THE GREAT DEPRESSION - A PHOTO ESSAY

A Photo Essay on the Great Depression

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The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange just after the crash of 1929. On Black Tuesday, October twenty-ninth, the market collapsed. In a single day, sixteen million shares were traded--a record--and thirty billion dollars vanished into thin air. Westinghouse lost two thirds of its September value. DuPont dropped seventy points. The "Era of Get Rich Quick" was over. Jack Dempsey, America's first millionaire athlete, lost $3 million. Cynical New York hotel clerks asked incoming guests, "You want a room for sleeping or jumping?" Source

Police stand guard outside the entrance to New York's closed World Exchange Bank, March 20, 1931. Not only did bank failures wipe out people's savings, they also undermined the ideology of thrift. Source

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

World War I veterans block the steps of the Capital during the Bonus March, July 5, 1932 (Underwood and Underwood). In the summer of 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, World War I veterans seeking early payment of a bonus scheduled for 1945 assembled in Washington to pressure Congress and the White House. Hoover resisted the demand for an early bonus. Veterans benefits took up 25% of the 1932 federal budget. Even so, as the Bonus Expeditionary Force swelled to 60,000 men, the president secretly ordered that its members be given tents, cots, army rations and medical care. In July, the Senate rejected the bonus 62 to 18. Most of the protesters went home, aided by Hoover's offer of free passage on the rails. Ten thousand remained behind, among them a hard core of Communists and other organizers. On the morning of July 28, forty protesters tried to reclaim an evacuated building in downtown Washington scheduled for demolition. The city's police chief, Pellham Glassford, sympathetic to the marchers, was knocked down by a brick. Glassford's assistant suffered a fractured skull. When rushed by a crowd, two other policemen opened fire. Two of the marchers were killed. Source

Bud Fields and his family. Alabama. 1935 or 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans. Source

Squatter's Camp, Route 70, Arkansas, October, 1935. Photographer: Ben Shahn Source

Philipinos cutting lettuce, Salinas, California, 1935. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. In order to maximize their ability to exploit farm workers, California employers recruited from China, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the American south, and Europe. Source

Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama, 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans. Source

Farmer and sons, dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936. Photographer: Arthur Rothstein. The drought that helped cripple agriculture in the Great Depression was the worst in the climatological history of the country. By 1934 it had dessicated the Great Plains, from North Dakota to Texas, from the Mississippi River Valley to the Rockies. Vast dust storms swept the region. Source

Migrant pea pickers camp in the rain. California, February, 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

In one of the largest pea camps in California. February, 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience: I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960). Source

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. Source

Freight car converted into house in "Little Oklahoma," California. February, 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange Source

Gellert, Hugo, 1924. Vote Communist poster. During the 1920s the American Communist Party was often a victim at once of government oppression and of its own sectarian struggles, but in the mid-1930s it adopted a "popular front" policy of alliances with liberal organizations. Its membership tripled, but more important still were the thousands of sympathizers who endorsed party-supported causes. Source

Demonstration of unemployed, Columbus, Kansas. May 1936. Photographer: Arthur Rothstein. Source

A sharecropper's yard, Hale County, Alabama, Summer 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans Source

Porch of a sharecropper's cabin, Hale County, Alabama, Summer 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans. The marginal and oppresive economy of sharecropping largely collapsed during the great Depression. Source

Kitchen in house of Floyd Burroughs, sharecropper, near Moundville, Hale County, Alabama. Summer 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans. Source

Part of an impoverished family of nine on a New Mexico highway. Depression refugees from Iowa. Left Iowa in 1932 because of father's ill health. Father an auto mechanic laborer, painter by trade, tubercular. Family has been on relief in Arizona but refused entry on relief roles in Iowa to which state they wish to return. Nine children including a sick four-month-old baby. No money at all. About to sell their belongings and trailer for money to buy food. "We don't want to go where we'll be a nuisance to anybody." Children of migrant workers typically had no way to attend school. By the end of 1930 some 3 million children had abandoned school. Thousands of schools had closed or were operating on reduced hours. At least 200,000 children took to the roads on their own. Summer 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

People living in miserable poverty, Elm Grove, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. August 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

Squatter camp, California, November 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

During the Great Depression, unemployment was high. Many employers tried to get as much work as possible from their employees for the lowest possible wage. Workers were upset with the speedup of assembly lines, working conditions and the lack of job security. Seeking strength in unity, they formed unions. Automobile workers organized the U.A.W. (United Automobile Workers of America) in 1935. General Motors would not recognize the U.A.W. as the workers' bargaining representative. Hearing rumors that G.M. was moving work to factories where the union was not as strong, workers in Flint began a sit-down strike on December 30, 1936. The sit-down was an effective way to strike. When workers walked off the job and picketed a plant, management could bring in new workers to break the strike. If the workers stayed in the plant, management could not replace them with other workers. This photograph shows the broken windows at General Motors' Flint Fisher Body Plant during the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37. Source

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

Toward Los Angeles, California. 1937. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Perhaps 2.5 million people abandoned their homes in the South and the Great Plains during the Great Depression and went on the road. Source

Waiting for the semimonthly relief checks at Calipatria, Imperial Valley, California. Typical story: fifteen years ago they owned farms in Oklahoma. Lost them through foreclosure when cotton prices fell after the war. Became tenants and sharecroppers. With the drought and dust they came West, 1934-1937. Never before left the county where they were born. Now although in California over a year they haven't been continuously resident in any single county long enough to become a legal resident. Reason: migratory agricultural laborers. March 1937. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

Drought refugees near Holtville, California. March 1937. Photographer: Dorothea Lange Source

Leland, Mississippi, in the Delta area, June 1937. Photographer: Dorothea lange. Source

Lincoln Brigade Ambulance Corps. Group photo in New York of sixteen volunteers, American Medical Bureau. 125 American men and women served in the Spanish Civil War with the American Medical Bureau as nurses, doctors, and support staff. 1936-1939. The Spanish Civil War was the great international cause of the 1930s. Aided by Hitler and Mussolini, the Spansih military led a revolt against the progressive elected government. About 3,000 Americans volunteered to fight on behlaf of the Spanish Republic. Click here for the MAPS page on the Spanish Civil War Source

