is indifferent to the spread of it. He invokes a principle of popular sovereignty, allowing the American people to vote upon slavery. Popular sovereignty embraces a state of indifference, which does not spread nor exclude slavery within the union, but rather allows the people to decide and form laws upon it. Lincoln argued,

The 1930’s started off with a huge economic crash which left the U.S. startled and in the Great Depression. The stock market had just crashed on October 24, 1929, also known as the Wall Street Crash. The “Jazz Age” had just ended and new musicians and artists were slowly rising up to their fame. African American’s were being discriminated against in the south. Many African Americans were farmers who had to suffer from the Great Depression as well as the Dust Bowl. As a result of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl many African Americans had to go through the struggles of losing their jobs and having to move north in search for a new life. Many Americans had this problem as well, but the racism that was used against Africans, added to the severeness of the situation. African Americans weren’t able to get jobs, homes, or opportunities as easily as African Americans. Many African Americans were in terrible condition and most of it was because of the way that African Americans were treated. After President Roosevelt was elected a new hope had arisen through the country and Africans Americans were given another chance.

With few outlets to succeed in America at the time, African Americans put forth extra effort to succeed when they were given a chance. Often times, this

Three days after taking office FDR established the Emergency Banking Act, that closed all the banks. Once the banks were reopened they were put under close supervision, also the treasury was authorized to issue more currency. After the Emergency Banking act, during the rest of FDR’s first 100 days in office, he proposed, and Congress enacted, an abundance of legislative acts such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA), the Civic Works Administration (CWA), the Homeowners Loan Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). One of the most innovative New Deal Program was the Tennessee Valley Authority act (TVA) which created an independent public agency that oversaw the development of projects in the Tennessee River Valley. “While [the New Deal] did not end the Depression, [the] experimental programs helped the American people immeasurably by taking care of their basic needs and giving them the dignity of work and hope” (Maxwell, 1952)

Slaves didn’t know their mothers or birthdays.  Assess the impact on their mental  well  being ?

35) As Hoovers administration continued its business backing policies African Americans drifted towards Democrats. This accompanied a rapid urbanization that rose the percentage of African Americans living in cities from forty four percent to fifty percent in just 9 years, from 1930 to 1939. (Trotter, pg. 11) Seventy five percent of African Americans lived in the South, where Southern Democrats had oppressed and opposed African Americans since the end of the Reconstruction in the early 1870’s. (Americans at War) Despite the bad blood between African Americans and Democrats, they drifted in large numbers towards ‘the left’ as Roosevelt and his administration began to administer the “New Deal”. The New Deal was a series of programs and agencies set up to help the United States recover from the Depression. Over 20 million Americans sought assistance from agencies and programs such as Social Service. (Trotter, pg. 8) Many of these were African Americans, but over sixty percent of African Americans received no benefits from the New Deal due to a propensity towards racism in many of the local distributers of aid. (Trotter, pg. 11) According to labor laws supported by Roosevelt and the Democrats, it was not required to pay African Americans minimum wage. Roosevelt also refused to sign an anti-lynching bill into law, allowing lynching to remain legal in many Southern states, due to Roosevelts need of the Southern Democrats to maintain power in the Senate and

Prompt: Douglass maintains that slavery dehumanized both the slave and the slaveholder. Quoting specific passages in the Narrative support this thesis with examples.

During the 1800s, slaves received treatment comparable to that of livestock. They were mere possessions of white men stripped of almost every last bit of humanity in them. African-Americans were constricted to this state of mind by their owners vicious treatment, but also the practice of keeping them uneducated. Keeping the slaves illiterate hindered them from understanding the world around them. Slave owners knew this. The slaves who were able to read and write always rebelled more against their masters. Frederick Douglass, author of "A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," and Harriet Jacobs, author of "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," were prime examples. Both slaves had been taught how read and write at a young