On February 17th 2009, President Barack Obama signed his first law.  He passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment act.  This was a bill passed to provide relief to low income families, open up jobs,  and help pay for medicare, so that no one is left without it health insurance.  This was a major problem in America, however many people were and still are against it, believing that it will not help fix the issue of urban poverty.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton was just elected to his second term in office.  He had strived for universal health care before it was shut down, in 1994.  In 1997 his wife started a universal health care for children, which became very popular.  He was never able to achieve universal health care for everyone throughout his 8 years in presidency.  Clinton had  a similar goal as obama when he strived for universal health care to bring relief to the needy.

http://www.recovery.gov/About/Pages/The_Act.aspx

During the 1990’s there was a new era, not just in terms of politics but also in terms of freedom and equality.  African Americans became more and more free and accepted as the 90’s came along.  In the 1990s Clinton became President and the rich people in the country were prospering like crazy, while the poor people’s minimum wage failed to increase with inflation.
Even though the wealth gap was increasing, African Americans were getting more jobs and the black wealth was going up.  According to Foner more blacks where getting jobs that were formerly known as white jobs, such as being a fireman or police officer.  The number of black police officers increased from 24,000 to 65,000 from 1970 to 2000.  Blacks were getting more and more wealthy faster than whites, and the concept of racism started to fade.  Even though racism was going away, black communities still continued to struggle as half of African Americans lived in poverty, and the ones that weren’t in poverty lived in predominantly black neighborhoods.  This is a huge factor in history I believe because you cannot just expect racism and segregation to die out so quickly it takes time for the older generations to forget about the days of racism and the ideas that “blacks are lower.”  This is a huge part of history and the hardships African Americans need to go through to gain full equality.

Both of these pictures convey the tough living conditions poor children had to endure during the time of the depression.  One of the pictures shows homeless children sitting on the street as their father’s were probably out looking for a source of food in order to survive.  The other picture shows a family who had to eat there christmas dinner around a small wooden table with probably just enough food to get by.  The children did not even have chairs to sit on as the poverty level was that bad.  Both of these images show how not only were adults left without jobs, but kids also had to suffer and live in ghetto’s for most of their childhoods as the depression went all the way to 1941.