Spanish Civil War demonstration in New York. Press photo. Photograph by "Alexander, 177 Thompson Street, New York." Source

Strike pickets, New York, New York. Dec. 1937. Photographer: Arthur Rothstein. Source

Unemployed workers in front of a shack with Christmas tree, East 12th Street, New York City. December 1937. Photographer: Russell Lee. Tattered communities of the homeless coalesced in and around every major city in the country. Source

Part of the daily lineup outside the State Employment Service Office. Memphis, Tennessee. June 1938. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

Squatter makes coffee in kitchen at his home in abandoned warehouse, Caruthersville, Missouri. August 1938. Photographer: Russell Lee. Source

Members of the picket line at King Farm strike. Morrisville, Pennsylvania. August 1938. Photographer: John Vachon. In contrast to a frequently racist society, several unions were militantly integrationist. Source

Power farming displaces tenants. Texas panhandle, 1938. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

Squatters in Mexican section in San Antonio, Texas. House was built of scrap material in vacant lot in Mexican section of San Antonio, Texas. March 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. Source

Mexican woman arranging things in her shack home. San Antonio, Texas. March 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. Source

Relief line waiting for commodities, San Antonio, Texas. March 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. Source

Man in hobo jungle killing turtle to make soup, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sept. 1939. Photographer: John Vachon. Source

Selling apples, Jacksonville, Texas. October, 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. Many tried apple-selling to avoid the shame of panhandling. In New York City, there were over 5,000 apple sellers on the street. Source

Young boys waiting in kitchen of city mission for soup which is given out nightly. Dubuque, Iowa. April 1940. Photographer: John Vachon. For millions, soup kitchens offered the only food they would eat. Source

Durham, North Carolina, May 1940. Photographer: Jack Delano. "At the bus station." Source

Upstairs bedroom of family on relief, Chicago, Illinois. April 1941. Photographer: Russell Lee. Source

Yabucoa, Puerto Rico. Strikers near the sugar mill. Jan. 1942. Photographer: Jack Delano. Source

Yabucoa, Puerto Rico. In the mill village at the sugar mill. Jan. 1942. Photographer: Jack Delano. Source

THE DUST BOWL

About The Dust Bowl

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For eight years dust blew on the southern plains. It came in a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. The simplest acts of life — breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk — were no longer simple. Children wore dust masks to and from school, women hung wet sheets over windows in a futile attempt to stop the dirt, farmers watched helplessly as their crops blew away. [source]

[Map source]

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s lasted about a decade. Its primary area of impact was on the southern Plains. The northern Plains were not so badly effected, but nonetheless, the drought, windblown dust and agricultural decline were no strangers to the north. In fact the agricultural devastation helped to lengthen the Depression whose effects were felt worldwide. The movement of people on the Plains was also profound.

As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land."

Poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought caused the Dust Bowl. Plains grasslands had been deeply plowed and planted to wheat. During the years when there was adequate rainfall, the land produced bountiful crops. But as the droughts of the early 1930s deepened, the farmers kept plowing and planting and nothing would grow. The ground cover that held the soil in place was gone. The Plains winds whipped across the fields raising billowing clouds of dust to the skys. The skys could darken for days, and even the most well sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on furniture. In some places the dust would drift like snow, covering farmsteads.

Timeline of The Dust Bowl

1931

Severe drought hits the midwestern and southern plains. As the crops die, the 'black blizzards" begin. Dust from the over-plowed and over-grazed land begins to blow.

1932

The number of dust storms is increasing. Fourteen are reported this year; next year there will be 38.

1933

March: When Franklin Roosevelt takes office, the country is in desperate straits. He took quick steps to declare a four-day bank holiday, during which time Congress came up with the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, which stabilized the banking industry and restored people's faith in the banking system by putting the federal government behind it.

May: The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act allots $200 million for refinancing mortgages to help farmers facing foreclosure. The Farm Credit Act of 1933 established a local bank and set up local credit associations.

September: Over 6 million young pigs are slaughtered to stabilize prices With most of the meat going to waste, public outcry led to the creation, in October, of the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation. The FSRC diverted agricultural commodities to relief organizations. Apples, beans, canned beef, flour and pork products were distributed through local relief channels. Cotton goods were eventually included to clothe the needy as well.

October: In California's San Joaquin Valley, where many farmers fleeing the plains have gone, seeking migrant farm work, the largest agricultural strike in America's history begins. More than 18,000 cotton workers with the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) went on strike for 24 days. During the strike, two men and one woman were killed and hundreds injured. In the settlement, the union was recognized by growers, and workers were given a 25 percent raise.

1934

May: Great dust storms spread from the Dust Bowl area. The drought is the worst ever in U.S. history, covering more than 75 percent of the country and affecting 27 states severely.

June: The Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act is approved. This act restricted the ability of banks to dispossess farmers in times of distress. Originally effective until 1938, the act was renewed four times until 1947, when it expired. Roosevelt signs the Taylor Grazing Act, which allows him to take up to 140 million acres of federally-owned land out of the public domain and establish grazing districts that will be carefully monitored. One of many New Deal efforts to reverse the damage done to the land by overuse, the program was able to arrest the deterioration, but couldn't undo the historical damage.

December: The "Yearbook of Agriculture" for 1934 announces, "Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production. . . . 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil. . . "

1935

January 15: The federal government forms a Drought Relief Service to coordinate relief activities. The DRS bought cattle in counties that were designated emergency areas, for $14 to $20 a head. Those unfit for human consumption - more than 50 percent at the beginning of the program - were destroyed. The remaining cattle were given to the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation to be used in food distribution to families nationwide. Although it was difficult for farmers to give up their herds, the cattle slaughter program helped many of them avoid bankruptcy. "The government cattle buying program was a God-send to many farmers, as they could not afford to keep their cattle, and the government paid a better price than they could obtain in local markets."

April 8: FDR approves the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, which provides $525 million for drought relief, and authorizes creation of the Works Progress Administration, which would employ 8.5 million people.

April 14: Black Sunday. The worst "black blizzard" of the Dust Bowl occurs, causing extensive damage.

