ation. If it had not been
for the W.P.A., the National Youth Administration, the Civilian
Conservation Corps, and other similar organizations, Afro-Americans would
have suffered even more during the Depression.

Some relief was brought to farmers through the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration. However, white landlords usually kept the checks which
had been intended for the sharecroppers. This resulted in the formation
of The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, an interracial organization.
Despite the landlords' attempts to use racism to destroy it, the Union
showed that white and black farmers could cooperate on the basis of their
common economic plight. This alliance of poor whites and poor blacks was
reminiscent of the earlier Populist Movement.

Although the New Deal did much to help the Negro, it tended to further
undercut his self-confidence and independence. Alain Locke has argued
that the significant fact about the northward migration by blacks had
been that the Afro-Americans had made a decision for themselves. The fact
of having made a decision and of taking action on it, Locke maintains,
was the event which created the aggressive self-confident New Negro. In
helping him to survive the Depression, the New Deal turned him again into
a passive recipient. The large number of Afro-Americans who were
receiving government aid in one way or another were aware of their
dependency. Afro-American communities, which had been regarded as "The
Promised Land," slid into poverty and dejection.

The Second World War

As ominous war clouds began to gather over Europe in the late 1930s, most
Americans were preoccupied with domestic problems resulting from the
Depression. Those who took notice of the ascendancy of Mussolini and
Hitler were apt to be impressed with their successes in combatting the
effects of the Depression in Italy and Germany. The Afro-American
community, however, was more concerned with the imperialistic and racist
elements in the teachings of Fascism and National Socialism. Usually,
American Negroes were prevented from looking beyond their own problems by
the immediacy of racial prejudice which they faced daily, but this time
they were among the first to warn of impending danger.

Racist thought in Germany did not begin with the rise of Adolf Hitler.
European anti-Semitism can be traced back into the past for centuries.
Although it originally had its roots in a religious feeling, racism
became secul