The United States
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Academic Achievements
*Ruth Howard Beckham received a Ph.D. in child welfare and psychology from the University of Minnesota.
*Ralph J. Bunche received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
*George M. Jones received a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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Arts
*Augusta (Fells) Savage (1892-1962), a sculptor and educator, became the first African American member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. One of her major commissions was the creation of sculpture for New York World's Fair 1939-40, Lift Every Voice and Sing, a sculptural group symbolizing blacks' contribution to music, which became Savage's best known and most widely recognized work. Another of her most successful works was The Negro Urchin.
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Awards
*Augusta (Fells) Savage (1892-1962), a sculptor and educator, became the first African American member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. One of her major commissions was the creation of sculpture for New York World's Fair 1939-40, Lift Every Voice and Sing, a sculptural group symbolizing blacks' contribution to music, which became Savage's best known and most widely recognized work. Another of her most successful works was The Negro Urchin.
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Awards
*William T. B. Williams, dean of Tuskegee Institute, received the Spingarn Medal for his achievements in education.
William Taylor Burwell Williams (b. July 3, 1869 – d. March 26, 1941) was Dean of Tuskegee Institute, taught at Hampton Institute, and was two-time president of the National Assocition of Teachers in Colored Schools (later renamed the American Teachers Association, it merged with the National Education Association (NEA) in 1966). He was born on a farm near Stone Bridge Clarke County, Virginia, he worked as a field agent of the Slater and Jeanes Funds and the General Education Board.
William Taylor Burwell Williams (b. July 3, 1869 – d. March 26, 1941) was Dean of Tuskegee Institute, taught at Hampton Institute, and was two-time president of the National Assocition of Teachers in Colored Schools (later renamed the American Teachers Association, it merged with the National Education Association (NEA) in 1966). He was born on a farm near Stone Bridge Clarke County, Virginia, he worked as a field agent of the Slater and Jeanes Funds and the General Education Board.
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Civil Rights
Civil Rights
*The Citizens' League for Fair Play organized a boycott against Blumstein's Department Store in Harlem (June).
The earliest activism by blacks to change the situation in Harlem itself grew out of the Great Depression, with the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" movement. This was the ultimately successful campaign to force retail shops on 125th Street to hire black employees. Boycotts were originally organized by the Citizens' League for Fair Play in June 1934 against Blumstein's Department Store on 125th Street. The store soon agreed to integrate its staff more fully. This success emboldened Harlem residents, and protests continued under other leadership, including that of preacher and later congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., seeking to change hiring practices at other stores, to effect the hiring of more black workers, or the hiring of members of particular protesting groups.
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The Communist Party
*Probably not more than 2,500 of the 24,536 claimed members of the American Communist Party were African Americans.
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W. E. B. DuBois
*W. E. B. DuBois resigned from the NAACP, where he had edited the Crisis magazine, in a conflict over the value of voluntary segregation, which DuBois supported. Roy Wilkins, assistant secretary of the NAACP, became the new editor of the Crisis.
Du Bois did not have a good working relationship with Walter Francis White, president of the NAACP since 1931. That conflict, combined with the financial stresses of the Great Depression, precipitated a power struggle over The Crisis. Du Bois, concerned that his position as editor would be eliminated, resigned his job at The Crisis and accepted an academic position at Atlanta University in early 1933. The rift with the NAACP grew larger in 1934 when Du Bois reversed his stance on segregation, stating that "separate but equal" was an acceptable goal for African Americans. The NAACP leadership was stunned, and asked Du Bois to retract his statement, but he refused, and the dispute led to Du Bois' resignation from the NAACP.
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Educational Institutions
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*Alain Leroy Locke founded the Associated in Negro Folk Education.
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Father Divine
By 1934, branches had opened in Los Angeles, California, and Seattle, Washington, and gatherings occurred in France, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia, but the membership totals were drastically overstated in the press. Time Magazine estimated nearly two million followers, but the true figure of adherents was probably a few tens of thousands and a larger body of sympathizers who attended his gatherings. Nonetheless, Father Divine was increasingly called upon to offer political endorsements, which he initially did not grant. For example, New York mayoral candidates John P. O'Brien and Fiorello H. LaGuardia each sought his endorsement in 1933, but Father Divine was apparently uninterested.
