Without posting an epic, the government does a lousy job at nearly everything especially charity.
What started all this was a flood. Young Herbert Hoover was the Fed who organized the government's relief effort, and the goodwill he generated propelled him into the White House. All of this was because women had just won the voting franchise and they rewarded sensitive caring do-gooders with their votes. All the years prior nobody thought it was the government's job to bail out people too poor or stupid enough to build on a obvious floodplain.
Why burden taxpayers with paying for people who were irresponsible? Even the poor could have simply moved on, the floodplain is not a place to live. Doh!
No offense to all the New Orleans urban dwellers who didn't know any better.
In the past every town had a Community Chest as well as stronger, more active churches. When somebody fell on hard times there were people who knew them personally. Obviously the scumbags didn't get help and the deserving did. Nobody had to meet federal guidelines and 90-100% of the donations went to help the people as opposed to the government that's lucky to get 50% of the budget where it needs to go.
That is considered unfair these days, and our media will point to examples of injustice. Lots of school kids your age have performed the play, Thornton Wilder's, "Hometown" (I think) and read books like. "To Kill a Mockingbird" where the authors criticize small town, rural American life. We hear about lynchings, racism, the Klan, bigotry, etc. while truth be told these were far more rare than we're led to believe. For instance, in the late 1800s there were more whites lynched than blacks, and of those I assume that the majority were actually guilty. Not every rapist and horsethief was innocent!
For instance if a young girl got pregnant, the community disapproved and it wasn't pleasant but the end result was that not many girls got pregnant! Now teenage pregnancy is celebrated and 80% of Black babies are born to single mothers (and all the other races are catching up too). What's the net result? Maybe shaming a few girls (and boys too) is better than multi-generational perpetual poverty and misery?
So I'm sorry for whomever's family needed assistance but no, during that period they shouldn't also be voting.