-AA were sharecroppers - the Great Depression caused crops to go down so most AA moved to the north and west looking for jobs - Ex. Cotton dropped from 18 cents per lbs to 6 cents per lbs
CONTINUING CHALLENGES AA FACED DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION
- lots of AA would be lynched by white men looking for work - (ex. AA working on trains would be attacked and killed by white men looking for work on trains - also lots of employers discriminated AAs to favor whites - lots of AA went into poverty
CHALLENGES MEXICANS FACED DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION
- most Mexican lived in the states Arizona, California, and Texas - When the dust bowl hit the Great Plains it forced a lot of people to move to the west and look for work - so the govt. reduced immigration - lots of people also pressured Mexicans to leave the U.S. - lots of employers denied Mexican Americans from jobs
- Dorothea Lange and Margret Bourke were both white photographers during the Great Depression - they documented the hardships people went through during the GD by taking pictures - Govt. hired them to take pics of what was going on in hope of raising awareness to the situation - it succeeded
- hired photographers, writers, painters, etc. to help raise awareness with art - Govt. also used artists to record the failures and successes of the Govt.
- photographers and writers came together to create photojournalism - these "works" described through and words (Ex. Bleak factories, dirty shantytowns, and oppressive farms) - photojournalism aimed to show the simple truths of daily life during the Depression
- some writers during the Great Depression were John Steinbeck and Richard Wright - Wright wrote the novel the Native Son which was about the relationship between AAs and whites - Steinbeck wrote the novel the Grapes of Wrath which is about a family driven off the farm by the dust bowl and has to go west to find work, they faced many hardships but despite the troubles the family endures and realizes its strength