The greatest obstacle Harlem Renaissance writers faced was not the withdrawal of the public eye. The Great Depression, beginning in 1929 and continuing until the build-up to World War II, presented the worst barrier to their continued success. As the maid of Fisk sociologist E. Franklin Frazier snorted, she didn’t know why people were talking about a Depression; she’d known hard times all her life. The necessity of art was replaced with economic reality and aesthetic theory supplanted by politics. By the mid-1930s the tone and subjects of many writers had shifted from a celebration of Negro culture and the attractions of the black metropolis to the hard facts of breadlines, apartment evictions, and skyrocketing unemployment (at one point during the 1930s about 50 percent of Harlem residents able to work were unemployed). The Republican Party, once the party of choice for African Americans, gave way to the Democratic Party’s promises of a safety net for all. Despite his party’s gains with African Americans, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was no radical on race issues. Although he retained black educator Mary McLeod Bethune as an adviser, Roosevelt feared a liberal image would weaken his position with white Southerners, and endanger his larger slate of reforms; no antilynching bill would be supported by him. (Not until 1948, under the leadership of President Harry Truman, would the United States officially begin the process of desegregation.) Federal organizations set up to alleviate the disasters of the Depression ended up replicating the status quo. Blacks would continue to receive lower wages than whites, if indeed they received work and federal assistance at all.