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Summary of the great migration
Features of African American Literature
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Eric Arnesen’s book, Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents, successfully portrays the struggles of early life for African Americans as well as why they migrated to the north in the years of World War I. During the first world war, the lives of as many as 500,000 African Americans changed dramatically as southern blacks migrated to the north. The migration escalated a shift in the population from extremely rural people to urban people in the years following the second world war. Those who lived in the south, particularly black southerners, had many reasons for why they wanted to move to the north. Due to the failure of Reconstruction, which was supposed to re-build the South after the Union victory and grant slaves …show more content…
freedom, many new challenges for black southerners were introduced. Legislation known as “black codes” restricted southern blacks from moving forward and many of them remained as rural agricultural workers. The labor and behavior of African Americans was still controlled by white southerners. They kept control of land, credit, supplies, as well as crops. Blacks remained in poverty as they provided the labor necessary for landowners. Black southerners occupied very few social, political, or legal rights at the end of the Reconstruction era. However, the outbreak of World War I transformed economic and demographic landscape.
Even though northerners were hesitant to work with blacks, employers were recognizing the demand for labor. The North heavily depended on southern reserve of black labor. This is when black men in particular got their first taste of industrial jobs. One motive for the great demographic shift as we know today as the “Great Migration” were jobs. Jobs in the North offered many more advantages than those in the South. Advantages such as higher wages, which was another motive. Other motives included educational opportunities, the prospect of voting, and the “promised land.” As blacks were migrating to the North in search for jobs, there was also a push for equality. There were heightened efforts to build community and political mobilization as more people migrated. Although white conservatives did not hold back their postwar reactions, the optimism to move forward with attempting to change racial order did not disappear. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the 1920’s, the National Negro Congress, Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work, as well as the March on Washington launched a style of protest politics that carried on well into the
1940’s. The “New Negro” had become permanent in the urban scene in the North. The upsurge of African American political activity was due to the desire to confront widespread racism, poor job opportunity, poor wages, and poor living space. By doing this, they confronted social, political, and economic challenges as well as creating a new black culture. Arnesen connects the black southerners to the north by explaining their horrific situations in the South as well as by explaining the advantages of migrating to the Northern states. In the Tampa Morning Tribune, Negroes Who Come to South Are Better Off portrays the South as more hospitable to blacks than the North. They describe “plenty of farm and mill work, better wages than ever before paid, and improved living conditions await southern negroes” (182). As this was true, there were also downsides. George E. Haynes article, Negro Migration: Its Effect on Family and Community Life in the North, explains how observers could not miss “the discriminatory treatment blacks in the North faced in the job market, in labor unions and schools, and in other aspects of urban life” (193). These two articles from the 1920’s explain the advantages and disadvantages of the Great Migration for African Americans.
The North had a very different opinion of the American way and made it exceedingly clear with the formation of numerous abolition societies, effectively abolishing slavery across the northern region and allowing blacks to live as productive members society, rather than its the property. Even one of the most prominent slave holders of that time was forced to rethink the legitimacy of slavery. “Seeing free black soldiers in action undermined [George] Washington’s racial prejudice and ultimately his support for slavery itself” (Finkelman 18). The productivity, societal and political benefits, and military empowerment made available by freed slaves challenged the South’s sense of racial supremacy, thus they began to establish a defense against the complete abolition of
During 1910-1970 the great migration was taking place, which was the movement of southern African American’s to the north/northern cities. The great migration was an event that seemed as if it was unstoppable and that it was going to happen. In the South African American’s faced racial discrimination, sharecropping, bad working conditions, low wages, racial segregation and political detriments. This is all supported by documents 1-4. The great migration was an event which helped improve the conditions for African Americans in America.
