[AzaleaCity5691]

"Of course, FDR's AAA and NRA lined the pockets of Southern planters and drove thousands of blacks from their land."

Exactly where are you getting your information from. The reason so much of FDR's aid went to the Southern states is because in many Southern states, there was a budding Socialist movement, because the region had been long mired in economic stagnation as a result of the consequences of Yankee misrule in the Reconstruction period. For example, in Huey Long's home parish of Winn, Eugene Debs was a revered figure, in several of his bids, he garnered more than 30% of the parish's vote. Where do you think Huey learned most of his issue positions from. In fact, the Huey Long approach of a sort of socialistic-fascist approach was gaining alot of popularity among poor whites in the Southeast, and that's the reason FDR poured so much money into the region, because during this time, there was real danger of insurrection.

And I have one question, exactly where are you getting your information that says that blacks were forcibly removed from their land.

[MikefromOhio]

And I have one question, exactly where are you getting your information that says that blacks were forcibly removed from their land.

He doesn't have any. You called him out right and good though....

[WillMalven]

Yes, we were saved from a disaster by a bullet in Baton Rouge. Huey was a socialist nightmare..

[Austin Willard Wright]

The literature on the NRA/AAA and mistreatment of blacks is quite extensive and is even accepted (or at least taken seriously) by many mainstream historians. For a good summary of evidence that Southern planters used the AAA (via production controls) NRA (via the minimum wage) to evict sharecroppers and pocket subsidies, see David Bernstein, Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal.

If you want to read some devastating criticism of both the NRA and AAA from the period, check out the old Chicago Defenders from the early 1930s. Such phrases for the NRA as "Negroes Ruined Again" "Negro Runaround Act" and "Negro Removal Act" were common.

I think you overstate evidence of a budding socialist movement in the South in the 1930s. There were some fascistic/socialist types like Huey but most Southern politicians (Richard Russell, Harry Byrd, Eugene Talmadge, John Nance Gardner, were more conservative. Debs was mouldering in his grave and Norman Thomas did much worse than Debs when he ran in 1932. His weakest showing was in the South!

Huey had a big following but it was more national than regional and crested 1934-1935, after the NRA/AAA were either dead on or on their last legs. The death of these agencies at the hands of the Supreme Court was unlamented even by FDR. Huey was not particularly bothered either.