By 1940, African Americans now wielded an arsenal of protest tactics and were marching on a path toward full citizenship rights, which remains an always evolving process. African Americans also challenged entrenched cultural stereotypes through photography, theater, and oral histories to illuminate the realities of black life in the United States.
Many black voters switched their allegiance from the Republican to the Democratic Party, waged more militant campaigns for racial justice, and joined interracial and leftist coalitions. As the New Deal progressed a sea change swept over black politics. At the grassroots level, black workers pressed for expanded employment opportunities and joined new labor unions to fight for economic rights. However, a cohort of black advisors and activists critiqued these government programs for excluding African Americans and enacted some reforms. Most African Americans were skeptical about benefiting from the New Deal, and racial discrimination remained rampant.
Once Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), a Democrat, was inaugurated as president in 1933, he launched a “New Deal” of ambitious government programs to lift the United States out of the economic crisis.
The outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929 caused widespread suffering and despair in black communities across the country as women and men faced staggering rates of unemployment and poverty. For African Americans, the Great Depression and the New Deal (1929–1940) marked a transformative era and laid the groundwork for the postwar black freedom struggle in the United States.
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