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Was the New Deal a Fair Deal in the South?

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Was the New Deal a Fair Deal in the South? VIRGINIA INQUIRY COLLABORATIVE AND C3 TEACHERS Equality in the New Deal Inquiry Was the New Deal a Fair Deal in the South? Smiling Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union members at an outdoor meeting (1937) Supporting Questions 1. Who was served by New Deal’s employment benefits and who was left out? 2. How were Southern agricultural workers impacted by the New Deal? 3. What were the impacts of the New Deal’s housing policies? 4. What did Southerners think about the New Deal? THIS WORK IS LICENSED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHAREALIKE 4.0 INTERNATIONAL LICENSE. 1 VIRGINIA INQUIRY COLLABORATIVE AND C3 TEACHERS 9-12th Was the New Deal a Fair Deal in the South? Compelling question? Virginia Social VUS10 d) evaluating and explaining how Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal measures Studies Standards addressed the Great Depression and expanded the government’s role in the economy. Staging the Brainstorm a list of ways the New Deal helped everyday Americans during the Great Compelling Question Depression. Supporting Question Supporting Question Supporting Question Supporting Question Who was served by New How were Southern What were the impacts What did Southerners Deal employment agricultural workers of the New Deal’s think about the New benefits and who was impacted by the New housing policies? Deal? left out? Deal? Formative Performance Formative Performance Formative Performance Formative Performance Task Task Task Task Complete a T-chart Identify the various Identify 5-7 impacts and Complete the thinking labeled “benefitted” and impacts and share the use the thinking routine routine “I used to think, “left out”. impacts using a “Chalk “The Complexity Scale” Now I think” for 3-5 Talk” thinking routine. to organize the impacts. shifts in thinking. Featured Sources Featured Sources Featured Sources Featured Sources Source A: Stamped from Source A: Fireside Chat Source A: Table of Source A: Interview with the Beginning Source B: FDR: The Homeownership Rates Ossie Davis Source B: Social Security American Franchise Source B: FDR’s Notes on Source B: Table of Act of 1935 Source C: Tenant the HOLC Election Results Source C: FDR: Domestic Farming in Arkansas Source C: Redlining Source C: FDR: The Affairs Richmond American Franchise Source D: Meeting- Source D: Redlining Source D: Huey Long’s Parkin, Arkansas Richmond Interactive radio address Map ARGUMENT. Construct an argument with evidence that addresses the question of “Was the New Summative Deal a Fair Deal in the South?” Performance Task EXTENSION. Brainstorm ways the Southern experience with the New Deal may still be impacting the South today. UNDERSTAND. Identify a federal policy that has unequally impacted specific groups in America? Taking ASSESS. Brainstorm 2-4 ways that policy could be made more fair and identify groups and Informed organizations working on that (or a related) issue. Action ACT. Create a campaign to raise awareness and amplify the messages of the organizations working to improve the policy. THIS WORK IS LICENSED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHAREALIKE 4.0 INTERNATIONAL LICENSE. 2 VIRGINIA INQUIRY COLLABORATIVE AND C3 TEACHERS *Featured sources are suggested and links are provided. It may be that these links are broken and we apologize in advance for the inconvenience. This inquiry was developed by .. Overview Inquiry Description This inquiry focuses on the uneven impacts of the New Deal policies with a focus on the experiences of everyday Americans living in the South. It is intended to expand students’ existing understanding of the New Deal by engaging in analysis around issues of equity and perspective. The questions, tasks, and sources in this inquiry asks students to consider the impact of three areas of federal policy during the New Deal (agricultural, employment benefits, and housing) and to consider how those policies may have been interpreted by Southerners at the time. This inquiry highlights the following Virginia social studies standards. ● VA 10d: evaluating and explaining how Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal measures addressed the Great Depression and expanded the government’s role in the economy. This inquiry is expected to take four 50-minute class periods. The inquiry time frame could expand if teachers think their students need additional instructional experiences (e.g., supporting questions, formative performance tasks, featured sources, writing). Teachers are encouraged to adapt the inquiry to meet the needs and interests of their particular students. This inquiry lends itself to differentiation and modeling of historical thinking skills while assisting students in reading the variety of sources. Structure of the Inquiry In addressing the compelling question, students will analyze or interact with a variety of sources including interviews, data tables, maps, and speeches to address four supporting questions, each with a formative performance task. The formative performance tasks are designed to encourage complex thinking about the supporting questions to develop a nuanced response to the compelling question. Ideally, students will share their thinking with their peers as part of the formative tasks. Ultimately, students make an argument in response to the compelling question about whether the New Deal was a fair deal for the South. THIS WORK IS LICENSED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHAREALIKE 4.0 INTERNATIONAL LICENSE. 