April 27: Congress declares soil erosion "a national menace" in an act establishing the Soil Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture (formerly the Soil Erosion Service in the U.S. Department of Interior). Under the direction of Hugh H. Bennett, the SCS developed extensive conservation programs that retained topsoil and prevented irreparable damage to the land. Farming techniques such as strip cropping, terracing, crop rotation, contour plowing, and cover crops were advocated. Farmers were paid to practice soil-conserving farming techniques.

December: At a meeting in Pueblo, Colorado, experts estimate that 850,000,000 tons of topsoil has blown off the Southern Plains during the course of the year, and that if the drought continued, the total area affected would increase from 4,350,000 acres to 5,350,000 acres in the spring of 1936. C.H. Wilson of the Resettlement Administration proposes buying up 2,250,000 acres and retiring it from cultivation.

1936

February: Los Angeles Police Chief James E. Davis sends 125 policemen to patrol the borders of Arizona and Oregon to keep "undesirables" out. As a result, the American Civil Liberties Union sues the city.

May: The SCS publishes a soil conservation district law, which, if passed by the states, allows farmers to set up their own districts to enforce soil conservation practices for five-year periods. One of the few grassroots organizations set up by the New Deal still in operation, the soil conservation district program recognized that new farming methods needed to be accepted and enforced by the farmers on the land rather than bureaucrats in Washington.

1937

March: Roosevelt addresses the nation in his second inaugural address, stating, "I see one-third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished . . . the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." FDR's Shelterbelt Project begins. The project called for large-scale planting of trees across the Great Plains, stretching in a 100-mile wide zone from Canada to northern Texas, to protect the land from erosion. Native trees, such as red cedar and green ash, were planted along fence rows separating properties, and farmers were paid to plant and cultivate them. The project was estimated to cost 75 million dollars over a period of 12 years. When disputes arose over funding sources (the project was considered to be a long-term strategy, and therefore ineligible for emergency relief funds), FDR transferred the program to the WPA, where the project had limited success.

1938

The extensive work re-plowing the land into furrows, planting trees in shelterbelts, and other conservation methods has resulted in a 65 percent reduction in the amount of soil blowing. However, the drought continued.

1939

In the fall, the rain comes, finally bringing an end to the drought. During the next few years, with the coming of World War II, the country is pulled out of the Depression and the plains once again become golden with wheat.

THE DEPRESSION IN THE UNITED STATES

The Depression in the United States--An Overview

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The Great Depression

In October 1929 the stock market crashed, wiping out 40 percent of the paper values of common stock. Even after the stock market collapse, however, politicians and industry leaders continued to issue optimistic predictions for the nation's economy. But the Depression deepened, confidence evaporated and many lost their life savings. By 1933 the value of stock on the New York Stock Exchange was less than a fifth of what it had been at its peak in 1929. Business houses closed their doors, factories shut down and banks failed. Farm income fell some 50 percent. By 1932 approximately one out of every four Americans was unemployed.

The core of the problem was the immense disparity between the country's productive capacity and the ability of people to consume. Great innovations in productive techniques during and after the war raised the output of industry beyond the purchasing capacity of U.S. farmers and wage earners. The savings of the wealthy and middle class, increasing far beyond the possibilities of sound investment, had been drawn into frantic speculation in stocks or real estate. The stock market collapse, therefore, had been merely the first of several detonations in which a flimsy structure of speculation had been leveled to the ground.

The presidential campaign of 1932 was chiefly a debate over the causes and possible remedies of the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover, unlucky in entering The White House only eight months before the stock market crash, had struggled tirelessly, but ineffectively, to set the wheels of industry in motion again. His Democratic opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt, already popular as the governor of New York during the developing crisis, argued that the Depression stemmed from the U.S. economy's underlying flaws, which had been aggravated by Republican policies during the 1920s. President Hoover replied that the economy was fundamentally sound, but had been shaken by the repercussions of a worldwide depression -- whose causes could be traced back to the war. Behind this argument lay a clear implication: Hoover had to depend largely on natural processes of recovery, while Roosevelt was prepared to use the federal government's authority for bold experimental remedies.

The election resulted in a smashing victory for Roosevelt, who won 22,800,000 votes to Hoover's 15,700,000. The United States was about to enter a new era of economic and political change.

Roosevelt and the New Deal

In 1933 the new president, Franklin Roosevelt, brought an air of confidence and optimism that quickly rallied the people to the banner of his program, known as the New Deal. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," the president declared in his inaugural address to the nation.

In a certain sense, it is fair to say that the New Deal merely introduced types of social and economic reform familiar to many Europeans for more than a generation. Moreover, the New Deal represented the culmination of a long-range trend toward abandonment of "laissez-faire" capitalism, going back to the regulation of the railroads in the 1880s, and the flood of state and national reform legislation introduced in the Progressive era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

What was truly novel about the New Deal, however, was the speed with which it accomplished what previously had taken generations. In fact, many of the reforms were hastily drawn and weakly administered; some actually contradicted others. And during the entire New Deal era, public criticism and debate were never interrupted or suspended; in fact, the New Deal brought to the individual citizen a sharp revival of interest in government.

When Roosevelt took the presidential oath, the banking and credit system of the nation was in a state of paralysis. With astonishing rapidity the nation's banks were first closed -- and then reopened only if they were solvent. The administration adopted a policy of moderate currency inflation to start an upward movement in commodity prices and to afford some relief to debtors. New governmental agencies brought generous credit facilities to industry and agriculture. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured savings-bank deposits up to $5,000, and severe regulations were imposed upon the sale of securities on the stock exchange.

Unemployment

By 1933 millions of Americans were out of work. Bread lines were a common sight in most cities. Hundreds of thousands roamed the country in search of food, work and shelter. "Brother, can you spare a dime?" went the refrain of a popular song.

An early step for the unemployed came in the form of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a program enacted by Congress to bring relief to young men between 18 and 25 years of age. Run in semi-military style, the CCC enrolled jobless young men in work camps across the country for about $30 per month. About 2 million young men took part during the decade. They participated in a variety of conservation projects: planting trees to combat soil erosion and maintain national forests; eliminating stream pollution; creating fish, game and bird sanctuaries; and conserving coal, petroleum, shale, gas, sodium and helium deposits.