An odd alliance between Father Divine and the Communist Party of America began in early 1934. Although Father Divine was outspokenly capitalist, he was impressed with the party's commitment to civil rights. The party relished the endorsement, although contemporary FBI records indicate some critics of the perceived huckster were expelled from the party for protesting the alliance.
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The Labor Movement
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*The American Federation of Labor rejected a resolution to end discrimination within its ranks and said that no discrimination existed.
A. Philip Randolph's resolution at the AFL National Convention to end union discrimination was rejected by the delegates. The AFL organization committee argued that no such discrimination existed, and supported the concept of separate unions for African Americans and European Americans. In 1935, after much debate the National Convention rejected a special investigation committe's suggestions to end discrimination.
The AFL and, in particular, the railroad brotherhoods discriminated against African Americans in the following ways: by constitutional, ritual and tacit agreement; through creation of segregated and auxiliary locals; by collusion with employers; by negotiating separate seniority and promotion agreements in contracts that kept African Americans in menial jobs; by controlling the craft licensing boards; by negotiating for African Americans without African American representation or votes on the final contracts; by excluding African Americans from union hiring halls when the halls represented the only job source.
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Law and Legislation
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*A lynch mob burned down a courthouse in Shelbyville, Tennessee, after learning that the young African-American man they wanted to hang had been transported to another county for his protection (December 19). National Guardsmen protecting the man killed 2 during a battle around the courthouse.
In 1934, the Bedford County Courthouse was destroyed when a lynch mob burned it down. Several days of violence preceded the act of arson. One hundred national guardsmen were called to the scene to protect a young African American man, E. K. Harris, who was accused of assault. Disguised as a guardsman, the accused man was removed from the jail and sent to Nashville for safekeeping. The mob burned the courthouse in retaliation for the removal of E. K. Harris.
*An anti-lynching bill failed in Congress due to lack of support from the Roosevelt administration.
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Literature
*Zora Neale Hurston's novel Jonah's Gourd Vine was published. In this novel, the author utilized rural African American folklore in a style modeled upon preacher of Holy Roller rhetoric to achieve a very original effect.
*The Ways of White Folks, an anthology of short stories by Langston Hughes, dealt with race relations in rural Southern towns. Miscegenation was the common theme of approximately half the stories.
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Movies
*The Hollywood movie Imitation of Life opened (November 26). It starred African American actress Louise Beavers and European American Claudette Colbert as two women who went into business together but whose daughters led troubled adulthood lives.
Imitation of Life is a 1934 American drama film directed by John M. Stahl. The screenplay by William Hurlbut, based on Fannie Hurst's 1933 novel of the same name, was augmented by eight additional uncredited writers, including Preston Sturges and Finley Peter Dunne. The film stars Claudette Colbert, Warren William and Rochelle Hudson, and features Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington.
The film was originally released by Universal Pictures on November 26, 1934, and later re-issued in 1936. A 1959 remake with the same title stars Lana Turner.
In 2005, Imitation of Life was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was also named by Time in 2007 as one of "The 25 Most Important Films on Race".
White widow Bea Pullman (Claudette Colbert) and her toddler daughter Jessie (Juanita Quigley), take in black housekeeper Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers) and her daughter Peola (Fredi Washington), whose fair complexion conceals her mixed-race ancestry. Bea exchanges room and board for work, although struggling to make ends meet. Delilah and Peola quickly become like family to Jessie and Bea. They particularly enjoy Delilah's pancakes, made from a special family recipe.
Bea finds it difficult to make a living selling maple syrup, as her husband had done. Using her wiles to get a storefront on the busy Atlantic City boardwalk refurbished for practically nothing, she opens a pancake restaurant, where Delilah cooks in the front window. Five years later, Bea makes her last payment to the furniture man and is debt-free.
