A New Deal for Youth

Mary McLeod Bethune, NYA director of Negro Activities; First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and NYA Director Aubrey Willis Williams.

Mary McLeod Bethune, NYA director of Negro Activities; First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and NYA Director Aubrey Willis Williams.
Source: thegrio.com

Sources disagree over how much First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had to prod her husband to establish the National Youth Administration (NYA). However, there is no question that Mrs. Roosevelt was deeply troubled over the plight of the nation’s youth—that they might become another stranded or lost generation. This fear, moreover, was the impetus for her vigorous role in the initiation, planning and daily operation of the NYA—and her high-profile role in promoting public awareness of its achievements. Significantly, FDR referred to the NYA as “the missus’s organization!”

NYA recruitment poster

NYA recruitment poster
Courtesy, LOC

Established in 1935, the NYA was a leader in gender as well as racial equity: the number of girls served sometimes equaled or exceeded the number of boys! The dynamic educator Mary McLeod Bethune who headed the New Deal’s informal “black cabinet” that advised the administration on racial policies, was named the NYA’s Director of Negro Affairs, responsible for the implementation of the racially progressive policies that both Mrs. Roosevelt and the NYA’s Director Aubrey Williams espoused.

Williams, born and raised in Alabama, deplored the fact that Blacks were not being treated fairly by government projects and was determined to make the NYA an exception. His progressivism (“one of the pinkest of the pink,” according to Representative Hamilton Fish), made Williams—and the NYA—a target among some in Congress that had refused to enact an anti-lynching law.

Girls in NYA war training program, San Augustine, Texas, 1943. 

Girls in NYA war training program, San Augustine, Texas, 1943. 
Photo: John Vachon, Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information photograph collection. Courtesy, LOC

No age group escaped hardship during the Great Depression, but the cohort served by the NYA, young men and women ages 16 to 25, was especially hard hit.  In 1935 when the NYA was inaugurated, an estimated five million of that age group were out of school and unemployed. At the beginning of the New Deal, the Children’s Bureau estimated that 23,000 adolescent hobos traveled the country riding the rails and hitchhiking along highways in search of work. Unemployment among black youth was much higher than that of white youth and Blacks found it extremely difficult to get a job, even in agriculture or domestic and personal service.

The NYA provided work relief to out-of-school, unemployed youth and work-study aid to make it possible for students to remain in high school or attend college. Youth who lacked proper medical care for economic reasons received it through the NYA.  Such student aid programs were widespread and popular.

"Projects for Out-of-School Youth," Inaugural Parade, Washington, D.C., 1937.

"Projects for Out-of-School Youth," Inaugural Parade, Washington, D.C., 1937. 
Credit: Wikipedia

The first NYA work relief projects paid little attention to training possibilities. They provided work experience, but of a general, unskilled nature. NYA youth helped build parks and playgrounds; worked as aides to public authorities; looked after crippled children; assisted state and local traffic departments; and repaired books in local libraries—work that was useful to communities but less so to enrollees.

To aid rural youth who weren’t able to come to work in the morning and return home each night, some live-in projects were developed. In one such residence, girls from neighboring counties worked on a machine sewing project in the afternoon and, having not completed high school, attended classes each morning. By mid-1938, one hundred such centers were in operation, often at abandoned CCC camps or campuses of agricultural colleges.  The NYA partnered with the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to help youths who wished to take up farming. The NYA would train them in efficient farming methods and the FSA would lend them money to go into business.

Girls at NYA welding class at Bethune-Cookman College, Daytona Beach, Florida, 1943.

Girls at NYA welding class at Bethune-Cookman College, Daytona Beach, Florida, 1943.
Young women made up about 43 percent of the National Youth Administration’s total enrollment. Photo: Gordon Parks

From mid-1940 defense began to dominate the NYA. By early 1942, the out-of-school program had been abandoned, construction projects ended and the work study programs terminated. The emphasis became “industrial training,” mainly in machine-shop work, sheet-metal trades, welding, and electrical industries. Employment in the defense industry supplied the vital ingredient of job training often missing in a depressed economy.

One of a handful of New Deal programs that had progressive racial policies, the NYA employed 2.6 million young men and women in its out-of-school work program and more than 2 million in its student work program during its nine-year run.  Growing opposition to the New Deal, Republican victories in the 1942 mid-term election, education officials’ fear that vocational training encroached on their domain and Aubrey Williams’s progressivism contributed to the demise of the NYA.

Men in training at NYA machine shop.

Men in training at NYA machine shop.
Courtesy, Encyclopedia of Alabama

Congress killed the NYA in January 1944 despite its popularity, advancement of racial and gender diversity and exemplary contribution to war production.

Professor Emerita of Social Work and Social Policy at Adelphi University, Trudy Goldberg has written about the feminization of poverty from a cross-national perspective; the history of work and welfare; and the New Deal. She is chair of the National Jobs for All Network. A version of this article first appeared in the organization’s February 2023 newsletter.

Was the New Deal Racist?

The CCC offered African American enrollees the opportunity to learn a trade.

CCC men at woodworking shop in Cabin John, Maryland
The CCC offered African American enrollees the opportunity to learn a trade.

Both friends and critics of the New Deal point to actions by President Franklin Roosevelt and the exclusion of African Americans from some programs as evidence that the New Deal was racist. But in order to evaluate the New Deal fairly we have to ask what the country was like at the time.

