eir most famous political and social advocacy organizations.
African Americans were excluded from the economic benefits of industrialization, and lynchings and race riots were frequent occurrences throughout the nation. Simultaneously, the Klu Klux Klan experienced a tremendous growth in membership and political power. World War I and the policies of the Wilson Administration reinforced the perception of alienation for African Americans. It appeared that the nation as a whole was more interested in democracy and human rights abroad than right here at home.
The Great Depression officially began in October of 1929 but African Americans had been feeling the economic pinch a few years earlier. Black farmers were already suffering from the effects of racism in agricultural loans, depressed prices, and the boowevil blight on crops. The recession of the mid 1920s also affected urban blacks particularly hard in the form of layoffs (Franklin & Moss, 1988, 341). By 1935, twenty six percent of black males and thirty two percent of black females, nationwide, were unemployed (Bennett, 1993, 359).
While economic conditions were getting worse, their traditional allies, the Republican Party, began drifting away from supporting issues important to African Americans, and increasingly courted Southern whites. In the Presidential election of 1924, the Republicans made a conscientious decision to forgo the black vote in an attempt to make inroads into the Southern Democrat's power base. At the same time Republicans were looking to change their power base, Democrats began courting the black vote. They were looking to compensate for the inroads Republicans had made among Southern whites by securing the alienated black support (whose aid came mostly in the form of money rather than votes). Franklin states that in "1924 when the Democratic candidate for president, John W. Davis, promised that if elected he would make no distinctions on the...