Great Depression

Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau  during the Great Depression.

In the 1930s, Texas' poor struggled to adjust to rapidly increasing unemployment and homelessness plus the emotional scares that lasted long after the economy recovered. 

The Great Depression dramatically changed the way Americans viewed their government and themselves. In Texas, unemployment and homelessness destroyed lives and families. Even though many New Deal programs provided assistance to Texas’ families, the negativity surrounding the Depression caused emotional hardships that could not be easily overcome.

Psychological impacts of the Great Depression

Many Texans, black and white, were unable to adapt to the sudden unemployment. For instance, just before shooting himself a distraught Houstonian left a note indicating that the Depression had gotten the best of him since he could not find work and felt too “proud” to ask for help from one of the numerous charities in the city. Suicide seemed his only option. He wrote, “So I see no other course. A land flowing with milk and honey and a first-class mechanic can’t make an honest living. I would rather take my chances with a just God than with an unjust humanity.”

People living in miserable poverty. August 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.

Unemployed and homeless, thousands of Texans hitchhiked across the state in search of work, while being frequently forced to seek shelter in “abandoned buildings, caves, dugouts, and shanties made of discarded boxes.” [ii] San Antonian Lonita Gourley was so desperate for employment, she wrote to Franklin Roosevelt asking for his assistance in finding employment with the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

However, in Dallas, dire economic contradictions were everywhere. For example, there still existed communities of neatly manicured lawns of the city’s elite who paid “homage to God and educate [their] children in magnificent churches and schools that are second to none in beauty and facilities.” Conversely, in other parts of the city the working class lived in slums and shantytowns that made those homes inhabited by antebellum slaves seems luxurious.

Racism and the Activities of Depression-era Private Organizations in Texas, as in other communities across the country, private organizations initiated relief activities to care for the hungry and homeless. In Houston, the First Presbyterian Church provided meals to over 75 thousand individuals during the winter of 1930. Unfortunately, the problems associated with racism were evident in the activities (clothes, and/or cash distributions) of private relief agencies, which often denied minorities access to their services.

Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother," destitute in a pea picker's camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute. By the end of the decade there were still 4 million migrants on the road.

Racism and the New Deal

Racism also affected the operations of federal agencies. In Houston, for example, blacks and Hispanics were told not to apply for relief because there was not enough money to take care of the city’s white families. When Governor Allred requested additional funds to increase the number of Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) camps, many Texans opposed new CCC facilities fearful they would become predominately “Negro” camps, even though the existing CCC facilities were already racially segregated.

Therefore, it was not surprising that blacks and Hispanics experienced the hardships of the Great Depression to a greater degree than most whites. While white families certainly experienced the despair of homeless and poverty, the state unemployment rate for blacks was twice that of their white contemporaries. Meanwhile, Texas’ Hispanic community also experienced hardships during the 1930s but there was no significant change from the post Reconstruction era when they struggled for recognition and survival in a changing economy.

Strikers guarding window entrance to Fisher body plant number three. Jan.-Feb. 1936. Photographer: Sheldon Dick.

Apathy and Violence in the Great Depression

Additionally, high levels of economic disenfranchisement from the Great Depression led to high instances of crime and violence. In a study of black high school graduates in 1933, 31 percent had no real career or educational plans after high school. Violence had always been a part of the urban black community, and Houston’s urban communities were no different. By the 1940s and 1950s, the Fifth Ward became known as the “Nickel” and “the Bloody Fifth” because of frequent violent confrontations in the community.

There is little question that the Great Depression changed American society by introducing Rooseveltian paternalism and the welfare state. Texans tried to survive the crises the best way they knew how. Some relied upon the government while others turned to the more familiar for help. Nonetheless, the emotional scares existed long after the economy recovered as minority communities in urban areas experienced increased social tensions leading to higher than average crime and violence.

See more:
http://www.erroluys.com/HowAmericansHelpedEachOtherDuringtheGreatDepression.htm
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/npg01
http://www.harlandavidson.com/txhist/4e/chap11ov.htm