Daddy Was a Number Runner is the first novel by American writer Louise Meriwether. It was published by Prentice Hall, with a foreword by James Baldwin, in 1970, and is now considered a modern classic. It depicts a poor black family in Harlem during the Great Depression in the first half of the 20th century, as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old African-American girl who has one brother who wants to be a chemist and another who is a gang member. - Wikipedia

I absolutely loved this evidently autobiographical tale of a black teenage girl on the cusp of womanhood in 1930s Harlem. An excellent feature of living in a multicultural country and city is that many such works are available at our libraries, and may it remain so.

#LouiseMeriwether #BlackLiterature #Reading #Novels #Harlem #GreatDepression #ComingOfAge #Books

... just how powerful IS this spell

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1909480/just-how-powerful-is-this-spell

Today in Labor History March 19, 1935: Harlem Uprising occurred, during the Great Depression, after rumors circulated that a black Puerto Rican teenage shoplifter was beaten by employees at an S. H. Kress "five and dime" store, and then killed by the police. Protests were quickly organized by the Young Liberators and the Young Communist League, which were promptly declared illegal by the police. Participants smashed windows of the store and began looting. The protest and looting spread, causing $200 million in damages. Police arrested 125 people and killed 3. Mayor LaGuardia set up a multi-racial Commission to investigate the causes of the riot, headed by African-American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier and with members including labor leader A. Philip Randolph. The identified "injustices of discrimination in employment, the aggressions of the police, and the racial segregation" as conditions which led to the outbreak of rioting, and congratulated the Communist organizations as deserving "more credit than any other element in Harlem for preventing a physical conflict between whites and blacks".

#workingclass #LaborHistory #harlem #Riot #greatdepression #racism #police #policebrutality #poverty #segregation #BlackMastodon

People walking across the frozen Mississippi River, USA, 1936

https://piefed.social/c/historyphotos/p/1868465/people-walking-across-the-frozen-mississippi-river-usa-1936

Not different from these days finding work in a terrible job market.

The US did not learn their lessons from the Great Depression.

#recession
#badjobmarket
#greatdepression
#corporategreed
#peasantclass
#workingclass

Today in Labor History March 6, 1930: 100,000 people demonstrated for jobs in New York City. Demonstrations by unemployed workers, demanding unemployment insurance, occurred in virtually every major U.S. city. In New York, police attacked a crowd of 35,000. In Cleveland, 10,000 people battled police. In Detroit, the Communist Party organized an underemployment demonstration. Over 50,000 people showed up. Thousands took to the streets in Toledo, Flint and Pontiac. These demonstrations led to the creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), sponsored by Republican congressman Hamilton Fish, with the support of the American Federation of Labor, to investigate and quash radical activities.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #unemployment #huac #communism #policebrutality #greatdepression #riot #police #newyork #cleveland #detroit #flint #republican

This is from 1933 (great depression and all that). There's a demonstration around a sign saying "down with capitalism". Next to it there are two policemen, speaking: "I'll freeze if I stand still any longer. Let's club a few of these guys."

#newyorker #acab #capitalism #greatdepression #ad1933 #cartoon