January 1936
International Harvester's mechanical cotton picker, demonstrated in 1936 and commercially available by 1941, could do the work of 50 pickers. Planters who received AAA payments for reducing cotton acreage used the funds to purchase machinery and evict sharecroppers. The displacement of 2 million Black agricultural workers between 1930 and 1960 drove the Second Great Migration into Northern cities with redlined housing and exclusionary unions. The transition from agricultural to urban labor occurred without any government support or retraining programs.
Between 1936 and 1938, the WPA Federal Writers' Project employed interviewers — primarily Black interviewers supervised by John Lomax and Sterling Brown — to record testimonies of over 2,300 surviving formerly enslaved people across 17 states. The resulting 10,000-page collection, now held at the Library of Congress, constitutes the most significant body of primary source documentation of enslaved experience in American history. The project was imperfect — white interviewers in the South received different, more guarded testimony — but preserved irreplaceable voices. Scholars including Eugene Genovese and Herbert Gutman later used this collection to reconstruct the social world of enslavement.
Events
- 1936WPA Slave Narrative Collection Preserves Testimony of 2,300 Formerly Enslaved People
Between 1936 and 1938, the WPA Federal Writers' Project employed interviewers — primarily Black interviewers supervised by John Lomax and Sterling Brown — to record testimonies of over 2,300 surviving formerly enslaved people across 17 states. The resulting 10,000-page collection, now held at the Library of Congress, constitutes the most significant body of primary source documentation of enslaved experience in American history. The project was imperfect — white interviewers in the South received different, more guarded testimony — but preserved irreplaceable voices. Scholars including Eugene Genovese and Herbert Gutman later used this collection to reconstruct the social world of enslavement.
- 1936WPA Slave Narrative Collection Preserves Testimony of 2,300 Formerly Enslaved People
Between 1936 and 1938, the WPA Federal Writers' Project employed interviewers to record testimonies of over 2,300 surviving formerly enslaved people across 17 states. The resulting 10,000-page collection, now held at the Library of Congress, constitutes the most significant body of primary source documentation of enslaved experience in American history. The project preserved irreplaceable voices; white interviewers in the South received more guarded testimony than Black interviewers. Scholars later used this collection to reconstruct the social world of enslavement.
- 1936Mechanical Cotton Picker Begins Displacing 2 Million Black Agricultural Workers
International Harvester's mechanical cotton picker, demonstrated in 1936 and commercially available by 1941, could do the work of 50 pickers. Planters who received AAA payments for reducing cotton acreage used the funds to purchase machinery and evict sharecroppers. The displacement of 2 million Black agricultural workers between 1930 and 1960 drove the Second Great Migration into Northern cities with redlined housing and exclusionary unions. The transition from agricultural to urban labor occurred without any government support or retraining programs.
- 1936Federal 'Black Cabinet' Coordinates Black New Deal Advocacy
Mary McLeod Bethune convened an informal network of Black advisers placed in New Deal agencies — including Robert Weaver at Interior and Eugene Kinckle Jones at Commerce — who met regularly to coordinate strategy and push back on racial discrimination within federal programs. They represented unprecedented Black executive-branch presence.
- 1936Victor Green Publishes 'The Negro Motorist Green Book' for Safe Black Travel
Victor H. Green, a Harlem postal worker, published the first Negro Motorist Green Book in 1936, listing hotels, restaurants, beauty parlors, and businesses that would serve Black travelers without harassment, discrimination, or danger across the country. The guide reflected the reality that Black Americans traveling by automobile faced hostile sundown towns, gas stations that refused service, hotels that turned them away, and regular danger of violence. The Green Book grew to list thousands of establishments and sold through Esso gas stations nationwide. Published annually until 1967, it documented both the geography of racism and the geography of Black community institutions.