Franklin D. Roosevelt

 Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York--now a national historic site--he attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School. On St. Patrick's Day, 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt.

Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. He won election to the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.

In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit-he was stricken with poliomyelitis. Demonstrating indomitable courage, he fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the Happy Warrior." In 1928 Roosevelt became Governor of New York.

He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first "hundred days," he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.

In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy.

Roosevelt had pledged the United States to the "good neighbor" policy, transforming the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral American manifesto into arrangements for mutual action against aggressors. He also sought through neutrality legislation to keep the United States out of the war in Europe, yet at the same time to strengthen nations threatened or attacked. When France fell and England came under siege in 1940, he began to send Great Britain all possible aid short of actual military involvement.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt directed organization of the Nation's manpower and resources for global war.

Feeling that the future peace of the world would depend upon relations between the United States and Russia, he devoted much thought to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped, international difficulties could be settled.

As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt's health deteriorated, and on April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. 

Read more: 

http://history1900s.about.com/od/people/a/fdr.htm

http://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt

http://www.potus.com/fdroosevelt.html

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_President_Franklin_D._Roosevelt_respond_when_the_US_Supreme_Court_ruled_some_of_his_New_Deal_programs_unconstitutional

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/facts.html

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