Jessie (Marilyn Knowlden) and Peola have proven to be challenging children to raise: Jessie is demanding, not particularly studious, relying instead on her charm. She is the first person to call Peola "black" in a hurtful way, hinting that their childhood idyll is doomed. Peola does not tell her classmates at school that she is "colored" and is humiliated when her mother shows up one day, revealing her secret.
Hurst's inspiration in writing her novel Imitation of Life was a road trip to Canada she took with her friend, the black short-story writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston. The novel was originally to be called Sugar House but was changed just before publication.
Universal borrowed Warren William from Warner Bros. for the male lead, but the studio had first wanted Paul Lukas for the part. The parents of the child playing "Jessie" as a baby changed her name from "Baby Jane" to "Juanita Quigley" during production of the film. Claudette Colbert was borrowed from Paramount.
Universal had difficulty receiving approval from the censors at the Hays Office for the original script they submitted for Imitation of Life. Joseph Breen objected to the elements of miscegenation in the story, which "not only violates the Production Code but is very dangerous from the standpoint both of industry and public policy." He rejected the project, writing, "Hurst's novel dealing with a partly colored girl who wants to pass as white violates the clause covering miscegenation in spirit, if not in fact!" The Production Code Administration's (PCA's) censors had difficulty in "negotiating how boundaries of racial difference should be cinematically constructed to be seen, and believed, on the screen."
Their concern was the character of Peola, in whose person miscegenation was represented by this young woman considered black, but with sufficient white ancestry to pass as white and the desire to do so. The PCA participated in Hollywood's ongoing desire to remake interracial desire, an historical fact, as always already having been a taboo. In addition, the more significant quandary imagined by the censors was that the PCA believed that Peola's light skin, and her passing, were signifiers of miscegenation and that by conflating miscegenation and passing in this way, the censors effectively attempted to extend the Code's ban on desire across black and white racial boundaries to include a ban on identification across those boundaries as well.
The censors also objected to some language in the script, and a scene where a black boy is nearly lynched for approaching a white woman whom he believed had invited his attention. Breen continued to refuse to approve the script up to July 17, when the director had already been shooting the film for two weeks.
Imitation of Life was in production from June 27 to September 11, 1934, and was released on November 26 of that year.
All versions of Imitation of Life issued by Universal after 1938, including TV, VHS and DVD versions, feature re-done title cards in place of the originals. Missing from all of these prints is a title card with a short prologue, which was included in the original release. It reads:
(Later films dealing with fair skin African American women, including the 1959 version of this work, cast European American women in the roles.)
The themes of the movie, to the modern eye, deal with very important issues — passing, the role of skin color in the African American community and tensions between its light-skinned and dark-skinned members, the role of black servants in white families, and maternal affection.
Some scenes seem to have been filmed to highlight the fundamental unfairness of Delilah's social position — for example, while living in Bea's fabulous NYC mansion, Delilah descends down the shadowy stairs to the basement where her rooms are. Bea, dressed in the height of fashion, floats up the stairs to her rooms, whose luxury was built from the success of Delilah's recipe. Others highlight the similarities between the two mothers, both of whom adore their daughters and are brought to grief by the younger women's actions. Some scenes seem to mock Delilah, because of her supposed ignorance about her financial interests and her willingness to be in a support role, but the two women have built an independent business together. In dying and in death — especially with the long processional portraying a very dignified African-American community, Delilah is treated with great respect.
Imitation of Life was nominated for three Academy Awards - Best Picture, Best Assistant Director for Scott R. Beal, and Sound Mixing for Theodore Soderberg.
In 2005, Imitation of Life was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. In February 2007, Time magazine included it among The 25 Most Important Films on Race, as part of the magazine's celebration of Black History Month.
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Music
*William Levi Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony was performed at Carnegie Hall by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra (November 14).
Symphony No. 1, Negro Folk Symphony, by William Levi Dawson (1899-1990), was the first symphony on black folk themes by an African American composer to be performed by a major orchestra. The symphony was substantially revised in 1952, after a visit to West Africa. Born in Anniston, Alabama, Dawson began to compose when he was sixteen years old. Under his leadership, the Tuskegee Choir became internationally renowned.
