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Issues of the Harlem Renaissance
Issues of the Harlem Renaissance
Issues of the Harlem Renaissance
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"Wedding Band" by Alice Childress is a story of a love/hate interracial relationship between two lovers in the south. The play is set in South Carolina in 1918. "Wedding Band" truly captures the essence of the time and place in which the play was set in. That era (1915-1931) is one of the most significant in the history of this young nation. The decade of the 1920's is often characterized as a period of American prosperity and optimism. It was the "Roaring Twenties," the decade of the bath tub gin, the model T, the $5 work day, the first transatlantic flight, and the movie. It was a high point in African-American history as well. The Harlem Renaissance took shape; it was a time when African Americans began an intellectual movement. Harlem became the center of African-American culture. Most African-Americans began a movement to rethink their values and appreciation of their roots and Africa. The "Great Migration" began at this time. Approximately two million Southern blacks move to northern industrial centers in hopes to escape the oppressive nature of the deep south. However, for every upside their is a downside. The decade was a period of rising intolerance and isolation. Americans retreated into a provincialism evidenced by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the anti radical hysteria of the Palmer raids, restrictive immigration laws, and prohibition. Influenza and the first world war brought an alarming amount of Americans to an early death. Racial motivated riots spread throughout the country and protests endorsing and condemning racism were the norm.
Life in the south was at most times unbearable for the blacks, and many felt that the southern atmosphere had such a suffocating affect on them that escape was the best option. African-Americans were showing their pain inside, little by little proving themselves to the racist whites in the south that they were somebody, not a property, but a human being with self worth and dignity who should be treated equally. The main place that the black southerners were blinded of was the urban places in the north. These were the places that captured their attention. Many of the southerners who were enslaved or sons and daughters of enslaved Africans began to migrate in the northern cities. These were the places where they began to live a life of independence and freedom. The migration of the black southerners was a success.
Among the many reasons for the Black people to migrate to the North were: the subordinate status of the Black people to the whims of the white communities; a belief of more opportunities for jobs, education, and the freedom to live the lives guaranteed them in the 13th,14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution of the United States of America, and to be free of the extreme punishments for noncompliance of the Jim Crow Laws inundated throughout the southern states after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The Ida Mae Brandon Gladney family was an example of these migratory people.
As a nation coming out of a devastating war, America faced many changes in the 1920s. It was a decade of growth and improvements. It was also a decade of great economic and political confidence. However, with all the changes comes opposition. Social and cultural fears still caused dichotomous rifts in American society.
In the south, cotton was becoming a huge success for the southern farmer. Cotton, being a very laborious crop, required the ownership of many slaves per plantation. Unlike the immigrants of the north, slaves were property. Slaves were also much less of a profit. When a slave became ill he could not simply be replaced, he needed to be cared for, after all, this was the plantation owners property. On the other hand in the north if a worker became to ill to work, there were several immigrants waiting for the job.
In 1619, slaves from Africa started being shipped to America. In the years that followed, the slave population grew and the southern states became more dependent on the slaves for their plantations. Then in the 1800s slavery began to divide America, and this became a national conflict which lead to the Civil War. Throughout history, groups in the minority have risen up to fight for their freedom. In the United States, at the time of the Civil War African Americans had to fight for their freedom. African Americans used various methods to fight for their freedom during the Civil War such as passing information and supplies to the Union Army, escaping to Union territory, and serving in the Union’s army. These actions affected the African Americans and the United States by helping the African Americans earn citizenship and abolishing slavery in the United States.
