What was life like in the 1930s Southern states?
This was the era of the Great Depression. The poor were the worst hit, they became even poorer than they had been. Enormous numbers of people were homeless, and living in old cars, piano boxes, anything they could find to make a home in. The middle class was ok but they did get hit with little money issues.
What was it like to live in the South during the Great Depression?
On the eve of the Great Depression the South was the poorest region in the United States, its per capita income scarcely 50 percent of the national figure. It was a poor rural one-crop society in which too many people chased too little farm income. It was the bastion of the open shop.
What were things like in Alabama in the 1930s?
Alabama in the 1930s Alabamians suffered through the Depression, actually posting higher unemployment rates than any other southern state and boasting the dubious distinction of Birmingham’s being arguably the hardest-hit city in America, with its full-time workforce plummeting from 100,000 to 15,000.
How did the Great Depression affect Southern families during the 1930s?
The Depression had a powerful impact on family life. It forced couples to delay marriage and drove the birthrate below the replacement level for the first time in American history. The divorce rate fell, for the simple reason that many couples could not afford to maintain separate households or pay legal fees.
What was life like in the 1930’s?
The 1930s saw natural disasters as well as manmade ones: For most of the decade, people in the Plains states suffered through the worst drought in American history, as well as hundreds of severe dust storms, or “black blizzards,” that carried away the soil and made it all but impossible to plant crops.
What was happening historically in the early 1930s try to focus on the South and Alabama?
Forest Restoration The Great Depression was a sustained, national economic recession that shaped the lives of all Alabamians. The Depression’s impact on Alabama lasted throughout the 1930s and, for some Alabamians, into the early 1940s, which was longer than the nation as a whole.
Was the Great Depression in the South?
The economic crisis known as the Great Depression actually began in the rural South with a severe crisis in agriculture. Meanwhile, as people fled the economic devastation of the South, jobs rapidly disappeared in the northern and Midwestern cities. African American families were hit the hardest.
What was lifestyle like in the 1930s?
After the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, started the Great Depression of the 1930s, Americans cut back their spending on clothes, household items, and cars. Instead of seasonal changes of wardrobe, consumers bought clothes that could be worn for years.