Work relief came in the form of the Civil Works Administration. Although criticized as "make work," the jobs funded ranged from ditch digging to highway repairs to teaching. Created in November 1933, it was abandoned in the spring of 1934. Roosevelt and his key officials, however, continued to favor unemployment programs based on work relief rather than welfare.

Agriculture

The New Deal years were characterized by a belief that greater regulation would solve many of the country's problems. In 1933, for example, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) to provide economic relief to farmers. The AAA had at its core a plan to raise crop prices by paying farmers a subsidy to compensate for voluntary cutbacks in production. Funds for the payments would be generated by a tax levied on industries that processed crops. By the time the act had become law, however, the growing season was well underway, and the AAA encouraged farmers to plow under their abundant crops. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace called this activity a "shocking commentary on our civilization." Nevertheless, through the AAA and the Commodity Credit Corporation, a program which extended loans for crops kept in storage and off the market, output dropped.

Between 1932 and 1935, farm income increased by more than 50 percent, but only partly because of federal programs. During the same years that farmers were being encouraged to take land out of production -- displacing tenants and sharecroppers -- a severe drought hit the Great Plains states, significantly reducing farm production. Violent wind and dust storms ravaged the southern Great Plains in what became known as the "Dust Bowl," throughout the 1930s, but particularly from 1935 to 1938. Crops were destroyed, cars and machinery were ruined, people and animals were harmed. Approximately 800,000 people, often called "Okies," left Arkansas, Texas, Missouri and Oklahoma during the 1930s and 1940s. Most headed farther west to the land of myth and promise, California. The migrants were not only farmers, but also professionals, retailers and others whose livelihoods were connected to the health of the farm communities. California was not the place of their dreams, at least initially. Most migrants ended up competing for seasonal jobs picking crops at extremely low wages.

The government provided aid in the form of the Soil Conservation Service, established in 1935. Farm practices that had damaged the soil had intensified the severity of the storms, and the Service taught farmers measures to reduce erosion. In addition, almost 30,000 kilometers of trees were planted to break the force of winds.

Although the AAA had been mostly successful, it was abandoned in 1936, when the tax on food processors was ruled unconstitutional. Six weeks later Congress passed a more effective farm-relief act, which authorized the government to make payments to farmers who reduced plantings of soil-depleting crops -- thereby achieving crop reduction through soil conservation practices.

By 1940 nearly 6 million farmers were receiving federal subsidies under this program. The new act likewise provided loans on surplus crops, insurance for wheat and a system of planned storage to ensure a stable food supply. Soon, prices of agricultural commodities rose, and economic stability for the farmer began to seem possible.

Industry and Labor

The National Recovery Administration (NRA), established in 1933 with the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), attempted to end cut-throat competition by setting codes of fair competitive practice to generate more jobs and thus more buying. Although the NRA was welcomed initially, business complained bitterly of over-regulation as recovery began to take hold. The NRA was declared unconstitutional in 1935. By this time other policies were fostering recovery, and the government soon took the position that administered prices in certain lines of business were a severe drain on the national economy and a barrier to recovery.

It was also during the New Deal that organized labor made greater gains than at any previous time in American history. NIRA had guaranteed to labor the right of collective bargaining (bargaining as a unit representing individual workers with industry). Then in 1935 Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act, which defined unfair labor practices, gave workers the right to bargain through unions of their own choice and prohibited employers from interfering with union activities. It also created the National Labor Relations Board to supervise collective bargaining, administer elections and ensure workers the right to choose the organization that should represent them in dealing with employers.

The great progress made in labor organization brought working people a growing sense of common interests, and labor's power increased not only in industry but also in politics. This power was exercised largely within the framework of the two major parties, however, and the Democratic Party generally received more union support than the Republicans.

The Second New Deal

In its early years, the New Deal sponsored a remarkable series of legislative initiatives and achieved significant increases in production and prices -- but it did not bring an end to the Depression. And as the sense of immediate crisis eased, new demands emerged. Businessmen mourned the end of "laissez-faire" and chafed under the regulations of the NIRA. Vocal attacks also mounted from the political left and right as dreamers, schemers and politicians alike emerged with economic panaceas that drew wide audiences of those dissatisfied with the pace of recovery. They included Francis E. Townsend's plan for generous old-age pensions; the inflationary suggestions of Father Coughlin, the radio priest who blamed international bankers in speeches increasingly peppered with anti-Semitic imagery; and most formidably, the "Every Man a King" plan of Huey P. Long, senator and former governor of Louisiana, the powerful and ruthless spokesman of the displaced who ran the state like a personal fiefdom. (If he had not been assassinated, Long very likely would have launched a presidential challenge to Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.)

In the face of these pressures from left and right, President Roosevelt backed a new set of economic and social measures. Prominent among these were measures to fight poverty, to counter unemployment with work and to provide a social safety net.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA), the principal relief agency of the so-called second New Deal, was an attempt to provide work rather than welfare. Under the WPA, buildings, roads, airports and schools were constructed. Actors, painters, musicians and writers were employed through the Federal Theater Project, the Federal Art Project and the Federal Writers Project. In addition, the National Youth Administration gave part-time employment to students, established training programs and provided aid to unemployed youth. The WPA only included about three million jobless at a time; when it was abandoned in 1943 it had helped a total of 9 million people.

But the New Deal's cornerstone, according to Roosevelt, was the Social Security Act of 1935. Social Security created a system of insurance for the aged, unemployed and disabled based on employer and employee contributions. Many other industrialized nations had already enacted such programs, but calls for such an initiative in the United States by the Progressives in the early 1900s had gone unheeded. Although conservatives complained that the Social Security system went against American traditions, it was actually relatively conservative. Social Security was funded in large part by taxes on the earnings of current workers, with a single fixed rate for all regardless of income. To Roosevelt, these limitations on the programs were compromises to ensure passage. Although its origins were initially quite modest, Social Security today is one of the largest domestic programs administered by the U.S. government.

