Political Movements

Under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one wing of the Democratic Party became transformed into a type of social democratic party. Although the Southern segregationists and the big-city political machines remained, the workers and farmers flooded into its ranks. The Democratic Party, moving in the direction of supporting social and economic reform, was impelled by the mass organization of workers into unions, especially into the industrial unions formed by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The Workers Alliance, various farmers' associations, and radicals, especially those in and around the Communist Party, most frequently generated the organization of the workers, farmers, and the unemployed. This process of mass organization empowered the victims of the Great Depression and compelled the government to respond to their plight.