The Second Bill of Rights

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i see people now who are trying to make an argument for a broader and bolder political vision. And i mean, i think they cite the new deal for a reason. Minimum wage, abolishing child labor, forty hour work week,. social security, you know, sond like, right? The jobs programmes, yes, massive jobs program im in support for the arts. So i think all those things are, you can't dismiss those. And then even if you look at this sort of language in roosevelt's speech, where he talks about the second bill of rights, ant i think that is really important to look at.

The Great Depression presented a crisis not only for the U.S. economy, but for American democracy. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to save the nation’s system of government, and its economic system, while reforming both. What did the New Deal achieve, and not achieve?

Reported and produced by John Biewen, with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Eric Rauchway and Cybelle Fox. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

Music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.

Photo: Men fighting during a strike at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, 1937. Image courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

As mentioned in the episode, an article by public historian Larry DeWitt examining the widespread assertion that the exclusion of some occupations from the original Social Security old-age pension program was insisted on by southern segregationists: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html