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Excerpt from

Oral History Interview with Clark Foreman, November 16, 1974. Interview B-0003. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

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New Deal programs made more jobs available to African Americans

The New Deal agency overseeing Negro economic affairs helped increase the proportion of jobs available to black workers and integrate army offices. Yet several letters detailing discrimination against tenant farmers and other black workers continued to come to Foreman's office.

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About this Excerpt

Interviewers	Jacquelyn Hall
	William Finger
Interviewees	Clark Foreman
Excerpt Length	0:01:33
Start Time	01:42:20
Stop Time	01:43:53
Subjects	Race and Civil Rights > RACE AND RACE RELATIONS > Economic Discrimination Piedmont Industrialization > UNIONS AND WORKPLACE ADVOCACY > Labor Law and Regulation Race and Civil Rights > DESEGREGATION BENEFITS > Employment Opportunities Race and Civil Rights > DESEGREGATION BENEFITS > Political Opportunities
Excerpt Dates	1930–1941

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Clark Foreman, November 16, 1974. Interview B-0003. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

JACQUELYN HALL:: What kind of information did you have about what kind of effect the New Deal agencies were having on blacks?
CLARK FOREMAN:: Well, the letters that I would get complaining about discrimination. I got one letter from Mississippi from some tenant farmer down there. He wrote to "Your Race Majesty" and he wanted to know if I couldn't do something about helping the situation down there.
JACQUELYN HALL:: Did you feel like you got any results for your efforts?
CLARK FOREMAN:: Well, I think we got some results from that regulation about employment. They had to employ on public works jobs a proportionate amount of Negro skilled and unskilled. I think there were some results in the CCC as a result of that Gettysburg job. Because once the army had to start eating with Negroes in one place they couldn't very well object to it in another.