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Robert Weaver, and Davis both Dunbar High School and Harvard University graduates, in their twenties and out-of-work, form the two-man Joint Committee on National Recovery in 1933, challenging President Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs. They travel the back roads of the deep and dangerous - for a black man - south investigating lynchings, voting rights violations of black Americans, and the squalid working conditions of black agricultural, textile and factory workers.

 They generate national front-page headlines when testifying before Congressional hearings that price supports are ruining black farmers and that the pending Social Security Act does not cover millions of black and white domestic and farm workers.

 

The white owner of a Georgia textile mill tells Congress, Everybody knows it costs Negroes less to live than white people. Davis angrily counters that what a person buys for dinner is determined by the size of his pay check, not the size of his appetite.

 

 Davis and Weaver also charge the Roosevelt Administration with refusing to forcibly back anti-lynching, anti-poll tax legislation and laws assuring black factory workers will be paid the same wages as white workers for the same or similar work.

 

      Roosevelt's National Recovery Act - NRA- stands for Negroes Robbed Again, John P. Davis testifies. The Roosevelt Administration offers them both high-level, high-paying government jobs. They refuse the offers, continuing their civil rights work.

 

 The Joint Committee for National Recovery:  Dr. Mordecai Johnson, C.C .Spaulding, Dr. Robert C Weaver, Walter White, Mabel Byrd, William P. Hastie, Mary Van Kleech, Dalton Ferguson, Myra Colson Callis, Dr. George E Hayes, John P. Davis

 

 

 


 

 

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