levo

Y319: Civil Rights in the USA 1865–1992

Depth study: The New Deal and civil rights — minorities, women and workers under Roosevelt

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on African Americans, women, Native Americans and unions by 1932, Roosevelt’s motives, the Black Cabinet and anti-lynching, the AAA and NRA, Social Security, the Indian New Deal, the Wagner Act and historians’ views.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Numbers

What was the position of women by 1932?

Who and when

How did New Deal agencies help, and in one case harm, African Americans?

Key term

State what the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 offered Native Americans.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Describe the situation of African Americans by 1932.

    Model answer

    They were last hired and first fired, with urban Black unemployment running at around half in some cities, southern tenancy collapsing as cotton prices fell, no federal protection against lynching, disfranchisement intact across the South, and the Scottsboro case of 1931 illustrating the state of southern justice; most who could vote still voted Republican.

  2. 2

    What was the position of women by 1932?

    Model answer

    Female unemployment rose sharply in clerical and manufacturing work, public hostility to married women holding jobs was intense and was written into Section 213 of the Economy Act of 1932, the suffrage movement had fragmented after 1920, and the women's organisations remained split between the Equal Rights Amendment and protective legislation.

  3. 3

    What was the position of Native American Indians by 1932?

    Model answer

    They were the poorest group in the country, having lost around two-thirds of their land under allotment, with the Meriam Report of 1928 documenting extreme poverty, disease, high infant mortality and abusive boarding schools, and with the Bureau of Indian Affairs still committed to assimilation.

  4. 4

    Summarise the state of the trade unions by 1932.

    Model answer

    Membership had fallen from about five million in 1920 to roughly three million, the open shop and yellow-dog contracts were entrenched, unemployment near a quarter of the workforce destroyed bargaining power, and the one gain, the Norris-La Guardia Act of 1932, merely restricted the use of federal injunctions.

  5. 5

    Explain Roosevelt's motives towards minority groups.

    Model answer

    His overriding aims were relief, recovery and reform for the nation as a whole rather than civil rights, and he needed the votes of southern Democrats who chaired the key congressional committees, so he was willing to make symbolic gestures and appointments while refusing to spend political capital on measures that would split his coalition.

  6. 6

    What was the Black Cabinet?

    Model answer

    It was the informal network of around forty African American advisers appointed to New Deal agencies, coordinated by Mary McLeod Bethune of the National Youth Administration, which gave Black Americans a voice inside the federal government for the first time and pressed, with limited success, for fair shares of relief.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

1Closed book
2Open book
3Closed book

The 3-step method, run for you

Answer cold, learn it, then prove it stuck. Levo tracks the jump between your first attempt and your last.

Y101: Alfred and the Making of England 871–1016
Y102: Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest 1035–1107
Y103: England 1199–1272
Y104: England 1377–1455

Cram a whole paper in one sitting

Sort every topic into what you know and what you do not, then drill only the weak ones.

Franz Ferdinand was shot at in June.
SarajevoBelgradeVienna

Blank Blitz makes facts automatic

Rapid timed gap-fills on the terms and numbers you need to recall without thinking.

AA republic replaced the sultanate.
BThe caliphate was abolished in 1924.
CThe Latin alphabet was adopted.

Build It gets the exam shape right

Assemble a full-mark answer from its marking points, in the order an examiner wants them.

Simony means the buying and selling of Church office.
TrueFalse

Test It catches misconceptions

Spot the fault in a statement. The traps are the mistakes students actually make.

721941163128510

Brain Breaks between sessions

Short focus games to reset attention, so the next set lands better than the last.

Every question in Y319: Civil Rights in the USA 1865–1992, on a schedule.

Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.

Or £46 a year, about £3.83 a month. Cancel anytime.