The 1930’s was a period of transformation in the political, legal, and social status of African Americans in the United States. Despite dramatic developments, many economic and demographic characteristics of African Americans at the end of the 1930’s were not that different from what they had been in the previous decades. It was for difficult for Blacks to make a living during the Great Depression. Living conditions were unreal and most people lived in extreme poverty. While these conditions affected all segments of society, African Americans were far worst off. Most of the country's Black population lived in rural areas and worked on farms owned by white landowners. For African-Americans, the depression was hard to distinguish when poverty was always a way of life. Living conditions became more horrendous when some landowners lost their properties during the Depression. However, there were many African-Americans who continued to make their living doing hard manual labor or working in dangerous areas such as in foundries, while others worked as domestic servants for whites. A smaller number worked for the railroads, steel mills, coal mines and school boards. There were some African-Americans who made fairly reasonable living operating small businesses. Around this time, the government began to get involved with the social statuses of African Americans. At the start of the decade and throughout most of his first term, neither President Franklin Roosevelt nor the Congress paid much attention to the suffering of blacks. The President did not want to anger the Southern Senators who controlled the Senate and who could block his efforts to end the Depression. However by the end first term, the president's thinking began to change, thanks to the efforts of his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. As a result, Roosevelt began to publicly speak out against lynching and granted influential black leaders such as Mary McLeod Bethune access to the White House. Federal agencies began to open their doors to blacks, providing jobs, relief, education, training, and participation in a variety of federal programs. The United States Supreme Court began to hand down decisions favoring black challenges to segregation. For the first time since Reconstruction, the federal government actively supported blacks and made a concerted effort to help them into the mainstream of American life. Black voters responded to the change of heart of the Roosevelt administration by switching their political allegiance from the Republican Party to the Democratic, and black civil-rights organizations began to increase their activity and demands for their rights as citizens of the United States. In the short novel, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck Crooks, the Black stable hand is used to represent the racism against blacks in the Depression-era west. During the Depression, Blacks like Crooks suffered from poverty and racial segregation. Crooks lives by himself because he is the only black man on the ranch. He is the loneliest characters, as he is excluded from the white workers' social group and is threatened with lynching and death like most Blacks were during this era. He is bookish and likes to keep neat, but he has been so beaten down by loneliness and prejudicial treatment that he is now suspicious of any kindness he receives. Though Crooks was born in California, he is treated like an outsider. He is painfully aware that his skin color is all that keeps him separate in this culture. Crook’s little dream of the farm he plans to own with George, Lennie and Candy, like the dreams of many other Blacks, is destroyed by Curley’s wife’s nasty comments, putting him right back into his status as inferior to whites. He accepts the fact that he lives with ever-present racial discrimination. Like many African Americans in the 1930’s, Crooks defines himself not based on what he believes he’s worth, but on knowing that no matter how he feels, others around him will always value him as less. The dream of freedom and equality between whites and blacks working together for a common goal excites him. As quickly as he got excited about the dream, he abandons it; He abandons being interested in his own freedom and happiness.