The Depression hit the agricultural South hard in the early 1930s. The region had long relied on cotton but was struggling with problems like the boll weevil infestation and the decline of the cotton market. Southern cities and leaders initially downplayed the economic troubles. However, by mid-1931 unemployment was widespread and the South became known as the nation's number one economic problem. In response, FDR's New Deal targeted the South with programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority, Agricultural Adjustment Act, and Federal Emergency Relief Administration to provide jobs and subsidies. These programs helped modernize the South and push it away from its isolated, agricultural past into a more integrated, industrialized "New South."

1. The Depression-Era South

2. Pre-Depression
 Agricultural society shaped by plantations: cash poor
 Southern leaders failed attempt to reshape economy,
lure factories from North with cheap labor
 Change in the cotton market: boll weevils in ’20s
Boll weevils migrated from Mexico in the late 1800s;
they are a type of beetle that feeds on cotton buds

3. Black Tuesday
“Stocks Up
“Brokers
in Strong
Believe
Rally;
Worst Is
Rockefellers
Over and
Big Buyers;
Recommend
Exchanges
Buying of
Close 2-1/2
Real
Days”
Bargains”
-New York
-New York
Herald
Herald,
Tribune,
October 27,
October 31,
1929
1929
October 29, 1929

4. Sunshine Syndrome
Southern cities had unparalleled growth in 1920s
 Memphis doubled in population, TN grew 1%
 Birmingham construction, $8 mil bond
 Atlanta raised $750k to advertise, lure people in
Southern newspapers downplayed adversity, “pessimism”
“The stockmarket collapse that shattered so many dreams elsewhere…finds
our city less affected…and in a better position perhaps than almost all
the rest to carry on through the year without distress.” – New Orleans
Times-Picayune, Jan. 1, 1930
Isolation from national, international events

5. Reality
Mid-1931:
production cut-backs
lay-offs
reduced wages (avg. of 50-75%)
closings
New York Bureau of Business survey for Memphis, mid-1931:
“There are no positive indications of a turn in any
industry.”

6. No. 1
South quickly became known as nation’s “No. 1
Economic Problem”
• Continued farming problems: boll weevil,
share-cropping,
“outsider” mass land ownership
• Deficiencies & Corruption:
Georgia Power, school system,

7. FDR and New Deal
 With South as problem no. 1, FDR targeted many New
Deal programs to the region:
Tennessee Valley Authority: (1933) federally owned
corporattion for navigation, flood control, electricity
generation, fertilizer manufacturing
Agricultural Adjustment Act: (1933) federal law which
paid farmers subsidies not to plant part of their land, kill
off excess livestock in hope of raising value
Federal Emergency Relief Administration: (1933)
later known as Works Progress Administration, gave
loans to states to operate relief programs such as creating
unskilled jobs in local/state government (more
expensive, but psychologically rewarding) (pg. 62)

8. Pride…
Why were the programs structured as they were?
Pride: Didn’t want hand-outs
Individualism: Didn’t want government stepping on
their toes, making them change
Community: Southerners had a sense of looking after
their own

9. …and Prejudice
During the height of the Depression, blacks suffered the most
• Unemployed whites began to take “black” jobs
• Laws were passed to keep blacks from applying for the few
jobs there were
The New Deal’s economic
changes non-directly improved
the lot of low-class whites and blacks
Blacks statistically received
less aid, but FDR and Eleanor’s interest
in reform pushed things along

10. Most Powerful Force for Change Since Civil War

11. New South, Again
• At beginning of New Deal, stagnation of the social
situation in the South ended: bigger problems at
hand, national attention
• At the end of the Depression, there was a sense of a
lost identity: no longer isolated, outside investors
meant the new South was not homemade
• The move away from agriculture that had begun
directly prior to the Depression increased, meaning a
divorce of work from family

12. “The anguish that most of us have observed for some
time now has been caused not by the fact that the South is
alienated from the rest of the country, but by the fact that it
is not alienated enough, that every day we are
getting more and more like the rest of the country, that we
are being forced out, not only of our many sins
but our few virtues.”
-Flannery O’Connor, 1957

13. References
Colemna, Amanda. “Rehabilitating the Region: The New Deal, Gender, and the
Remaking of the Rural South.” Southeastern Geographer, 50.2 (2010): 200 –
17. Print.
Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the “Forgotten Man.” Ed.
Robert S. McElvaine. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1983. Print.
McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1929 – 1941. New York:
Times, 1984. Print.
Smith, Douglas L. The New Deal in the Urban South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State U P, 1988. Print.
The New Deal and the South. Ed. James C. Cobb and Michael V. Namorato.
Jackson: U P of Mississippi, 1984. Print.