Why are you quoting the article back to me? I said 1/3 of black workers were covered initially, which means 2/3 or 66.6% were not.

Then you quote the oft-repeated sinister intentions view of how the racists did this to screw black people that arose in the 90's, when the whole point of the article is to discuss research pointing out lack of means to deal with payments for the hard-to-reach agricultural sector rather than racism (remember, banks were going bankrupt, people were losing their farms and moving around, roads weren't nearly as good as when the interstate started to go in, etc.).

So apparently they covered the sectors they could cover, and left the rest for later.

Read the fascinating report for yourself: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html

An excerpt on the race question

Examining the Race Explanation

First, note that the coverage decision made in 1935 was not to exclude farm and domestic workers, which, had that been the factual circumstance, might have lent more credence to a charge of racial bias. Rather, the decision was to include only those workers regularly employed in commerce and industry. Thus, the coverage decision also excluded the following.

• Self-employed individuals (including farm proprietors)
• Persons working in the nonprofit sector
• Professionals such as self-employed doctors, lawyers, and ministers
• Seamen in the merchant marine
• Employees of charitable or educational foundations
• Employees of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
• Persons aged 65 or older
• Casual laborers
• Members of Congress
• Employees of federal, state, and local governments—everyone from the president of the United States to post office clerks

Indeed, of the 20.1 million gainfully employed workers that the president's Committee on Economic Security estimated were excluded from participation in the Social Security system, at least 15 million were white.6

Moreover, African Americans, to the extent that they were members of these other professions, would be excluded from coverage because of their membership. For example, in 1935 African Americans made up about 4 percent of the federal government's workforce in six of the largest agencies and comprised more than 20 percent of the workers in such agencies as the Government Printing Office. All of these workers were excluded from Social Security coverage because of their employment, not because of their race (Rung 2002, 73–74). Other African Americans were likewise excluded for reasons having nothing to do with race. The professional employees of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), for example, were also excluded from coverage on the grounds that they were employed by a nonprofit institution. Indeed, most of the members of President Roosevelt's informal "black cabinet" were blocked from participating in the Social Security system because they worked in either the federal government or in nonprofit organizations.7 The point here is that some African Americans were excluded from the program for occupational reasons rather than their race. This lends credence to the idea that the other large group of excluded African Americans (those in agricultural and domestic work) might also have been excluded from coverage because of their occupation features rather than racial bias.

It is true that from the 1930 Census (the closest available data point and the main information base available to Social Security policymakers in 1935), we can observe that about 65 percent of gainfully employed African Americans worked in the agricultural or domestic sectors of the economy. This statistic, stated alone, does create an impression that African Americans might have been the target of the coverage exclusions. But there are a couple of other statistics here that are worth noting. See Table 1, for a more comprehensive view of coverage exclusions.

Table 1. Noncoverage of agricultural and domestic workers, by occupational categories and raceOccupational categoryWhiteNegro [sic]Other aTotal, all racesAgriculture8,192,1811,987,839291,97810,471,998Domestic and personal service3,268,7251,576,205197,5215,042,451Total workers excluded from coverage11,460,9063,564,044489,49915,514,449Percentage of excluded workers74233100Total workers in all occupations42,584,4975,503,535741,88848,829,920Excluded workforce as a percentage of total workers276566. . .SOURCE: Census Bureau (1933, Table 12, p. 24).NOTE: . . . = not applicable.a. Other category includes Mexicans, Indians, Japanese, Filipinos, Hindus, Koreans, Hawaiians, and so forth.

Although 65 percent of the African American workforce was excluded by this provision, it was also the case that 27 percent of the white workforce was likewise excluded from coverage. Moreover, African Americans were not the most heavily impacted group: 66 percent of "other" races were excluded as well. Of those individuals excluded under the provision, 74 percent were white, and only 23 percent were African American. This hardly constitutes a compelling initial case for the assumption that the provision targeted African Americans.8

Moreover, the coverage exclusions had less impact than the gross 1930 Census numbers suggest because the Bureau of Internal Revenue—subsequent to the passage of the law—had to develop regulations to put the generalities of the law into practical language. They had to define, for example, what type of work was and was not considered "agricultural." Ultimately the regulations excluded from agricultural work (and hence included for participation in Social Security) jobs in industries such as cotton and rice gins; milk bottling, delivery, and sales; growing, harvesting, processing, and packing gum naval stores; chicken hatcheries; raising animals for fur; and several other agricultural-type occupations. The bureau also defined any job that was not in fact agricultural in nature (such as a mechanic, bookkeeper, carpenter, and so forth) as nonagricultural, even if it was performed entirely on a farm (Schurz, Wyatt, and Wandel 1937, 91–97).9

Also, occupational categories are not necessarily life assignments; workers in noncovered occupations could earn coverage by working part time in covered jobs, even if their primary occupation was excluded. The Social Security Board (1945, 14) estimated that around 22 percent of agricultural workers had earned some coverage by the end of 1940; about 25 percent of white domestic workers and 13 percent of black domestic workers had some covered earnings during the first few years of the program.10

Finally, if Southerners engineered the coverage exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers out of economic self-interest, we have to question whether or not the coverage exclusions would have been a rational way to proceed. If Social Security coverage was considered to be a positive, the exclusions might have acted as an incentive for workers to leave their agricultural and domestic jobs and seek employment in factory work or in other covered industries. On the other hand—to the extent that future Social Security benefits would be seen as an economic incentive—covering agricultural and domestic workers under Social Security would have served as an incentive to keep them in those jobs. So if racist Southerners were acting out of their economic self-interest here, it would seem more likely that they would have urged coverage of their agricultural and domestic workers, not their exclusion.

Followup section then goes on to explain that the "South" wasn't so monolithic in economy and culture, as well as:

Many workers in Depression-era America were reluctant to take an immediate cut in take-home pay for the promise of a benefit in the distant future. Recall also that the original law of 1935 contemplated payroll-tax withholding beginning in January 1937, but the first monthly retirement benefits were to be paid in 1942. So 1935-era workers not only had to take on faith the idea that they would get a future benefit from the government when they retired, but it was also going to be several years before they could see examples of other people going before them for whom the government had kept its promise.

Indeed, almost all of the disputes, protests, lawsuits, and so forth, involving the program in the early years were efforts by individuals who were in the covered population to get out of that population