While the New Deal revolutionized many aspects of society and government, it was not able to overcome America’s entrenched racial order. The fact is, the United States had been a white supremacist country from the beginning—rife with genocide and suppression of native people; slavery followed by Jim Crow; and the exploitation and exclusion of Chinese, Mexicans, and Filipinos. That was the world the New Deal inherited. The Civil Rights Movement would not arrive for another generation.

Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes hands the first constitution issued under the Indian Reorganization Act to delegates of the Confederated Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana, 1935.

Indian New Deal
Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes hands the first constitution issued under the Indian Reorganization Act to delegates of the Confederated Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana, 1935.
Photo Credit: Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

The New Dealers faced the daunting task of overcoming long-established patterns of discrimination and social hierarchy. They did not challenge the prevailing racial order head-on, but that’s not the same as saying it was racist. The leading New Dealers—Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, and Harry Hopkins—were outspoken critics of racial discrimination and made a systematic effort to include people of color in New Deal programs. Their overall achievement was impressive, if far from perfect.

Most New Deal programs reached out to include Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, and Asians to an unprecedented degree. People of color worked in large numbers in all the big relief programs and there were education, recreation, and health programs aimed specifically at helping them.

An educator, author and civil rights advocate,  and advisor to FDR and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, she headed the Negro Division of the National Youth Administration.

Mary McLeod Bethune, 1943
An educator, author and civil rights advocate, and advisor to FDR and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, she headed the Negro Division of the National Youth Administration.
Photo Credit: Picyrl

For example, the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the so-called “Indian New Deal,” was a radical shift in federal policy. It was a genuine effort to honor native sovereignty, improve reservation lands, promote artisan crafts, and build schools for native children. On the other hand, the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams built on the Columbia River flooded thousands of acres of Native American lands without even providing irrigation water to local reservations.

Other New Deal achievements baked in discriminatory policies. The Social Security and National Labor Relations Acts of 1935 made an exception for agricultural and domestic workers, effectively excluding African Americans and Chicanos as a result of compromises FDR made with Southern Democrats and Western Growers to get these programs through Congress.

Nevertheless, FDR put African Americans into positions of power not seen since Reconstruction. A group of prominent African Americans were popularly known as FDR’s Black Cabinet. They included Lawrence Oxley, a high-ranking official in the Department of Labor; Mary McLeod Bethune, the director of the National Youth Administration’s Office of Negro Affairs; and Robert Weaver, who served as an economic advisor to the president. FDR also appointed William Hastie as the first-ever African-American federal judge.

The Farm Security Administration established camps for migrant farm workers in California, and the CCC and WPA hired unemployed Mexican Americans on relief jobs.

Men at work
The Farm Security Administration established camps for migrant farm workers in California, and the CCC and WPA hired unemployed Mexican Americans on relief jobs.

By Executive Order, discrimination was barred in the relief agencies and workers were paid equal wages regardless of race nearly everywhere. The WPA employed hundreds of thousands of African-American, Asian, Mexican, and Native American citizens. These were not only men doing manual labor. Women of color were hired as teachers, social workers, librarians, and in other professional and service sectors, often working on integrated teams.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) is often cited as a segregated program, but at the outset it was integrated. Intense opposition in rural areas of the North and across the South ultimately forced the CCC to segregate its camps.

The New Deal ended President Hoover’s aggressive deportation of Mexicans and invested heavily in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Hawai’i. Yet, President Roosevelt made a catastrophically bad decision to issue Executive Order 9066, which imprisoned some 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans as the country went to war at the end of 1942.

WPA artist Tyrus Wong

WPA artist Tyrus Wong
Many minority artists were employed or commissioned by New Deal art programs.

While the New Deal fell far short of ending racial discrimination, it set in motion the forces that would challenge Jim Crow in the postwar era. The number of people of color working for the federal government increased dramatically during the New Deal and many were elevated to important positions in government. Many of the black leaders Roosevelt relied upon would go on to help launch the Civil Rights Movement. Integration of the Armed Forces would begin by the end of World War II. Supreme Court justices appointed by FDR were crucial to postwar judgments against segregated education, anti-miscegenation laws, and housing discrimination.

The New Deal marked an important step forward in addressing the problems of U.S. society. Its outlook, policies, and programs, while far from perfect, contributed to the advancement of millions of citizens of color as part of its massive effort to improve the lives of all working people, seniors, children and other ordinary Americans.

FDR’s " Black Cabinet"

FDR’s "Black Cabinet"
An informal cabinet of African Americans served as public policy advisors to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt,. Front row, left to right: Dr. Ambrose Caliver, Dr. Roscoe C. Brown, Dr. Robert C. Weaver, Joseph H. Evans, Dr. Frank Horne, Mary McLeod Bethune, Lt. Lawrence A. Oxley, Dr. William J. Thompkins, Charles E. Hall, William I. Houston, Ralph E. Mizelle. Back row, left to right: Dewey R. Jones, Edgar Brown, J. Parker Prescott, Edward H. Lawson, Jr., Arthur Weiseger, Alfred Edgar Smith, Henry A. Hunt, John W. Whitten, Joseph R. Houchins. Source: Scurlock Studio, “President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet” taken in March 1938″
Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Richard A Walker is the director of the Living New Deal.