African American Immigration Dbq

As the first World War came to a close, Americans experienced an era of great social and economic upheaval/change. During the roaring twenties, an average worker could support his family on a factory paycheck while still having time and resources to socialize or cruise about in automobiles. This expansion of consumerism expanded thanks to household appliances and the newly available credit card. During this time of prosperity jazz, flappers and consumerism immortalized in American culture. Many black Americans in the South longed for such a lifestyle, and migrated Northeast in the hopes of a better life. Through this “Great Migration”, black Americans advanced from sharecroppers to factory workers within a generation, from illiterate to cultural

significance in a new urban setting. However, the migrants soon found that the issues of racial strife and segregation remained a powerful influence.

The Great Migration yielded a transformation in African Americans from sharecroppers into factory workers, which allowed for a unique culture to form amongst African Americans.

For decades before the migration, an African American folk-saying bitterly said that black sharecroppers were without a home, cheated by white men who left no crop for them (Document 1). This saying was popular among African Americans, reflecting the experiences of black sharecroppers in the South. The situation for black Americans had changed by the migration’s early year of 1917, in which a literate black man wrote to a group he discovered by reading the Chicago Defender to inquire about moving North to support his family (Document 2). Many African Americans like the author of this letter migrated in order to work in factories, which promised consistency and relatively high wages for its workers. The migration allowed for an increase in literacy among black Americans and the formation of a new African American culture. In contrast to the old folk-saying, in 1925 a black journalist George Schuyler was able to write about the misconception that black factory workers strike more than white ones (Document 6). Given that Schuyler’s publisher, The Messenger, was a magazine aimed at literate black Americans, he aimed to disprove a

falsehood that prevents black Americans from getting the high-paying union jobs that they migrated North for. One example of cultural excitement in black Americans is Lizzie Miles, an African American singer who lamented the feeling of un-belonging that she felt as a black American in her 1923 song “Cotton Belt Blues” (Document 5). She likely dramaticized her feelings for artistic reasons, but nevertheless the song still reflects how many black Americans felt concerning their heritage and history. The enrichment of post-migratory African American culture was most famously embodied by the Harlem Renaissance, in which influential black writers and musicians like W. E. B. Dubois and Louis Armstrong embraced the experiences of black Americans in essays, literature, poetry, and song.The transformation of black Americans during the twenties was challenged by the issues that followed them from the South.

Racial segregation and condescension continued to plague black communities still after the Great Migration North.

Racism towards blacks is evident in a 1919 article by the Jackson Daily News, newspaper, which blamed the race riot in Chicago on the influx of naive black migrants (Document 4). Being a southern white-owned publication, the Jackson Daily News condescends to black migrants for seeking better work North, advising them to return south for their sharecropping positions; it justifies itself by saying the occasional lynching is better than the threat of being bombed by racists. Another example is the misconception that George Schuyler disproved in his previously mentioned 1925 article for The Messenger, that Black workers are more likely to break strikes (Document 6). Racism in the United States was manifested most prominently in segregation. This sentiment is plainly stated in Dwight Farnham, a white efficiency expert’s 1918 article “Negroes as a Source of Industrial Labor” (Document 3). Farnham, being a white industrialist writing in Industrial Management magazine, justifies segregation by saying that separating workers by race prevents race riots and maximizes efficiency. The effects of racial segregation can be seen in the academic population map DISTRIBUTION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN POPULATION IN CHICAGO, 1930, which shows black populations deliberately concentrated in areas separate from white neighborhoods (Document 7). As an academic source, this map uses census

data to showcase segregation as a problem even by end of the Great Migration. The justification of racial segregation was best exemplified in the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896, which stated that segregation was constitutional as long as the mantra “separate but equal’ held true. This ruling reflects the racist mindset of white Americans that prohibited all but a few African Americans from fully integrating into American society during the roaring twenties.

The segregation and institutionalized racism of the roaring twenties remained from the previous industrial period, unaffected by the Great Migration. However, the migration did cause an elevation of black Americans from rural sharecroppers to urban industrial workers, as well as the creation of a distinct African American culture. Parallels can be drawn between this time and the Civil Rights Movement. The issues of segregation and institutional racism were challenged during both eras, albeit with more success in the Civil Rights Movement’s time. Some portion of the these movements still live on today in police shooting protests.