A New Coalition

In 1936, the Republican Party nominated Alfred M. Landon, the relatively liberal governor of Kansas, to oppose Roosevelt. Despite all the complaints leveled at the New Deal, Roosevelt won an even more decisive victory than in 1932. He took 60 percent of the population and carried all states except Maine and Vermont. In this election, a broad new coalition aligned with the Democratic Party emerged, consisting of labor, most farmers, immigrants and urban ethnic groups from East and Southern Europe, African Americans and the South. The Republican Party received the support of business as well as middle-class members of small towns and suburbs. This political alliance, with some variation and shifting, remained intact for several decades.

From 1932 to 1938 there was widespread public debate on the meaning of New Deal policies to the nation's political and economic life. It became obvious that Americans wanted the government to take greater responsibility for the welfare of the nation. Indeed, historians generally credit the New Deal with establishing the foundations of the modern welfare state in the United States. Some New Deal critics argued that the indefinite extension of government functions would eventually undermine the liberties of the people. But President Roosevelt insisted that measures fostering economic well-being would strengthen liberty and democracy.

In a radio address in 1938, Roosevelt reminded the American people that:

Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership....Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat. We in America know that our democratic institutions can be preserved and made to work. But in order to preserve them we need...to prove that the practical operation of democratic government is equal to the task of protecting the security of the people....The people of America are in agreement in defending their liberties at any cost, and the first line of the defense lies in the protection of economic security.

Eve of World War II

Before Roosevelt's second term was well under way, his domestic program was overshadowed by a new danger little noted by average Americans: the expansionist designs of totalitarian regimes in Japan, Italy and Germany. In 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria and crushed Chinese resistance; a year later the Japanese set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. Italy, having succumbed to fascism, enlarged its boundaries in Libya and in 1935 attacked Ethiopia. Germany, where Adolf Hitler had organized the National Socialist Party and seized the reins of government in 1933, reoccupied the Rhineland and undertook large-scale rearmament.

As the real nature of totalitarianism became clear, and as Germany, Italy and Japan continued their aggression, American apprehension fueled isolationist sentiment. In 1938, after Hitler had incorporated Austria into the German Reich, his demands for the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia made war seem possible at any moment in Europe. The United States, disillusioned by the failure of the crusade for democracy in World War I, announced that in no circumstances could any country involved in the conflict look to it for aid. Neutrality legislation, enacted piecemeal from 1935 to 1937, prohibited trade with or credit to any of the warring nations. The objective was to prevent, at almost any cost, the involvement of the United States in a non-American war.

With the Nazi assault on Poland in 1939 and the outbreak of World War II, isolationist sentiment increased, even though Americans were far from neutral in their feelings about world events. Public sentiment clearly favored the victims of Hitler's aggression and supported the Allied powers that stood in opposition to German expansion. Under the circumstances, however, Roosevelt could only wait until public opinion regarding U.S. involvement was altered by events.

With the fall of France and the air war against Britain in 1940, the debate intensified between those who favored aiding the democracies and the isolationists, organized around the America First Committee, whose support ranged from Midwestern conservatives to left-leaning pacifists. In the end, the interventionist argument won a protracted public debate, aided in large measure by the work of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.

The United States joined Canada in a Mutual Board of Defense, and aligned with the Latin American republics in extending collective protection to the nations in the Western Hemisphere. Congress, confronted with the mounting crisis, voted immense sums for rearmament, and in September 1940 passed the first peacetime conscription bill ever enacted in the United States -- albeit by a margin of one vote in the House of Representatives. In early 1941 Congress approved the Lend-Lease Program, which enabled President Roosevelt to transfer arms and equipment to any nation (notably Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China) deemed vital to the defense of the United States. Total Lend-Lease aid by war's end amounted to more than $50,000 million.

The 1940 presidential election campaign demonstrated that the isolationists, while vocal, commanded relatively few followers nationally. Roosevelt's Republican opponent, Wendell Wilkie, lacked a compelling issue since he supported the president's foreign policy, and also agreed with a large part of Roosevelt's domestic program. Thus the November election yielded another majority for Roosevelt. For the first time in U.S. history, a president was elected to a third term.

Japan, Pearl Harbor and War

While most Americans anxiously watched the course of the European war, tension mounted in Asia. Taking advantage of an opportunity to improve its strategic position, Japan boldly announced a "new order" in which it would exercise hegemony over all of the Pacific. Battling for its survival against Nazi Germany, Britain was unable to resist, withdrawing from Shanghai and temporarily closing the Burma Road. In the summer of 1940, Japan won permission from the weak Vichy government in France to use airfields in Indochina. By September the Japanese had joined the Rome-Berlin Axis. As a countermove, the United States imposed an embargo on export of scrap iron to Japan.

It seemed that the Japanese might turn southward toward the oil, tin and rubber of British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. In July 1941 the Japanese occupied the remainder of Indochina; the United States, in response, froze Japanese assets.

General Hideki Tojo became prime minister of Japan in October 1941. In mid-November, he sent a special envoy to the United States to meet with Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Among other things, Japan demanded that the U.S. release Japanese assets and stop U.S. naval expansion in the Pacific. Hull countered with a proposal for Japanese withdrawal from China and Indochina in exchange for the freeing of the frozen assets. The Japanese asked for two weeks to study the proposal, but on December 1 rejected it. On December 6, Franklin Roosevelt appealed directly to the Japanese emperor, Hirohito. On the morning of December 7, however, Japanese carrier-based planes attacked the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a devastating, surprise attack. Nineteen ships, including five battleships, and about 150 U.S. planes were destroyed; more than 2,300 soldiers, sailors and civilians were killed. Only one fact favored the Americans that day: the U.S. aircraft carriers that would play such a critical role in the ensuing naval war in the Pacific were at sea and not anchored at Pearl Harbor.

As the details of the Japanese raids upon Hawaii, Midway, Wake and Guam blared from American radios, incredulity turned to anger at what President Roosevelt called "a day that will live in infamy." On December 8, Congress declared a state of war with Japan; three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

The nation rapidly geared itself for mobilization of its people and its entire industrial capacity. On January 6, 1942, President Roosevelt announced staggering production goals: delivery in that year of 60,000 planes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns and 18 million deadweight tons of merchant shipping. All the nation's activities -- farming, manufacturing, mining, trade, labor, investment, communications, even education and cultural undertakings -- were in some fashion brought under new and enlarged controls. The nation raised money in enormous sums and created great new industries for the mass production of ships, armored vehicles and planes. Major movements of population took place. Under a series of conscription acts, the United States brought the armed forces up to a total of 15,100,000. By the end of 1943, approximately 65 million men and women were in uniform or in war-related occupations.

