How did the great Depression affect the south?

  Before and After: Living poorly or better?

"Conditions were harsher for blacks, whose entanglement in the sharecropping system dated back to the end of the Reconstruction era. While some still owned their own farms in the 1920s, many were forced off their land entirely by declining prices and into menial jobs in towns and cities. Others took the now-familiar path of migrating to urban areas in the state or industrial centers in the North, often joining relatives who had migrated during the mid-1910s. By 1935 just 12 percent of blacks owned the land they worked.

   The root of Georgia's rural depression in the 1920s was the decades-long dependence on cash-crop agriculture. Cash-crop production placed enormous pressure on farmers to plant every available acre of land with cotton, which eventually depleted the soil. Outmoded and careless practices, such as intertilling and the plowing of furrows without respect to the land's contour, further drained topsoil, leaving the land gashed and gullied. Making matters worse, the removal of much of the state's natural forestland eliminated one of nature's most effective barriers to erosion. Georgia's land, economy, and farmers were already wearing out when the Great Depression began."-Jamil S. Zainaldin, Georgia Humanities Council

1939
Two sisters shop in San Augustine, Texas.

1942

Ella Watson cares for her three grand children at her home in Washington DC.

It was extremely difficult for a large segment of the population to make a living during the depression. Living conditions were terrible and people lived in extreme poverty. While these conditions affected all segments of society, there is very little known about how African Americans survived during the depression. My goal is to find out, as much information as possible, what it was like to live during the Great Depression from an African Americans' point of view.

Much of the country's African-American population lived in rural areas and worked on farms owned by white landowners. For rural African-Americans, the Great Depression was hard to distinguish when poverty was always a way of life. Living conditions became more horrendous when some landowners lost their properties during the Depression. African-Americans had always relied on subsistence farming to supplement their meager earnings. In any case, most shared what little they had.

Life was considerably harder for African-Americans living in urban areas. However, there were many African-Americans who continued to work doing hard manual labor or working in areas inherently dangerous such as in foundries, while others worked as domestic servants for white folks. A smaller number worked for the railroads, steel mills, coal mines, school boards, etc. There were some enterprising African-Americans who made a fairly reasonable living operating small businesses.

Some African-Americans made a living as peddlers or street vendors. One gentlemen by the name of Clyde “Kingfish” Smith is said to have made a living selling fish in Harlem, New York City for as little as five cents a pound.

1938
A girl looks out of a window at Gees Bend, Alabama