“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”? This quote from his inaugural address sums up the mood of the American people as Roosevelt was elected president of the United States in the depths of the Depression. He faced many challenges due to the mismanagement of previous successive Republican governments, including the fact that a large part of the American population was unemployed and the banking crisis. Roosevelt had promised the American people a “new deal” when he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in 1932; However, his campaign offered only vague indications of what that would entail. He put the issue of economic security on the agenda. President Roosevelt explicitly and consciously defined the New Deal as the embodiment of freedom, but the freedom of economic security rather than freedom of contract, or the freedom of every man for himself. Roosevelt promulgated the first New Deal, also called the "Hundred Days" to address the emergency situation in which the country found itself. He faced a banking system on the brink of collapse, when more than five thousand banks were already closed, including all those in New York and Illinois, because they had been closed by their state governors respective earlier in the day. Roosevelt declared a "holiday" in March 1933, because by that time banking had been suspended in more than thirty-eight states, he temporarily halted all banking operations, and held a special session of Congress. On March 9, Congress hastily passed a bill called the Emergency Banking Act, which provided funds to consolidate endangered banks. He continued to attempt to protect the economy by introducing the Glass-Stegall Act, which prohibited commercial banks from getting involved. ..... middle of document...... including racial and ethnic groups ignored by the previous administration, nevertheless the South helped the New Deal welfare state be shaped to help only white Americans , as the majority of black workers observed. themselves to the most venerable and least generous wing of the new welfare state. The federal government allowed states to set their benefits for blacks at extremely low levels and to determine eligibility standards that included moral behavior as defined by local authorities, which led to widespread discrimination in the payment of services. African Americans were hit hardest by the Depression because they had an unemployment rate twice that of whites. Thus, the majority of blacks received direct government assistance, especially in northern cities like Harlem, where half of families received public assistance throughout the years 1930..