The attack on the United States disarmed the appeal of isolationists and permitted quick military mobilization. However, as a result of Pearl Harbor and the fear of Asian espionage, Americans also committed an act of intolerance: the internment of Japanese-Americans. In February 1942, nearly 120,000 Japanese-Americans residing in California were removed from their homes and interned behind barbed wire in 10 wretched temporary camps, later to be moved to "relocation centers" outside isolated Southwestern towns. Nearly 63 percent of these Japanese-Americans were Nisei -- American-born -- and, therefore, U.S. citizens. No evidence of espionage ever surfaced. In fact, Japanese-Americans from Hawaii and the continental United States fought with noble distinction and valor in two infantry units on the Italian front. Others served as interpreters and translators in the Pacific. In 1983 the U.S. government acknowledged the injustice of internment with limited payments to those Japanese-Americans of that era who were still living.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

About the Great Depression

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The Great Depression was an economic slump in North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world.

Though the U.S. economy had gone into depression six months earlier, the Great Depression may be said to have begun with a catastrophic collapse of stock-market prices on the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929. During the next three years stock prices in the United States continued to fall, until by late 1932 they had dropped to only about 20 percent of their value in 1929. Besides ruining many thousands of individual investors, this precipitous decline in the value of assets greatly strained banks and other financial institutions, particularly those holding stocks in their portfolios. Many banks were consequently forced into insolvency; by 1933, 11,000 of the United States' 25,000 banks had failed. The failure of so many banks, combined with a general and nationwide loss of confidence in the economy, led to much-reduced levels of spending and demand and hence of production, thus aggravating the downward spiral. The result was drastically falling output and drastically rising unemployment; by 1932, U.S. manufacturing output had fallen to 54 percent of its 1929 level, and unemployment had risen to between 12 and 15 million workers, or 25-30 percent of the work force.

The Great Depression began in the United States but quickly turned into a worldwide economic slump owing to the special and intimate relationships that had been forged between the United States and European economies after World War I. The United States had emerged from the war as the major creditor and financier of postwar Europe, whose national economies had been greatly weakened by the war itself, by war debts, and, in the case of Germany and other defeated nations, by the need to pay war reparations. So once the American economy slumped and the flow of American investment credits to Europe dried up, prosperity tended to collapse there as well. The Depression hit hardest those nations that were most deeply indebted to the United States, i.e., Germany and Great Britain. In Germany, unemployment rose sharply beginning in late 1929, and by early 1932 it had reached 6 million workers, or 25 percent of the work force. Britain was less severely affected, but its industrial and export sectors remained seriously depressed until World War II. Many other countries had been affected by the slump by 1931.

Almost all nations sought to protect their domestic production by imposing tariffs, raising existing ones, and setting quotas on foreign imports. The effect of these restrictive measures was to greatly reduce the volume of international trade: by 1932 the total value of world trade had fallen by more than half as country after country took measures against the importation of foreign goods.

The Great Depression had important consequences in the political sphere. In the United States, economic distress led to the election of the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in late 1932. Roosevelt introduced a number of major changes in the structure of the American economy, using increased government regulation and massive public-works projects to promote a recovery. But despite this active intervention, mass unemployment and economic stagnation continued, though on a somewhat reduced scale, with about 15 percent of the work force still unemployed in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II. After that, unemployment dropped rapidly as American factories were flooded with orders from overseas for armaments and munitions. The depression ended completely soon after the United States' entry into World War II in 1941. In Europe, the Great Depression strengthened extremist forces and lowered the prestige of liberal democracy. In Germany, economic distress directly contributed to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The Nazis' public-works projects and their rapid expansion of munitions production ended the Depression there by 1936.

At least in part, the Great Depression was caused by underlying weaknesses and imbalances within the U.S. economy that had been obscured by the boom psychology and speculative euphoria of the 1920s. The Depression exposed those weaknesses, as it did the inability of the nation's political and financial institutions to cope with the vicious downward economic cycle that had set in by 1930. Prior to the Great Depression, governments traditionally took little or no action in times of business downturn, relying instead on impersonal market forces to achieve the necessary economic correction. But market forces alone proved unable to achieve the desired recovery in the early years of the Great Depression, and this painful discovery eventually inspired some fundamental changes in the United States' economic structure. After the Great Depression, government action, whether in the form of taxation, industrial regulation, public works, social insurance, social-welfare services, or deficit spending, came to assume a principal role in ensuring economic stability in most industrial nations with market economies.

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The International Depression

The Great Depression of 1929-33 was the most severe economic crisis of modern times. Millions of people lost their jobs, and many farmers and businesses were bankrupted. Industrialized nations and those supplying primary products (food and raw materials) were all affected in one way or another. In Germany the United States industrial output fell by about 50 per cent, and between 25 and 33 per cent of the industrial labour force was unemployed.

The Depression was eventually to cause a complete turn-around in economic theory and government policy. In the 1920s governments and business people largely believed, as they had since the 19^th century, that prosperity resulted from the least possible government intervention in the domestic economy, from open international relations with little trade discrimination, and from currencies that were fixed in value and readily convertible. Few people would continue to believe this in the 1930s.

THE MAIN AREAS OF DEPRESSION

The US economy had experienced rapid economic growth and financial excess in the late 1920s, and initially the economic downturn was seen as simply part of the boom-bust-boom cycle. Unexpectedly, however, output continued to fall for three and a half years, by which time half of the population was in desperate circumstances (map1). It also became clear that there had been serious over-production in agriculture, leading to falling prices and a rising debt among farmers. At the same time there was a major banking crisis, including the "Wall Street Crash" in October 1929. The situation was aggravated by serious policy mistakes of the Federal Reserve Board, which led to a fall in money supply and further contraction of the economy.

Map 1

The economic situation in Germany (map2) was made worse by the enormous debt with which the country had been burdened following the First World War. It had been forced to borrow heavily in order to pay "reparations" to the victorious European powers, as demanded by the Treat of Versailles (1919), and also to pay for industrial reconstruction. When the American economy fell into depression, US banks recalled their loans, causing the German banking system to collapse.