Prior to the Civil War and Reconstruction, the main goal of the African American population was to be granted freedom. African Americans had been enslaved since 1619 in America, when the first slaves were sold on the auction block. However, their concepts of freedom were extremely romanticized and highly unrealistic as a direct result of the atrocities they witnessed and endured in the institution of slavery. They visualized the abolition of slavery to be comparable with the coming of Jesus Christ. Yet when politics made that day become reality on January 1, 1863, the newly freed men and women were utterly disappointed and in disarray. After living their lives under the institution of slavery, the former slaves were literally left to survive on their own without the proper tools such as opportunities, provisions, or education. This race of people, for whom it was illegal to learn to read or write and even to congregate in groups of three or more, was now released into the same society that had enslaved them, and which was now supposed to open its arms and accept them as equals. Along with this freedom came a sudden change in identity, a clinging to faith, and a supposed new placement within society.
The 1920s was a time of conservatism and it was a time of great social change. From the world of fashion to the world of politics, forces clashed to produce the most explosive decade of the century. It was the age of prohibition, it was the age of prosperity, and it was the age of downfall.
Although the slaves had families they had no control on whether or not they would stay together. Slaves were sold to different parts of the country in which sometimes they would never see their family members again. Although slavery was accepted, the northern part of America allowed African Americans to be free. This ultimately led to a bloody division between the North and the South. The south led a revolt to go to war against the north, specifically in order to keep their rights to allow slavery.
Slavery was abolished and many southerners had a problem with that. To many whites, black people didn't deserve and weren't intellectually "ready" for such freedom. The South had such a hard time accepting it that Union troops were stationed in southern states who couldn't cooperate. Booker T. Washington is a prime example to southerners who think that blacks can amount to nothing. In my paper, I will talk to you about the many accomplishments he has made and the hardships that were attached to his achievements.
After liberation, most of the African Americans operated roles as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. “And Black men’s feet learned roads. Some said goodbye cheerfully…others fearfully, with terrors of unknown dangers in their mouths…others in their eagerness for distance said nothing…” (Takaki 311). The migration to the north guaranteed blacks opportunities toward employment, which led them to obtain sharper wages. Unfortunately, the northern part of the United States was not how immigrants perceived it to be: lack of segregation.
Most blacks came to America involuntarily. Sold as slaves in Africa, they were brought to America as laborers. Being slaves, they were legally considered property and thus were excluded from the legal protections that other people living in America were entitled to. Slave marriages were not legally recognized, and parents and children could be separated at the whim of their owners. As Frederick Douglass and countless other narratives by former slaves have shown us, slaves were forced to rely on a network of extended family members and other slaves to ...
states to Union, and deciding who would control government.1 Socially, the South was in chaos. Newly emancipated slaves wandered the South after having left their former masters, and the White population was spiritually devastated, uneasy about what lay ahead. Economically, the South was also devastated: plantations lay ruined, railroads torn up, the system of slave labor in shambles, and cities burnt down. The economic condition of ex-slaves after the Civil War was just as uncertain; many had left former masters and roamed thehighways.2
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
When the newcomers came to the north and west Starling, Gladney, and Foster it wasn’t a warm welcome. Wilkerson says that often when immigrants from the southern states came to the north or west mostly people closed the door on them and didn’t want to help. It a long time for them to find there place in major cities of the North and West, but southerners who stayed end up finding their way using elements of the old culture with the new opportunities in the north. Also traveling to the newer states wasn’t easy for African Americans. They usually traveling by train, boat or bus. And it was very dangerous to travel because of the gas station your able to stop at and even stop to get food. Also the long trips ahead. You would never know what troubles would be head of the journey. Typically once the black citizens arrived in the state it was hard to settle and to find a job with leak of skills. Like Ida Mae husband George ended up hauling ice up flights of stairs in cold Chicago and Ida Mae did domestic jobs before finding a decent job. Wilkerson also states that it took them a long time before really get settled in an affordable home in south side of Chicago. Then the journey to south was not cheap to make it far so many African Americans took in mind that having money before leaving would be the
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.
The 1920’s was a period of rapid growth and change in America. After World War I, American’s were introduced to a lifestyle of lavishness they had never encountered before. It was a period of radical thought and ideas. It was in this time period that the idea of the Harlem Renaissance was born. The ideology behind the Harlem Renaissance was to create the image of the “New Negro”.