African American Struggles 1920-1930
By Bridget Creel and Charlie Eichenberger
Once World War I began African Americans began The Great Migration, in search of jobs and to escape tenent farming, sharecropping and peonage.
From 1910 to 1920 the Black population in Chicago went up by 148 percent
The African American
population in Cleveland went up by 307 percent,
And the black population in Detroit grew by 611 percent.
In total 1.5 million
African Americans
moved north.
This started to cause some
racial segregation. In 1917 Supreme Court declared a municipal segregation, seperating neighborhoods by race city wide. Racism was becoming very apparent in the United States.
In revolt to all the hate Marcus Garvey,
a Jamaican immigrant, created the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). It quickly grew popular with 700 branches in 38 states and the West Indies. They also created a news paper with 200,000 subscribers. They operated grocery stores, laundromats, printing plants and other neccesary things for a well functioning community.
Unfortunatley Garvey was arrested with mail fraud in 1920 and
deported to Jamaica. But Garvey's Black Pride message still was strong in a time when Blacks were bombarded with ads for skin lightening cosmetics, and hair straighteners to change their apperance.
In 1920 the Harlem Renaisance began and Black Pride was spread. African Americans became proud of their history and culture.
Jim Crow Laws were put in place to
to make segregation official. After the Civil War there were laws in place against the seperation of puplic accomidations, but by the 1900s they had been forgoten and passed by, overridden by the Jim Crows.
But they found
ways to make their
own community
and develope a better way of living in the North after the Great Migration.
One way they did this is by starting a black baseball league.
All in all the African Americans
of the 1900s were racially
opressed but they found ways to
get by in the tough situation they'd
been delt.
Margaret , Washington. "Obstacles Faced by African Americans." American Expericance. WGBH, 1996-2009. Web. 23 May 2011.
"Working: Finding a Place." Turn of the Centuries. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, 2008. Web. 23 May 2011.