Map 2

Countries that were dependent on the export of primary products, such as those in Latin America, were already suffering a depression in the late l920s. More efficient farming methods and technological changes meant that the supply of agricultural products was rising faster than demand, and prices were falling as a consequence. Initially, the governments of the producer countries stockpiled their products. but this depended on loans from the USA and Europe. When these were recalled, the stockpiles were released onto the market, causing prices to collapse and the income of the primary-producing countries to fall drastically (map3).

Map 3

NEW INTERVENTIONIST POLICIES

The Depression spread rapidly around the world because the responses made by governments were flawed. When faced with falling export earnings they overreacted and severely increased tariffs on imports, thus further reducing trade. Moreover, since deflation was the only policy supported by economic theory at the time, the initial response of every government was to cut their spending. As a result consumer demand fell even further. Deflationary policies were critically linked to exchange rates. Under the Gold Standard, which linked currencies to the value of gold, governments were committed to maintaining fixed exchange rates. However, during the Depression they were forced to keep interest rates high to persuade banks to buy and hold their currency. Since prices were falling, interest-rate repayments rose in real terms, making it too expensive for both businesses and individuals to borrow.

The First World War had led to such political mistrust that international action to halt the Depression was impossible to achieve In 1931 banks in the United States started to withdraw funds from Europe, leading to the selling of European currencies and the collapse of many European banks. At this point governments either introduced exchange control (as in Germany) or devalued the currency (as in Britain) to stop further runs. As a consequence of this action the gold standard collapsed (map 4).

Map 4 The gold standard linked currencies to the value of gold, and was supported by almost every country in the world. From 1931, however, countries began to leave the standard, leading to its total collapse by 1936. Although at the time this was seen as a disaster, it actually presented opportunities for recovery in many countries, allowing governments to intervene to create economic growth.

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

The Depression had profound political implications. In countries such as Germany and Japan, reaction to the Depression brought about the rise to power of militarist governments who adopted the regressive foreign policies that led to the Second World War. In countries such as the United States and Britain, government intervention ultimately resulted in the creation of welfare systems and the managed economies of the period following the Second World War.

In the United States Roosevelt became President in 1933 and promised a "New Deal" under which the government would intervene to reduce unemployment by work-creation schemes such as street cleaning and the painting of post offices. Both agriculture and industry were supported by policies (which turned out to be mistaken) to restrict output and increase prices. The most durable legacy of the New Deal was the great public works projects such as the Hoover Dam and the introduction by the Tennessee Valley Authority of flood control, electric power, fertilizer, and even education to a depressed agricultural region in the south.

The New Deal was not, in the main, an early example of economic management, and it did not lead to rapid recovery. Income per capita was no higher in 1939 than in 1929, although the government�s welfare and public works policies did benefit many of the most needy people. The big growth in the US economy was, in fact, due to rearmament.

In Germany Hitler adopted policies that were more interventionist, developing a massive work-creation scheme that had largely eradicated unemployment by 1936. In the same year rearmament, paid for by government borrowing, started in earnest. In order to keep down inflation, consumption was restricted by rationing and trade controls. By 1939 the Germans� Gross National Product was 51 per cent higher than in 1929 � an increase due mainly to the manufacture of armaments and machinery.

THE COLLAPSE OF WORLD TRADE

The German case is an extreme example of what happened virtually everywhere in the 1930s. The international economy broke up into trading blocs determined by political allegiances and the currency in which they traded. Trade between the blocs was limited, with world trade in 1939 still below its 1929 level. Although the global economy did eventually recover from the Depression, it was at considerable cost to international economic relations and to political stability.

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JESSE OWENS AND THE 1936 OLYMPICS

Jesse Owens and the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Jesse Owens and the “Nazi Olympics”

“Hitler didn’t snub me—it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”

— Jesse Owens, in Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics (Jeremy Schaap, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007)

James Cleveland (“J.C.”/“Jesse”) Owens (1913-1980) was born near Oakville, Alabama (southwest of Huntsville) on September 12, 1913. J.C. was only nine years old when Henry and Emma Owens moved the family to Cleveland, Ohio to seek a better life.

Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Photo: Library of Congress

Owens is best known for his victories at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals. The American track and field champ first drew national attention as a student at East Technical High School in Cleveland when he equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash and long-jumped 24 feet 9-½ inches at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago.

Owens later attended Ohio State University, where he was affectionately known as the “Buckeye Bullet.” In 1935 and 1936 he won a record eight individual NCAA championships, four in each year. At the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan on May 25, 1935, Owens set three world records and tied a fourth.

That same year, Jesse Owens married his high school sweetheart, Minnie Ruth Solomon. (Ruth had given birth to their first daughter, Gloria, in 1932.) They would have two more daughters: Marlene (1939) and Beverly (1940).

OLYMPIC VICTORS: Jesse Owens’ name appears three times on this list at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. His fourth gold medal was for the 4 x 100 m relay (Staffellauf, USA). Photo: Hyde Flippo > More stadium photos

Seven Days in Berlin
Jesse Owens’ lasting international fame is the result of his athletic achievements in Berlin over a period of just seven days in the summer of 1936. Between August 3 and August 9 the Afro-American athlete won four gold medals, one each for the 100-meter dash, the long jump, the 200-meter dash, and the 400-meter relay. Owens’ four track and field victories were an achievement not equaled until 1984, when Carl Lewis, another African-American, did the same at the 1984 Summer Olympics. (Lewis was often called the “second Jesse Owens” before he got his negative image.)

German Track Shoes Jesse Owens was wearing German track shoes when he won his gold medals in Berlin. So were all the members of the German team and most of the track and field athletes. His shoes were made by the company co-founded by Adolf ("Adi") Dassler. Today that firm is called Adidas.

Many myths have developed around Owens’ victories in 1936. One of the most persistent erroneous stories is the “Hitler snub” myth. We’ll discuss that one a bit later, but first we’ll look at another Berlin Olympics myth.

