ctices of merchants to slum landlords and police
tactics. Window-breaking, looting, and burning soon followed. Before
peace was restored, three Negroes had been killed, some two hundred
stores smashed, and it was estimated that approximately $2,000,000 worth
of damage had been done. Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia appointed a study
commission which was headed by the noted black sociologist E. Franklin
Frazier. The commission concluded that the causes of the riot were
rooted in resentment against racial discrimination and poverty. The
"promised land" of the large northern cities had not lived up to
expectations.

The Depression, however, brought its own kind of hope. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, who had been elected in 1932, promised the country a "New
Deal." It was to be a new deal for the workers, the unemployed and, it
seemed, for the Negro too. In response, black voters switched to the
Democratic party in droves. While Franklin D. Roosevelt was not the first
president to appoint Negroes to government positions, his appointments
were different in two major respects. First, there were more of them.
Second, instead of being political payoffs, the appointees were selected
for their expert knowledge, and their intellectual skills became part of
the government's decision-making processes.

This group, which became informally known as the "Black Cabinet,"
included such prominent Afro-American leaders as Robert L. Vann of The
Pittsburgh Courier, William H. Hastie of the Harvard Law School, Eugene
Kinckle Jones of the Urban League, Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune of the
National Council of Negro Women, Robert C. Weaver, and Ralph Bunche, who
later became the first Negro to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The
number of Afro-Americans hired by the Federal Government mushroomed
rapidly.

Between 1933 and 1946 the number rose from 50,000 to almost 200,000.
Most, however, were employed in the lower, unskilled and semi-skilled,
brackets. It was also during this period that the civil service
terminated its policy of requiring applicants to state their race and to
include photographs. Individual personnel officers, nevertheless, could
and did continue to discriminate.

In spite of the attempt of the Roosevelt Administration to elevate the
status of the Afro-American, the New Deal itself became enmeshed in
racial discrimination in three ways: through discriminatory practice
within government bureaus, through exclusion carried on by uni