1930 The United States

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The United States

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, southern African Americans in agriculture suffered more economic adversity than any other American group, black or white.  In 1930, there were 1,112,510 African Americans employed as agricultural laborers: two-thirds of all southern African Americans.  Ten years later, this number dropped to 780,312: a 30% reduction even though the affected population declined only 4%.  In addition, the average wage earned by a southern African American agricultural laborer in 1940 was less than half what it was in 1930.  Black migration from the South to the North came to a virtual standstill during this period because northern whites were taking the unskilled jobs formerly left for migrating African Americans to fill. 

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Academic Achievements

*Ambrose Caliver received an Ph.D. in education (with special reference to college administration) from Columbia University, New York City, New York.

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Black Enterprise

*There were 944 African American banking and brokerage entrepreneurs and officials, clerks and accountants and 9,325 insurance executives, managers, etc.  The first figure was less than 1 for every 600 European American workers in such positions, and the second represented about 2% of the national total of such workers.

*Seventy African American building and loan associations had assets of $6,600.000.  These assets represented less than one percent of the total for all building and loan associations.  The number of associations fell to 30 by 1938, and assets to $3,600,000.

*The Depression-related failure of four African American bands severely impacted the African American community in Chicago.

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Census

*There were 11,891,100 African Americans in the United States, representing 9.7% of the total population.  The percentage of African Americans in the Northeast was 9.6%; in the North Central states, 10.6%; in the South , 78.7%; and in Western states, 1%.

*The foreign born African American population of the United States was 98,620 or 0.99% of the total African American population.  Of all the African American immigrants in the United States, 73% were born in the West Indies.  91,677 foreign born African Americans, or 93% resided in urban areas. Of these, 65% lived in New York City.

*In the North and West, 88% of all African Americans lived in urban areas; 32% of the African Americans in the South livd in urban areas.

*African American illiteracy was 16.3%.  Of the African American illiterates 93.6% lived in the South.  Per capita expenditure per European American school child was $44.31 in areas where segregation was legally mandatory; for African American students it was $12.57.

*The Depression hit the Southern African Americans in agriculture the hardest.  Two thirds of Southern African Americans were sharecroppers or wage laborers.  In 1930, 1,112,510 African Americans were employed as agricultural laborers.  By 1940, this figure had dropped to 780,212.  Of the African Americans, 13.1% were owners or managers, in contrast to 42.4% of the European Americans in Southern agriculture.

*Between 1930 and 1940 the total African American rural farm population decreased 4.5%.

*The total number of African American policemen in the United States was 1,297.  Only 7% of whom were employed in the Deep South.  There were no African American policemen in Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Virginia.

*The 2,946 African American undertakers represented one-tenth of all United States undertakers.

*The number of African American contractors fell to 2,400, or 1.6% of the total number of contractors in the United States.

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Civil Rights

*National Guardsmen in Huntsville, Alabama, attacked a crowd around the Madison County jail with tear gas bombs (September 29). The mob was trying to storm the jail where an African-American man was being held in connection with the murder of a businessman.

*A group of prominent women from seven Southern states met to form the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. 

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The Communist Party

*The American Communist Party organized the League of Struggle for Negro Rights (LSNR).  Langston Hughes was elected president.  The league united several African American groups in a sweeping program to eliminate wrongs against African Americans, and envisioned the eventual establishment of an African American republic in America.  However, the NAACP and the National Urban League, and the majority of African Americans steered clear of the LSNR.  It, therefore, accomplished little.

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Crime and Punishment

*Between 1930 and 1939, there were 1,666 executions under civil authority in the United States.  Of these, 827 were European American and 816 African American.  In the two major crime categories, of a total 1,514 executed for murder, 804 were European American and 687 African American; of the total of 125 executions for rape, 10 were European American and 175 African American.

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Education

*Mary McLeod Bethune, educator and civil rights activist, was cited as one of America's 50 leading women by historian Ida Tarbell.

*Where public school segregation was legally mandated, $44.31 was spent annually on each European American child and $12.57 was spent annually on each African American child.

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Labor

*Approximately 22 major unions officially discriminated against African Americans.  This figure was reduced to 13 by 1943, to 9 by 1949, and 2 by 1963.

*R. L. Mays, president of the Railway Men's International Benevolent Industrial Association, organized a convention of African American railway workers to fight discrimination in job appointments and promotions.

R. L. Mays, a Chicago African American, was president of the Railway Men's International Benevolent Industrial Association and executive officer of the Interstate Order of Locomotive Firemen, Yard and Train Service Employees and Railway Mechanics.  He organized a convention of African American railway workers to combat "the tendency to eliminate from railway service our men now employed as skilled shop workers, trainmen, and locomotive firemen and yard switchmen," by organizing existing African American workmen's associations.  Mays asked those in control of American industry to recognize character instead of color and to give jobs to African Americans.  The convention met in Detroit, Michigan.