During this time period and previous years, Jim Crow laws in the South were greatly in affect and causing African Americans a rough time due to the racism they faced. After Reconstruction had ended, white supremacy had taken its toll in the South and Jim Crow had taken over.. The North, Midwest, and West of the United States began to face a shortage in industrial laborers due to World War I beginning and putting an end to immigration of Europeans to the United States. African Americans felt that heading north was their escape from harsh laws and unsatisfactory economic opportunities. Many people, including teenagers, from the South would write letters to the Chicago Defender asking for help to come North and find work because in the South it was hard to make a living.
During the 1940's, millions of African-Americans moved from the South to the North in search of industrial opportunities. As a result of this migration, a third of all black Americans lived outside the south by 1950.... ... middle of paper ... ... While the war changed the lives of every American, the most notable changes were in demographics, the labor force, economic prosperity and cultural trends.
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Van Woodward, traces the history of race relations in the United States from the mid and late nineteenth century through the twentieth century. In doing so Woodward brings to light significant aspects of Reconstruction that remain unknown to many today. He argues that the races were not as separate many people believe until the Jim Crow laws. To set up such an argument, Woodward first outlines the relationship between Southern and Northern whites, and African Americans during the nineteenth century. He then breaks down the details of the injustice brought about by the Jim Crow laws, and outlines the transformation in American society from discrimination to Civil Rights. Woodward’s argument is very persuasive because he uses specific evidence to support his opinions and to connect his ideas. Considering the time period in which the book and its editions were written, it should be praised for its insight into and analysis of the most important social issue in American history.
In the 1920s and 1930s, segregation was a massive thing for everyone. Minorities were looked down upon mainly because of their different skin color and culture, as people from all over the world started to come to America because of its freedom that it offered. They did receive many of the rights that was said to be given, nor much respect, especially from caucasians. They were mostly slaves, workers or farmers for caucasians. Although they would work as hard as they can, they wouldn’t receive fair pay. In the result of that, they were never able to live the life of a middle-class citizen. They were always low on money. Also, taxes would bug them as it would rise only for the lower-class...
Those studying the experience of African Americans in World War II consistently ask one central question: “Was World War II a turning point for African Americans?” In elaboration, does World War II symbolize a prolongation of policies of segregation and discrimination both on the home front and the war front, or does it represent the start of the Civil Rights Movement that brought racial equality? The data points to the war experience being a transition leading to the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s. World War II presented several new opportunities for African Americans to participate in the war effort and thereby begin to earn an equal place in American society and politics. From the beginning of the war, the black media urged fighting
The North and South were forming completely different economies, and therefore completely different geographies, from one another during the period of the Industrial Revolution and right before the Civil War. The North’s economy was based mainly upon industrialization from the formation of the American System, which was producing large quantities of goods in factories. The North was becoming much more urbanized due to factories being located in cities, near the major railroad systems for transportation of the goods, along with the movement of large groups of factory workers to the cities to be closer to their jobs. With the North’s increased rate of job opportunities, many different people of different ethnic groups and classes ended up working together. This ignited the demise of the North’s social order. The South was not as rapidly urbanizing as the North, and therefore social order was still in existence; the South’s economy was based upon the production of cotton after Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin. Large cotton plantations’ production made up the bulk of America’s...
African Americans migrated to escape racism and prejudice in the south, as well as to seek jobs in industrial cities and resulted in a major shift in where African Americans lived in the United States. Many blacks went north during the great migration due to the fact of believing that they would get better jobs and fair treatment in the north. The Chicago race riot caused by hatred for one another of members of different races in the same community. The black people had suffered the worst of the bloodshed, they had also been arrested by police twice the rate of whites. Many blacks viewed the migration as a well inspired deliverance from the land of suffering. The south could be hostile, but the north could be careful, cold, and lonely. The reason why the Chicago race riots was ludicrous was because of the Eugene Williams situation and doing that time thirty-eight people died 23 (African American and 15 white) and over five hundred were injured. You can relate this back to what’s going on in present time with the police brutality how they are killing African American teens for no reason just because they believe they are up to no good. The Eugene Williams situation really set things off that’s why Chicago had that big riot just like the one in Baltimore with the Mike Brown brutality and
Prior to World War I there was much social, economic, and political inequality for African Americans. This made it difficult for African Americans to accept their own ethnicity and integrate with the rest of American society. By the end of World War II however African Americans had made great strides towards reaching complete equality, developing their culture, securing basic rights, and incorporating into American society.
