The National Youth Administration's college fund for African Americans

Above: The caption for this photograph, taken in January 1943, reads: "Daytona Beach, Florida. Bethune-Cookman College. Two NYA (National Youth Administration) students chatting between classes on the campus." Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Above: The caption for this photograph, taken in February 1943, reads: "Daytona Beach, Florida. Bethune-Cookman College. NYA (National Youth Administration) students who live in the regular school dormitory looking at class schedule." Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The New Deal helped African Americans attend college

Despite MSNBC anchor Joy Reid's recent, blanket statement that FDR and the New Deal excluded African Americans (see my last blog post), the New Deal's National Youth Administration (NYA)--created by FDR with Executive Order 7086--employed hundreds of thousands of African Americans on both in-school and out-of-school projects. The NYA also set up a "Special Negro College and Graduate Fund." During academic years 1937-1943, the NYA spent $609,930 from this special fund to help 4,118 college and graduate-level African Americans - or about $11.2 million in 2019 dollars (NYA final report, 1944, p. 52).

Though this may not seem like a lot, it must be remembered that (a) college was less expensive in those days, and (b) this assistance was on top of the NYA's routine college assistance to African Americans. The special fund was described in the NYA's final report: "Eligible Negro students who could not be employed within a particular institution's quota for college and graduate work, after the institution had made a fair allocation for Negro students from its regular quota, could apply for assistance from the special Negro college and graduate work fund through the institution which they desired to attend" (p. 51, emphasis added).

Additionally, by 1938 alone, the NYA was providing student work and financial assistance to 30,000 African American high school students, thus helping them move on to college, trade school, or post-high school employment (National Youth Administration, The Tenth Youth, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938, p. 5).

There has been a growing notion in modern America that the New Deal excluded African Americans - a notion now advanced by Joy Reid (who has millions of followers). But this is a false notion, a falsity that not only contradicts the historical record, but also demeans the work of African Americans who worked in the New Deal administration, such as Mary McLeod Bethune, Lawrence Oxley, and Thomasina Norford. These administrators worked hard to create more opportunities for African Americans, and they also helped lay the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement they surely knew was coming.

And to be clear, the NYA's special college fund was just one of many New Deal programs to assist African Americans.

Above: NYA workers at the Morgan State College library, Baltimore, Maryland, ca. 1935-1943. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

"I have determined that we shall do something for the Nation's unemployed youth because we can ill afford to lose the skill and energy of these young men and women."

--President Franklin Roosevelt, "Statement on the National Youth Administration," June 26, 1935