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*Only one percent of the employees in the Southern oil and gas production field were African Americans, and only ten percent of the employees in automobile-created jobs were African Americans.  Southern African Americans were principally employed as teamsters, drivers, maintenance and construction men on city and state projects and as menials in the wholesale and retail trade in banking brokerage houses and insurance.  In the South, European Americans were the majority as workers in hotels, restaurants, and boarding houses.  In the United States, African Americans employed as launderers and laundresses numbered 329,163 in 1930; by 1940 the fight had been reduced to 47,734.  In 1930, some 107,739 African Americans were employed as iron and steel laborers; by 1940 African American employment in that industry was down to 40,818.  In this period, there was one substantial increase in African American occupations: African American teamsters numbered 19,566 in 1930; by 1940 there were 137,121 African American teamsters.

*A small percentage of African Americans displaced from jobs in the South moved westward.  The African American population in the Western states between 1930 and 1940 increased by 2.1%. Migration to Northern cities of Southern African Americans was relatively low as the general unemployment of unskilled workers was such that European Americans were now hired for traditionally African American jobs.

*Of the 116,000 African Americans in professional jobs, over two-thirds were teachers or ministers.

*The total number of African American policemen in the United States was 1,297; only seven percent of whom were employed in the Deep South.  There were no African American policemen in Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas and Virginia.

*The 2,946 African American undertakers represented one-tenth of all United States undertakers.

*The number of African American contractors fell to 2,400 or 1.6% of the total number of contractors in the United States.

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Literature

The Depression changed the emphasis in African American writing from the race problem to class oppression.  During the 1930's, left-wing and Communist periodicals such as The New Masses and The Nation were among the few to accept African American manuscripts and give the European American audience African American views.

*Langston Hughes published his novel Not Without Laughter.

*James Weldon Johnson published Black Manhattan.

*Edward S. Silvera contributed verse to the collection Four Lincoln Poets.  His poems are free verse lyrics, similar in style to those of Emily Dickinson.

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The Media

*In a gesture meant to convey respect, the New York Times began capitalizing the word "Negro" (June 7).

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Music

*The National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., became the first major religious group to publicly endorse gospel music.

From this endorsement followed the first choruses, the first publishing houses, the first professional organizations, and the first paid gospel concerts.  Thomas Dorsey (1899-1993), the "Father of Gospel," founded the first gospel choir in the world with Theodore Frye at Chicago's Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1931.  Dorsey later established the first music publishing firm dedicated only to gospel music in 1932.  The 1930 endorsement of gospel music b the Baptist convention, which had been carried away by Dorsey's "If You See My Savior," called public attention to a major change that had been taking place in the music of black churches. The 1930 endorsement is often considered the starting point for the history of gospel music.

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The NAACP

*The U.S. Senate rejected President Hoover's Supreme Court Justice nominee John J. Parker by a vote of 41–39 (May 7).  The NAACP successfully campaigned to defeat confirmation of Supreme Court nominee John H. Parker, who was on record in opposition to voting rights for African Americans.

John H. Parker, once an opponent of African American suffrage, was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Herbert Hoover.  The NAACP protested and through a strong nation-wide campaign influenced the Senate to vote against Parker's confirmation.  The NAACP then waged a campaign against those Senators who had voted for Judge Parker, and was credited with the defeat of eleven (11) of them when they ran for re-election.

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Nation of Islam

In the Summer of 1930, in the African American section of Detroit, a mysterious person known variously as Farad Mohammed, F. Mohammed Ali, Professor Ford, Wally Farad, and W. D. Fard, began to peddle to African Americans silks and other articles purported to be from Africa.  He preached about the "home country" of the African Americans and about their "true religion" of Islam.  Fard preached against the white race and against Christianity, and gained many converts, who hired a hall which they called the Temple of Islam.  These people were the initiators of the movement later called the Nation of Islam or the Black Muslims.  

Fard's origins, racial and national, are not known.  Many thought him to be an Arab.  In his teaching, Fard used the writings of Joseph F. "Judge" Rutherford, leader of the Jehovah's Witnesses; Hendrik van Loon's Story of Mankind; James Breasted's The Conquest of Civilization; the Qur'an; the Bible; etc.  Fard wrote two manuals for his followers:  The Secret Ritual of the Nation of Islam, which was taught orally; and Teaching for the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in a Mathematical Way.  

Fard founded a University of Islam, actually an elementary and secondary school.  He created the Muslim Girls Training Class for teaching home economics and proper behavior as wife and mother.  Fard founded the Fruit of Islam, a military protection group.  He appointed ministers of Islam and assistant ministers.  In 1934, Fard disappeared and was succeeded by Elijah Muhammad, born Elijah Poole in Georgia, one of Fard's earliest lieutenants.  Muhammad moved the Muslim headquarters to Chicago.  Elijah Muhammad became the Prophet, and Fard was identified with Allah.  

Black Muslims, the members of the Nation of Islam, believed that Elijah Muhammad was the messenger of Allah, directly commissioned by Allah himself, who came in person under the name of Fard to awaken African Americans to their superiority over Europeans and European Americans.  The tenets of the Nation of Islam held that all men were originally black with two sides to their natures, the white half represented the weaknesses and evils of man, the black half, the strengths and virtues.  A scientist had separated the two halves.  Whites had been given 6,070 years to rule and then the blacks would reign.  The black hegemony was to begin in 1984. 

It should not be lost that most Black Muslims in Detroit from 1930 to 1934 were recent immigrants from the rural South and were "functionally illiterate."