The Great Migration was the movement of two million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast and West between 1910 and 1940. In 1900, about ninety percent of African Americans resided in formed slave holding states in the South. Beginning in 1910, the African American population increased by nearly twenty percent in Northern states, mostly in the biggest cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Cleveland. African Americans left the rural south because they believed they could escape the discrimination and racial segregation of Jim Crow laws by seeking refuge in the North. Some examples of Jim Crow laws include the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks (“The History of Jim Crow). In addition, economic depression due to the boll weevil infestation of Southern cotton fields in the late 1910s and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 forced many sharecroppers to look for other emplo...
In the book ‘Warmth of Other Suns’ by Isabel Wilkerson listed a series of these factors that contributed. Documented post World War I by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations reasons for migration were as following persuaded by friends, better wages, more work, better conditions, to get away from the south, and other economic and freedom situations. At this time sharecropping was a source of work in the south that left renters in poverty. The conditions that black were living in were not suitable for man. In addition, the agriculture economy was failing according to ‘Warmth of Other Suns’, “boll weevil that tore through the cotton fields and left them without work and in even greater misery...” (pg. 216-217) Also, during this time Jim Crow segregation made it very difficult for the black man to be hired equally, or hired at all. The north and areas in the west were depicted as a land with greater opportunity and freedom. However, we should not get confused about the North; it was still racist and conditions of living were not equal. In comparison to the south, the north was still a better solution for living. Another, huge contributor as a push factor is violence that left fear in black communities of the south. At this time many racial violent groups were terrorizing blacks, such as lynching, beatings, burning of homes, and taunting. Some lynching was made public to show blacks what could happen to
After the end of the civil war African Americans had more opportunity and freedom since the men were soldiers of the civil war. Most African Americans had the plan to leave the south and move to up north because of the racism still lingering in the south, for example the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court case. This case was about a light-skin colored man sitting in the “white” car of a train. Although he was light-skin he was still considered black and got arrested for sitting in that section of the train. This was an opportunity to express racial equality, but the end result was devastating. The Supreme Court declared that segregation of race was to be still constitutionally acceptable. Also economic status in the south was getting lower and there was not as much labor due to destroyed crops.
Beginning in the 1919 and lasting through about 1926 thousands of Blacks began to migrate from the southern United States to the North; an estimated 1 million people participated in what has come to be called the Great Migration.[1] The reasons for this mass movement are complicated and numerous, but they include search for better work, which was fueled by a new demand for labor in the North (particularly from the railroad industry) and the destruction of many cotton harvests by the infectious boll weevil ...
World War I had created a transition time for African Americans to transform from the Old Negro to the New Negro. Many African Americans soldiers, upon returning home, were determined to achieve a fuller part in the American society. Many thousands of them moved from the rural South filled with racism to the industrial North in a pursuit of new social and economic opportunities. In “The New Negro,” the author, Alaine Locke, showed us the myth of the Old Negro who had just become embedded into the American history. This concept of the Old Negro was solely a creation from historical controversy and debate. On the other hand, the New Negro turned out to be the augury of a new democracy in American culture. The New Negro Movement contained within it the goals it set out to achieve. Some of the main goals of the New Negro Movement were first to develop self-respect and self-reliance within blacks. For many years they had to rely on white Americans and almost lost their self-consciousness of self-respect and their own identity. The movement also set out to remove the social dependence of African Americans on white Americans in their society. In addition, the movement also aimed to repudiate the double standard of judgment and help African Americans rise from the social disillusionment to regain their racial pride. The New Negro Movement would also bring many benefits to African Americans according to Alaine Locke. First of all, the new and equal social status that they would have in the American society. The movement would also bring them their own independence from the superior whites and thus offer them a sense of pride of being African