Answer:
Possible thesis statement: Most Americans felt the effects of the Great Depression largely through the massive unemployment that spread across the nation. Unemployment created fear among all Americans about their present and future economic security. It caused stress among most segments of the population—adult men, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, women, and families.
Adult men experienced severe emotional distress from being out of work. They especially were ashamed of being unemployed, of their inability to meet the needs of their families, and the way in which unemployment challenged their masculinity.
African Americans suffered disproportionately with more unemployment, homelessness, malnutrition, and disease than most whites. Unemployed whites began competing for jobs traditionally taken by African American workers and many whites demanded that all blacks be dismissed from their jobs so that they could be given to white workers.
Hispanic workers, especially those in the Southwest, suffered more severe discrimination and unemployment during the Depression. Hispanics were excluded from most relief roles, offered fewer benefits than white workers, had no access to American schools, and some were rounded up and transported back to Mexico. Consequently, both African American and Hispanic rural laborers began to migrate to larger cities for jobs where they lived in urban poverty.
Asian Americans were forced to deal with increased discrimination and economic marginalization that stemmed from longstanding patterns, especially in the agricultural economies of California.
While economic forces pushed many women into the workforce during the Depression, women failed to become more economically, socially, or professionally independent during the era.
Families experienced great hardships, foremost among them malnutrition and homelessness. People in both rural and urban America lost their homes and took to the road. Both the young and old began "hoboing" on freight cars. When they could no longer move, homeless families constructed shantytowns of makeshift shacks fashioned from abandoned crates, wood scraps, and flattened tin cans. Rural Americans suffered especially. Farm incomes decreased by as much as 60 percent, one-third of all farmers lost their land, and the drought natural disaster known as the Dust Bowl stimulated a massive migration of farmers to the American West. The bottom line effect of all these dislocations was the erosion of the strength that held many American families together.
Possible conclusion: As Dr. Brinkley concludes, while Americans and the American family suffered greatly during the Great Depression, the "American way of life" was not destroyed. Indeed, the Depression confirmed many traditional values in American society, as well as reinforced many traditional goals.
