What rights did African Americans possess in the 1930's? Is there any evidence of the treatment of African Americans in "Of Mice and Men" by...

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the setting of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," Jim Crow Laws were existant in the South.  These laws deprived African-Americans of many job opportunities; disinfranchisement was also in existence, while public buildings and parks, restaurants, and churches were segregated. Anti-miscegenation laws were in effect; it was not until 1948 that California repealed their law regarding miscegenation.

In Steinbeck's novella, Crooks, the stabler who is black, is segregated from the other men and not allowed into the ranch house.  Instead, he is isolated from the white men and made to live in the barn with the mules. However, he tells Lennie that he is not a Southern negro who grew up under Jim Crow; instead, his father had a chicken ranch of nearly ten acres.  He even played with white children as a child, but now

there ain't a colored man on this ranch an' there's jus' one fmaily in Soledad.

The most alienated of the men on another man's ranch, he tells Lennie,

A guy needs somebody--to be near him....A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.

When Curley's wife appears, Crooks tells her,

Maybe you better go along to your own house now.  We don't want no trouble.

But, because he is black, he retires into the "terrible protective dignity of the negro" and becomes quiet as Candy scolds her.  However, Crooks does tell her that she has no right to come into a "colored man's room...and messing around."  However, he is threatened by Curley's wife when she hears him say that he might ask the boss to prohibit her from coming around:

'Listen, Nigger,' she said.  'You know what I can do to you if you open your trap?'

Crooks stared hopelessly at her, and then he sat down on his bunk and drew into himself.

She closed on him. 'You know what I could do?'

Crooks seemed to grow smaller, and he pressed himself against the wall. 'Yes, ma'am.'

'Well, you keep your place then, Nigger.  I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny.'

Crooks had reduced himself to nothing.  There was no personality, no ego--nothing to arouse either like or dislike.  He said, 'Yes, ma'am,' and his voice was toneless. [He acts according to Jim Crow]

For a moment she stood over him as though waiting for him to move so that she could whip at him again, but Crooks sat perfectly still, his eyes averted, everything that might be hurt drawn in.  She turned at last to the other two.

Clearly, Crooks assumes a position of submission after Curley's wife turns upon him.  For, he has no rights, no room in which to express any opinion, no edge over even Curley's wife; he must be submissive out of fear of reprisals.  After all, this is the behavior expected of a black in the 1930s.  Indeed, Crooks is the most tragic of all the men, isolated completely, ridiculed, and slighted.