The fact that there were American athletes competing in the 1936 Olympics at all is still considered by many to be a blotch on the history of the US Olympic Committee. Germany’s open discrimination against Jews and other “non-Aryans” was already public knowledge when many Americans opposed US participation in the “Nazi Olympics.” The opponents of US participation included the American ambassadors to Germany and Austria. But those who warned that Hitler and the Nazis would use the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin for propaganda purposes lost the battle to have the US boycott the Berlin Olympiade.

Which brings us to our first Olympic myth. It is often stated that Jesse Owens’ four gold medals humiliated Hitler by proving to the world that Nazi claims of Aryan superiority were a lie. But Hitler and the Nazis were far from unhappy with the Olympic results. Not only did Germany win far more medals than any other country at the 1936 Olympics, but the Nazis had pulled off the huge public relations coup that Olympic opponents had predicted, casting Germany and the Nazis, falsely, in a positive light. In the long run, Owens’ victories turned out to be only a minor embarrassment for Nazi Germany.

Leni Riefenstahl Jesse Owens' long-jump victory is documented in the 1938 film Olympia by the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Her groundbreaking film of the 1936 Olympics is considered a cinematic masterpiece.

But Jesse Owens’ reception by the German public and the spectators in the Olympic stadium was warm. There were German cheers of “Yesseh Oh-vens” or just “Oh-vens” from the crowd. Owens was a true celebrity in Berlin, mobbed by autograph seekers to the point that he complained about all the attention. He later claimed that his reception in Berlin was greater than any other he had ever experienced, and he had been quite popular even before the Olympics.

Back in the USA
With his victories and medals behind him, Owens was looking forward to reaping some rewards. But after being stripped of his amateur status, potential sponsors backed out. That, and the racial discrimination of the day in his native land, prevented him from enjoying anything close to the huge financial benefits that African American athletes can expect today. When Owens came home from his success in Nazi Germany, he faced barriers that he would not have faced today. In fact, Owens had encountered far less discrimination in Germany than he did back in his own country. For a post-Olympic reception at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, the world-famous black athlete was forced to use the freight elevator! That is just one example of the humiliating discrimination that even a black man as famous as Owens confronted in those days.

18 African-American Athletes in Berlin Jesse Owens was just one of 18 African-American athletes (including 2 women) who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. That was the largest number of black athletes who had ever been part of the US Olympic team up to that time. Ten of the 18 won 14 Olympic medals, 8 of them gold. That figure represents almost one-quarter of the total of 56 medals won by the US team in all events. SOURCE: US Holocaust Memorial Museum

After the ticker-tape parades, Owens received no Hollywood offers, no endorsement contracts, and no ad deals. His face didn’t appear on cereal boxes. Three years after his victories in Berlin, a failed business deal forced Owens to declare bankruptcy. He made a modest living from his own sports promotions, including racing against a thoroughbred horse. After moving to Chicago in 1949, he started a successful public relations firm. Owens was also a popular jazz disc jockey for many years in the “Windy City.”

Jesse Owens (center) during his gold medal award ceremony for the long jump, admidst a sea of Nazi salutes in Berlin. Photo: Bundesarchiv

The Hitler-Snub Myth
Adolf Hitler did shun a black American athlete at the 1936 Games, but it wasn’t Jesse Owens. On the first day of the Olympics, just before Cornelius Johnson, an African-American althlete who won the first gold medal for the US that day, was to receive his award, Hitler left the stadium early. (The Nazis later claimed it was a previously scheduled departure.) Prior to his departure, Hitler had received a number of winners, but Olympic officials informed the German leader that in the future he must receive all of the winners or none at all. After the first day, he opted to acknowledge none. Jesse Owens had his victories on the second day and later, when Hitler was no longer in attendance. Would Hitler have snubbed Owens if he had been in the stadium on day two? Perhaps. But since he wasn’t there, he didn’t.

Jesse Owens’ Record Wins Owens’ Gold: 100-meter dash in 10.3 seconds (tying the world record), long jump with a jump of 26' 5-¼" (Olympic record), 200-meter dash in 20.7 seconds (Olympic record), and 400-meter relay (first leg) in 39.8 seconds (Olympic and world record).

The FDR Snub
Ironically, the real snub of Owens came from his own president. Even after ticker-tape parades for Owens in New York City and Cleveland, President Franklin D. Roosevelt never publicly acknowledged Owens’ record-breaking achievements. Owens was never invited to the White House and never even received a letter of congratulations from the president. That included the later Truman administration. Almost two decades passed before an American president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, honored Owens by naming him “Ambassador of Sports” — in 1955.

This US postage stamp was issued in honor of Jesse Owens in 1998. Photo: USPS

Later US presidents also honored Owens. In 1976, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush posthumously awarded Owens the Congressional Gold Medal.

The many tributes to Owens since his death in 1980 include two US postage stamps (in 1990 and 1998, see photo above). In Berlin a street near the Olympic Stadium in Berlin was renamed Jesse-Owens-Allee in 1984. The Jesse-Owens-Realschule/Oberschule (a secondary school) in the Lichtenberg district of Berlin also honors his name. In 2001, Ohio State University dedicated its Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium for track and field events.

Jesse Owens, a longtime smoker, died of lung cancer in Tucson, Arizona on March 31, 1980. In Phoenix, where he had spent his retired life, his body lay in state in the Arizona capitol rotunda. He is buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.

“When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. Now what’s the difference?”

— Jesse Owens, quoted in his New York Times obituary (April 1, 1980)

On June 29, 1996, in conjunction with the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Owens’ hometown of Oakville, Alabama dedicated the new 20-acre Jesse Owens Memorial Park in Danville and unveiled the new visitors center, memorial museum, and a replica of the Owens home. As part of a nationwide torch relay, the Olympic Torch passed through Cleveland, Ohio (June 9) and Oakville (June 29), 60 years after Owens’ 1936 Olympic triumph in Berlin. Stuart Owens Rankin, Jesse Owens’ grandson, was one of the torch bearers. (Ironically, the very first Olympic Torch relay was inaugurated by the Nazis for the 1936 Games.)

In October 2005, with help from the Hampton Inn Corporation’s Save-A-Landmark Program, volunteers revitalized the Jesse Owens Memorial Park, which features a bronze statue of the athlete and a replica of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Torch. Jesse’s widow Ruth lit the torch’s eternal flame as part of the 1996 ceremonies.