The Great Depression in the South

How Did The Great Depression Affect the South?

The Great Depression in the South came at a time when the South was still not fully recovered from the civil war. As a result the economy was already in worse shape than their thriving Northern counterparts.

The South was the poorest section of the depression with a per capita income ½ of that of the northern states. Workers struggled to feed their families even before the stock market crash of 1929. As people who would be interviewed later on would state, “those were the good old days, but the good old days were pretty tough.”

After the depression hit the south fell into even worse hardship. One county in North Carolina saw 3,500 Farm Foreclosures out of 5,280 farms in the county in a single year. This means if you were farming during that time period and lived next to two other farmers’ chances are two out of the three of you would have lost your farm within the year, an amazingly high figure.

A swarm of Locus and a drought hurt farmers even more by making it harder for them to grow their crops.

Governments in the South during the great depression responded to the economic disaster by raising the sales tax and cutting spending on government programs. These two things lead to an even greater disaster.

All of the problems in the South lead Franklin Roosevelt to refer to the south during the great depression as the nation’s number one problem.

African Americans During The Great Depression

Blacks during the Great Depression were also hit hard, but they did not have as far to fall as other workers at the time. One Black citizen by the name Georgian Wryly stated that “most blacks did not even know the Great Depression has come. They had always been poor and only thought the whites were catching up.”

In 1929 when the average yearly income was $2,300 many African Americans found it hard to make $100 a year. After the depression hit they became the first to get fired from their jobs and the last to get hired.

At its height ½ of all blacks were out of work, twice as high as whites. A good portion of those that did have a job worked as “scabs” or temporary workers while strikes were going on. White rioters shouting slogans such as, “No Jobs for Niggers until every white man has a job.” A few rioters went so far as to murder black workers in order to get their jobs.

The horrific conditions in the south during the great depression lead many African Americans to head north were northern workers believed them to be pests coming there to steal their jobs away.

Recovery of the Great Depression in the South

The Recovery of the Great Depression in the South was a long one brought on by the New Deal and other government programs. But recovery would be slow and the south would not reach a decent economic state until WW2.

Return From the Great Depression in the South to Stock Market History.