red." The Depression
also proved that Harlem, like other Afro-American communities, was not as
economically self-sufficient as Johnson had imagined. Although such
communities had many Negro-owned businesses thriving on a Negro trade,
these businesses were still dependent on the economy at large. Therefore,
they were not at all free from the racial discrimination in the nation.
Their clientele was largely employed in white-owned businesses. Many
Negroes were laid off, and Negro-owned businesses immediately felt the
pinch.

Although Negro businesses had grown significantly during the 1920s, most
were small establishments and, in the age of mass production and mass
marketing, always had to struggle hard in order to compete. In 1929, the
Colored Merchants Association was established in New York City, and it
attempted to buy goods for independent stores on a cooperative wholesale
basis. This aided them in competing with chain stores. The Association
also urged blacks to patronize stores owned by Afro-Americans.
Nevertheless, the Association only survived for two years. The
Afro-American community felt the Depression sooner and harder than did
the rest of the country.

By 1932, the government believed that 38 percent of the Afro-American
community was incapable of self-support and in need of government relief.
At the same time, it considered that only 17 percent of the white
community fell into this category. In October of 1933, between 25 percent
and 40 percent of the blacks in many of the large cities, to which they
had moved to find a brighter future, were on relief. This percentage was
three or four times higher than that of the whites in the same cities. As
affluent whites felt the economic pinch, one of the first items to be
trimmed from their shrinking budgets was the maid or the gardener. In
1935 the number of unemployed Negro domestics was at least one and a half
million. In that same year, the government estimated that 65 percent of
the Negro employables in Atlanta were on public assistance while, in
Norfolk, 80 percent of the Afro-American community was on relief.

As Negro unemployment statistics skyrocketed in the early thirties,
The-Jobs-for-Negroes Movement strove to alleviate the crisis. It was
begun by the Urban League in St. Louis. A boycott was organized against
white-owned chain stores which catered to Negroes, but refused to employ
them. The movement spread throughout the Midwest and had some success