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Bklyn BookMatch: Diverse Perspectives of the Great Depression

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9 items

Headin' for better times
Duane Damon.
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Drawing on the tragedies and struggles that defined the Great Depression era, artists of all genres endeavored through their works to touch the millions of Americans whose lives were abruptly changed in the 1930s. These artists found a freshly American voice, expressing not only the sorrows but also the hopes and joys of a generation. Their works came to define what America was and what it would become.

"Or does it explode?"
Cheryl Lynn Greenberg.
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The Great Depression was a time of hardship for many Americans, but for the citizens of Harlem it was made worse by past and present discrimination. Or Does It Explode? examines Black Harlem from the 1920s through the Depression and New Deal to the outbreak of World War II. It describes the changing economic and social lives of Harlemites, and the complex responses of a resilient community to racism and poverty.

The homeless transient in the Great Depression
Joan M. Crouse.
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Years before the Dust Bowl exodus raised America's conscience to the plight of its migratory citzenry, an estimated one to two million homeless, unemployed Americans were traversing the country, searching for permanent community. Often mistaken for bums, tramps, hoboes or migratory laborers, these transients were a new breed of educated, highly employable men and women uprooted from their middle- and working-class homes by an unprecedented economic crisis. The Homeless Transient in the Great Depression investigates this population and the problems they faced in an America caught between a poor law past and a social welfare future.

Bud, not Buddy
Christopher Paul Curtis.
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It's 1936, in Flint, Michigan. Ten-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy on the run, but he's on a mission. His momma never told him who his father was, but she left a clue: posters of Herman E. Calloway and his famous band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression! Bud's got an idea that those posters will lead to his father. Once he decides to hit the road and find this mystery man, nothing can stop him.

New York Jews and the Great Depression
Beth S. Wenger.
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Chronicling the experience of New York City's Jewish families during the Great Depression, this work tells the story of a generation of immigrants and their children as they faced an uncertain future in America.

Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression;

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No description seems to be available online but based on the table of contents, this books seems to focus on what lead to repatriation in Arizona and more on Los Angeles during the Great Depression.

Children of the Great Depression
by Russell Freedman.
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As he did for frontier children in his enormously popular Children of the Wild West, Russell Freedman illuminates the lives of the American children affected by the economic and social changes of the Great Depression. Middle-class urban youth, migrant farm laborers, boxcar kids, children whose families found themselves struggling for survival . . . all Depression-era young people faced challenges like unemployed and demoralized parents, inadequate food and shelter, schools they couldn’t attend because they had to go to work, schools that simply closed their doors. Even so, life had its bright spots—like favorite games and radio shows—and many young people remained upbeat and optimistic about the future.

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt
edited by Robert Cohen.
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Impoverished young Americans had no greater champion during the Depression than Eleanor Roosevelt. As First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt used her newspaper columns and radio broadcasts to crusade for expanded federal aid to poor children and teens. "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt" presents nearly 200 of these extraordinary documents to open a window into the lives of the Depression's youngest victims. In their own words, the letter writers confide what it was like to be needy and young during the worst economic crisis in American history.

To ask for an equal chance
Cheryl Lynn Greenberg.
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As Cheryl Lynn Greenberg makes clear, African Americans were not passive victims of economic catastrophe or white racism; they responded to such challenges in a variety of political, social, and communal ways. The book explores both the external realities facing African Americans and individual and communal responses to them. While experiences varied depending on many factors including class, location, gender and community size, there are also unifying and overarching realities that applied universally. To Ask for an Equal Chance straddles the particular, with examinations of specific communities and experiences, and the general, with explorations of the broader effects of racism, discrimination, family, class, and political organizing.