1933

The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), created in 1933, produced 'residential security maps' for over 200 American cities between 1935 and 1940. These maps used four color grades — green (best), blue (still desirable), yellow (declining), and red (hazardous) — to rate neighborhoods for mortgage risk. Black neighborhoods in every city were consistently rated 'D' (red), regardless of the physical condition of housing. These maps were shared with private lenders and the FHA, institutionalizing racial exclusion from mortgage credit across the entire country.

The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), a cornerstone of the New Deal, paid subsidies to landowners to reduce crop production. White landowners used these payments to mechanize and evict Black sharecroppers and tenant farmers instead of sharing benefits as intended. Hundreds of thousands of Black farming families were displaced across the South between 1933 and 1940. The Southern Tenant Farmers Union, formed in 1934, documented widespread evictions. Black sharecroppers received a fraction of promised payments when they received any at all. The AAA was administered locally by all-white county committees.

Local administrators of the Civil Works Administration and Federal Emergency Relief Administration routinely paid Black workers lower daily wages than white workers for identical tasks. Southern officials openly enforced racial pay tiers. Federal administrators deferred to local custom rather than enforce equality.

The Public Works Administration under Harold Ickes (who was personally committed to racial equality) formally prohibited racial wage discrimination in contracts but was largely unable to enforce this in the South. PWA construction projects were built by segregated workforces, with Black workers assigned to the most dangerous and lowest-paid tasks. Housing projects built by the PWA were explicitly segregated — white projects in white neighborhoods, Black projects in Black neighborhoods — formalizing and reinforcing residential segregation through public investment. Ickes insisted on nondiscrimination in federal employment but could not override Southern congressional resistance on broader implementation.

Housing projects built by the Public Works Administration were explicitly segregated — white projects in white neighborhoods, Black projects in Black neighborhoods — formalizing and reinforcing residential segregation through public investment. PWA construction projects were built by segregated workforces, with Black workers assigned to dangerous and lowest-paid tasks. Housing Administrator Harold Ickes (personally committed to racial equality) formally prohibited racial wage discrimination in contracts but was largely unable to enforce this in the South.

The CCC enrolled Black men in racially segregated camps, limited their enrollment to roughly 6% of total despite higher Black unemployment rates, and barred Black officers from commanding camps in the South. The program's stated universalism masked systematic exclusion negotiated with Southern Democrats.

President Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps, which employed 3 million young men during the Depression, was racially segregated by War Department policy. Black men were admitted to separate camps, often in inferior facilities, under white officers. Initially limited to 10% of CCC enrollment even as Black unemployment reached 50% in some cities, Black enrollment was capped at approximately 6% through most of the program. Southern states frequently refused to establish Black CCC camps at all. Black CCC workers were often assigned the most dangerous tasks at lower effective pay.

The TVA's model town of Norris, Tennessee was built entirely by white labor and barred to Black residents. Black TVA workers received lower wages than white workers and were excluded from skilled construction jobs. The agency's progressive image coexisted with explicit racial hierarchy enforced at every work site.

Nineteen-year-old Cordie Cheek was taken from a Tennessee jail and lynched by a mob after charges against him were dropped. The NAACP used the case to press the Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill, which the Senate refused to bring to a vote under threat of Southern filibuster.

President Roosevelt appointed approximately 45 Black advisors to positions within New Deal agencies — dubbed the 'Black Cabinet' or 'Federal Council on Negro Affairs' — including Robert Clifton Weaver (Housing), William Hastie (War), Lawrence Oxley (Labor), and Mary McLeod Bethune (NYA). These appointees represented unprecedented Black representation in federal government and worked to mitigate racial discrimination in New Deal programs. However, they lacked authority to override agency heads or congressional mandates, operated in advisory roles without line authority, and were largely unable to change the fundamental exclusions written into New Deal legislation.

Federal housing agencies map Black neighborhoods as "hazardous," denying them loans for generations.