3 VIRGINIA INQUIRY COLLABORATIVE AND C3 TEACHERS Staging the Compelling Question In staging the compelling question, students will brainstorm a list of ways the New Deal helped Americans. It is not designed to delve too far into the specific content of the compelling question. Instead, it’s intended to provide a frame of reference and context for the inquiry. Specifically, the staging task is designed to encapsulate the students’ previous learning and prior knowledge of the New Deal and set the tone of analyzing the New Deal through the lens of everyday Americans. This task may be completed in a very brief period of time and may be completed as a class. VIRGINIA INQUIRY COLLABORATIVE AND C3 TEACHERS Supporting Question 1 The first supporting question asks, ”Who was served by New Deal job benefits and who was left out?”. While the New Deal greatly expanded employment benefits (such as Social Security, unemployment insurance, unionization rights, and wage minimums), the federal government created categories of types of employment that were excluded from these policies and programs. Across the country, the excluded categories disproportionately impacted people of color and women. In the South, with its large population of tenant farmers, the magnitude of the impact was exacerbated by the inclusion of agricultural workers in the type of employment that would not gain access to the employment benefits of the New Deal. The featured sources include an excerpt from the book “Stamped from the Beginning”, the text of the Social Security Act of 1935 and an excerpt from an essay on the legacy of FDR’s domestic policies. The formative performance task is to create a T-chart of who benefited and who was left out with the goal of recognizing that the reforms to employment benefits had different impacts on various categories of employment. The following procedures may be used to support students as they complete this task. ● Define and give examples of employment benefits so that all students understand the concept. ● Students or teachers can create the T-chart. ● As the students analyze the sources, they can add examples of groups to the two columns on their chart. ● If desired, teachers may ask students to summarize their findings in one sentence to synthesize their learning. Work on the formative performance task provides students an opportunity to gather information they will need in responding to the compelling question. VIRGINIA INQUIRY COLLABORATIVE AND C3 TEACHERS Supporting Question 1 Featured Source Source A: Excerpt from “Stamped from the Beginning” This source is Excerpt from Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi (pp.337-339) and is not available online. After taking office, President Franklin D. Roosevelt powered through what he called the “New Deal,” the flurry of government relief programs, job programs, labor rights bills, and capitalism-saving bills passed from 1933 to 1938. To secure the congressional votes of southern Democrats, Roosevelt and northern Democrats crafted these bills such that, to southern Blacks, they seemed more like the Old Deal. Just like in the old days before Roosevelt, segregationists were given the power to locally administer and racially discriminate the relief coming from these federal programs. And segregationists made sure that farmers and domestics—Blacks’ primary vocations—were excluded from the laws’ new job benefits, like minimum wage, social security, unemployment insurance, and unionizing rights. Not to be denied, Black southerners secretly joined sharecropper and industrial unions organized inside and outside of the CPUSA to fight for their own New Deal in the 1930s. Alabama Blacks during the Depression blended their homegrown antiracist socialism and Christian theology in a popular saying: “And the day shall come when the bottom rail shall be on top and the top rail on the bottom. The Ethiopians will stretch forth their arms and find their place under the sun.” VIRGINIA INQUIRY COLLABORATIVE AND C3 TEACHERS Supporting Question 1 Featured Source Source B: Social Security Act of 1935 This source is the text of the Social Security Act of 1935 and is available online at https://link.gale.com/apps/portal/YKBIYM579678884/SMPS?u=justicehs&sid=SMPS&xid=0b2229ff SEC. 210. When used in this title— (a) The term wages means all remuneration for employment, including the cash value of all remuneration paid in any medium other than cash; except that such term shall not include that part of the remuneration which, after remuneration equal to $3,000 has been paid to an individual by an employer with respect to employment during any calendar year, is paid to such employer with respect to employment during such calendar year.
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