How did the economy effect the black people?

The Black Population
"For the state's African American population, as the blues singer Lonnie Johnson put it, "Hard times don't worry me / I was broke when it first started out." Condemned by Jim Crow before the depression to inferior levels of education and the lowest-paying menial jobs, blacks were blocked from participating in the state's political system. The income of rural blacks was about half that of rural whites. In the entire state there were only four black insurance companies, one bank (Citizens Trust Bank in Atlanta), and one wholly owned newspaper. According to the 1930 U.S. census, there were 10,110 black professionals in Georgia (out of a population of 1,071,125), the majority being clergymen and teachers. Hospitals for blacks existed only in the largest urban areas. The Great Depression slowed the black migratory stream north but did not stop it entirely. In 1890 African Americans accounted for 47 percent of Georgia's population and by 1930 just 37 percent. By 1940 that figure fell slightly, to 35 percent."



The Great Depression of the 1930s worsened the already bleak economic situation of African Americans. They were the first to be laid off from their jobs, and they suffered from an unemployment rate two to three times that of whites. In early public assistance programs African Americans often received substantially less aid than whites, and some charitable organizations even excluded blacks from their soup kitchens.    

1940
Migrant workers travel from Florida to New Jersey to harvest potatoes. African Americans were particularly devastated by the Great Depression when work and food were scarce. They became part of a major migratory cycle in which laborers started down south in the spring, worked their way north, completed the fall harvest and then returned to Florida to begin the cycle again.
African Americans suffered more than whites, since their jobs were often taken away from them and given to whites. In 1930, 50 percent of blacks were unemployed. However, Eleanor Roosevelt championed black rights, and New Deal programs prohibited discrimination. Discrimination continued in the South, however, as a result a large number of black voters switched from the Republican to the Democrat party during the Depression.