Does our recession today mark the milestone of our great depression for unemployment in our past as for African America?
By Stanley (Cigar) Tucks
Though we are struggling through a recession today, it is nothing in comparison to what our ancestors went through in the Great Depression back in the 1930’s.
The Great depression brought hard times for Americans especially for Black. Blacks became the chief victims of jobs discrimination. They adopted the slogan “Last hired and first fired” to express their situation.
Back in those days, African Americans helped to ease poverty by organizing cooperative groups. These groups brought foods and other goods in large volumes to get the lowest prices. These groups known as “Colored Merchants Association” in New York City, and “jobs for Negros” organizations in St. Louis, Chicago and Cleveland boycotted against stores that had mostly Blacks customers but few, if any, Black workers.
Most African Americans deserted their traditional loyalty to Republican Party, when they no longer saw it as the party of Abraham Lincoln the emancipator. Thereby, in 1936, for the first time, most African Americans supported the Democratic Party for a candidate.
And yet, the recession that we live in today is nothing to the Depression, where the recession is a decline in overall business activity. During a nationwide recession, a country suffers a drop in buying, selling and production and as well as a rise in unemployment.
A recession may hit and industry or a region. Historically, recession have also brought an end to severe inflation or even a fall in prices. A recession hurts countless people, especially African Americans, who lose their jobs. A recession lasts an average of about a year. A recession which grows worse and lasts longer becomes a depression.
Depression or recession, most of all African American have felt the economy drop in this recession today. For example, if sales rise more slowly than usual, business may reduce their orders for new goods. The manufactors that supply the goods cut back on production. They need fewer workers, and so layoffs and unemployment increase the demand for goods.
Many African Americans have focused on building up the Black communities, particularity in the cities. Many reformers supported self-help programs to deal with crime, drug abuse, poverty, and substandard education. For example: The event called the “Million Man March, leady by Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, a Black Muslim group…. Mr. martin Luther King, Jr., African American minister and civil rights leader; and Nobel Prize winner….Our own President barrack Obama, has made contribution by helping in dropping a high rate of people out of work down to 8 percent and he is trying to induce big companies to bring back their business to help the American people instead of overseas and the list can go on and on.
African American today stress the use from the 1970’s up to the 1990’s for Black-owned business in the United States and those African American men and women have increased from 190,000 to about 620,00 and more as we stand today.
Closing Remarks
History is the record of the encounter of all African American struggles, and it takes a good African American man or woman to take a firm stand to step up in the plate and then the spines of other African American are stiffened by their examples.
By Stanley (Cigar) Tucks
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