Symphony No. 1, Negro Folk Symphony, by William Levi Dawson (1899-1990), was the first symphony on black folk themes by an African American composer to be performed by a major orchestra. The symphony was substantially revised in 1952, after a visit to West Africa. Born in Anniston, Alabama, Dawson began to compose when he was sixteen years old. Under his leadership, the Tuskegee Choir became internationally renowned.
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The NAACP
*W. E. B. DuBois resigned from the NAACP, where he had edited the Crisis magazine, in a conflict over the value of voluntary segregation, which DuBois supported. DuBois would not return to the NAACP until 1944. Roy Wilkins, the assistant secretary of the NAACP, became the new editor of the Crisis.
*The NAACP began formulating a plan for a "systematic coordinated legal assault on discrimination in the schools."
*An anti-lynching bill written by Senator Costigan of Colorado and Senator Wagner of New York was proposed. The NAACP sponsored the bill and placed large banners outside its New York office every day a man was lynched. The NAACP was unsuccessful in its attempt to have President Roosevelt endorse the bill and it did not pass.
*The culmination of the NAACP's 14-year campaign for the liberation of Haiti occurred when President Roosevelt finally withdrew the United States troops from Haiti.
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The Nation of Islam
*By 1934, the Black Muslim leader, Fard, had about 8,000 adherents. Membership would decline after Fard's disappearance later in the year. Elijah Muhammad would then move his headquarters to Chicago. He would soon be called "The Prophet," and Fard was identified with Allah.
Elijah Muhammad succeeded W. D. Fard as leader of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad was born Elijah Poole in Sandersville, Georgia, in 1897. His father was a Baptist preacher, sawmill worker, and tenant farmer. Muhammad was a deeply religious and race conscious youth. While he was employed as a laborer in Georgia in 1923, a European American employer cursed him and he decided to move North. While living on relief in Detroit during the Depression, Muhammad came under the influence of W. D. Fard or Wallace Fard Muhammad, a mysterious silk peddler who had been teaching African Americans that they were members of a superior race, descendants of Muslims from Afro-Asia.
Fard claimed to be a messenger from Allah sent to reclaim his lost people, to save them from the inferior race of "white devils" who had made their lives so miserable. Christianity, Fard asserted, was a false religion used by European American people to keep African Americans in subjugation. Elijah Poole soon became Fard's closest associate and when Fard mysteriously disappeared in 1934, Poole, now known as Elijah Muhammad, took control of the group as "The Messenger of Allah to the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in the Wilderness of North America." Muhammad and his followers refused to bear arms for the United States during World War II. Muhammad himself was convicted of encouraging resistance to the draft and served three and a half years of a five-year sentence in a federal prison.
Elijah Muhammad was released from prison in 1946. During the time of his incarceration, membership in the Nation of Islam dropped from a high of about 8,000 under Fard's leadership leadership to 1,000 under the incarcerated Elijah Muhammad.
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The New Deal
*The Federal Emergency Relief Administration inaugurated a program to help the rural poor grow their own food. Between this year and 1941, $1,121,000,000 was allocated to this program, and $5.3 billion to the discriminatory AAA.
*The National Recovery Administration (NRA) proved unsatisfactory to most African Americans. They were rarely represented at code hearings, and cost-of-living differentials were discriminatory. Under the steel, laundry and tobacco codes, among others, African American workers received lower wages than European American workers.
*The minimum wage regulations of the National Recovery Act contributed to the number of African Americans on relief. The NRA increased competition for jobs and thus encouraged discrimination. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 setting minimum wages had a similar effect.
*Clark Foreman of the Interior Department and E. K. Jones of the Commerce Department, both African Americans, set up interdepartmental committees to consider the problems of African Americans under the NRA and the AAA. An NRA representative admitted that there was discrimination against African Americans in its operations. An AAA representative explained, "It may be said that the smaller the administrative unit, and the greater the degree of local control, the worse the conditions to which Negroes are subjected."
*John P. Davis criticized the NRA for putting African Americans out of work and for raising prices.
*African American enrollment in the CCC was only 5.3% of the total enrollment, although African Americans represented 10% of the population. Enrollment was done by local officials, which led to discrimination.
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