Their Eyes Were Watching God

Conditions during the Great Depression
The Great Depression was a really severe worldwide economic depression right before World War II started. A depression is a period of decline in an economy. Business was poor, and very high unemployment was occurring. It affected almost every nation and the world trade was decreasing because of countries raising tariffs to protect their industry. The people who received the hardest impact from the Great Depression were the blacks. The blacks were always treated differently and in this case the southern blacks had it really bad.
The number of rural blacks looking for jobs in the cities rose, the urban black workers experienced more difficulties than normal (Novelguide). Black unemployment reached over fifty percent, that’s more than twice the rate of whites. The really horrible things that happened took place on southern railroads. White unionized workers attacked and killed black firemen to take their jobs. Almost a dozen black firemen got murdered. This just shows you how all the blacks got discriminated against, but the southern blacks were the ones who were really suffering. Segregation was another problem that arose during the Great Depression for blacks. The government also deprived blacks from their government checks (Novelguide). There were New Deal agencies which were supposed to help fight against racial discrimination but they all failed. “There were areas where African-American life continued as usual. In some cases people lead a more productive life. They enrolled and graduated from some of the nation’s prestigious universities (Mtungsten).
This shows that the southern blacks did have it hard during the Great Depression. They lost their jobs by force and by death. They got segregated from schools and legislation but they did fight back through peace and organized committees, although some did turn violent. Some blacks did make it successful through the great depression.

Sources
Novelguide. “HARD TIMES AND...