Lesson Plan: Overview

Academic Standards

Standard 3-5: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the major developments in South Carolina in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century.

Historical Background Notes

Lesson 1

On October 24, 1929 the stock market was the last thing many South Carolinians had on their mind.  It was Big Thursday the football game between Clemson College and the University of South Carolina.  There were fourteen thousand people watching the game at the State Fairgrounds in Columbia to see Clemson break a tie and win.  (Edgar, 1998, 498)

It took a few days for the news of the stock market crash to sink in, but when it did Big Thursday also was Black Thursday.  By June 1932 cotton dropped to fifty-one cents a pound the lowest it had been since 1894.  The per capita income for South Carolinians dropped from two hundred sixty-one dollars in 1929 to one hundred fifty-one dollars in 1933.  (Edgar, 1998, 499)

Major financial institutions began to go under.  In 1931 People’s State Bank and its forty-four branches closed.  State and local governments seemed unwilling or unable to act.  In 1931 Charleston was on the brink of bankruptcy.  Greenville cut taxes, Florence eliminated jobs, and Columbia’s mayor said there was no economic crisis and blocked a municipal employment agency. (Edgar, 1998, 499)

By 1936 South Carolina was one of six states without old-age pensions, one of fourteen without assistance for the blind, and one of two with no aid for dependent children.  Local agencies could not cope with the seriousness of this crisis.  There were seventeen counties in South Carolina that had an unemployment rate greater than thirty percent.  By the year 1932 charities in Columbia were serving more than seven hundred thousand free meals a year.  In rural South Carolina people were dying from hunger, and in Columbia many were close to starvation. (Edgar, 1998, 500)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidential election of 1932.  The most number of votes for FDR came from South Carolina.  As a result of the New Deal many South Carolinians were saved from starvation.  The school lunch program made a big difference for children whose families could not feed them everyday.  The Civilian Conservation Corps provided jobs for young men. 

The Great Depression had an enormous effect on the people of South Carolina.  Many people were without jobs and unable to buy food.  As a result of this situation many South Carolinians felt FDR’s New Deal was their chance to find work and feed their families.  It provided many with the opportunity for a new beginning.

Lesson 2

The stock market crash of October 1929 was like an earthquake that cracked across the United States. (Kennedy, 2005, 10)  As the decade of the Great Depression opened the already struggling farmers would be the hardest hit victims.  During the 1920’s the South was the nation’s most rural region.  Southerners planted and picked their traditional crops of cotton, tobacco, rice, or sugarcane. (Kennedy, 2005, 18)  Cotton slumped from thirty-five cents per pound to sixteen cents in 1920.  Corn sank from $1.50 per bushel to fifty-two cents. (Kennedy, 2005, 17)

 The education system during the Great Depression was also affected.  Rural, southern, and black schools were already the most poorly funded and felt the effects the most.  By 1934 rural poverty had closed more than 20,000 schools.  These were hard times for schools, families, and the young.  The birth rate and grade school enrollments fell as well. (Cohen, 2002, 91)

During this time both Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband received unprecedented amounts of mail from Americans between 1933 and 1940.  The public sent FDR more than three times the mail of any previous president.  Mrs. Roosevelt received more than 300,000 pieces of mail during her first year in the White House.  What made the letters unique were their origins and character.  The majority of the letters were written from the working class and wrote asking for aid rather than to voice their opinion. (Cohen, 2002, 5)

In one letter a ten year old girl asks for a bus to get to school.  She says they have to walk across a river and they almost freeze because they do not have good clothes.  (Cohen, 2002, 97)  In many other letters students are requesting money for tuition to either attend college or grade school.  In one letter a girl asked for clothes to wear to school.  She said any clothes Mrs. Roosevelt did not wear would be greatly appreciated.  She also asked that her letter not be put in the newspaper. (Cohen, 2002, 103)  Another letter states how much a family likes Mr. Roosevelt’s New Deal. (Cohen, 2002, 104)

Materials

“A Sharecropper Boy.”  Photograph.  As reproduced in A South Carolina Album, 1936-1948, Constance B Schulz, editor. Columbia:  The University of South Carolina Press,1992.

“The Wife and Mother of a Sharecropper.”  Photograph.  As reproduced in A South Carolina Album, 1936-1948, Constance B Schulz, editor. Columbia:  The University of South Carolina Press, 1992.

Walker, Joel and Donald O. Stewart.  The South Carolina Adventure.  Salt Lake City: Gibbes Smith, 2005.

Edgar,Walter.  South Carolina: A History.  Columbia:  University of South Carolina Press, 1998.

Cohen, Robert.  Dear Mrs. Roosevelt:  Letters from Children of the Great Depression.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002.