The stock market crash of 1929 fueled America's worst depression, which lasted until the World War II recovery.

As commercial, industrial, retail, and service companies failed or cut production, unemployment spiraled upward. Masses of the unemployed joined bread lines; racial and ethnic minorities faced much discrimination. When the Roosevelt Administration began the New Deal (1932), median family income was half its pre-crash level and one in four breadwinners had no income. Black joblessness exceeded 50 percent in large cities. Three in ten black families were destitute.

Like business, industry, and labor, blacks lobbied the government. They sought equity in federal relief and jobs programs, but reform was slow. Social security benefits, for example, did not include sharecroppers and tenant farmers, the supermajority of black workers. Also, under the Agricultural Adjustment Administration's crop reduction program, farmowners signed contracts and received cash payments to reduce planting acreage as much as 40 percent, resulting in rampant black evictions. Some evicted families secured low-interest loans to buy farms via the Farm Security Administration. Its Subsistence Homestead Program resettled many of them in rural communities. It also subsidized migrant farm worker camps. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) segregated black youths, who flocked to CCC educational, public works, and residential sites. The National Recovery Administration's wage codes were the lowest for blacks in all occupations.

Blacks pushed for equality nonetheless. Black voters consistently supported President Roosevelt, who appointed a Federal Council on Negro Affairs, known as the “Black Cabinet.” Led by National Youth Administration director Mary M. Bethune, members coalesced with the NAACP and Urban League to pursue civil rights and equal opportunities. At the same time, more and more elite and ordinary blacks enlisted in civic organizations and labor unions (along with white liberals, socialists, and communists) to launch protests against race and economic inequality.