Table of Contents |
Jazz provided a uniquely American soundtrack for the 1920s. It began during the 1890s in clubs located in the red-light district of New Orleans. Its improvisational style was the product of a variety of musical traditions, including blues and ragtime.
When the United States entered the First World War in 1917, New Orleans became an important point of departure for troops traveling to Europe. To prevent soldiers from getting into trouble while waiting to leave, the city shut down its red-light district.
The musicians moved north, up the Mississippi River, to Midwestern cities, including St. Louis and Chicago. They became part of the Great Migration, or the mass exodus of nearly 2 million African Americans from the South to Northern cities between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Great Depression. During the 1920s alone, more than half a million African Americans migrated north.
New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Indianapolis, in addition to St. Louis and Chicago, were the primary destinations for African Americans who traveled north.
As was the case with European immigration, a combination of “push” and “pull” factors contributed to the Great Migration.
Even though their jobs did not pay well, most African Americans earned more in the North than they could by working the same jobs in the South. They also found more available housing in Northern cities. However, the cost of living was higher in the North, because of higher rents and higher prices of food and other essentials. As a result, African Americans often lived in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, similar to how many European immigrants at the time lived.
The racial violence of 1919 showed that racial discrimination flourished in the North as well as in the South. It was most evident in housing: Landlords frequently discriminated against African Americans who wanted to rent from them. Homeowners in White neighborhoods developed informal agreements and, later, formal covenants in which they agreed not to sell their homes to Black buyers. Some bankers practiced mortgage discrimination—a policy later known as redlining—by denying home loans to qualified African American buyers.
Pervasive discrimination in residential areas led to a concentration of African Americans in some of the worst slums. However, like the ethnic enclaves that developed in Northern cities, the residential concentration created vibrant communities and encouraged cultural growth.
Why did the Great Migration continue throughout the 1920s despite the economic challenges and pervasive discrimination that awaited those moving to the North? According to some historians, the answer lies in noneconomic gains, including the following:
EXAMPLE
The Cotton Club in Harlem was famous for performances by Black entertainers (including Duke Ellington), even though its White owner maintained a “Whites only” policy regarding the audience.In a community enlarged (and strengthened) by the Great Migration, frustration over ongoing discrimination and racial violence found an outlet in a cultural flowering in the 1920s that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance.
Harlem, a neighborhood at the northern end of Manhattan in New York City, became a center of Afrocentric art and literature associated with the “New Negro” Movement.
African American writers, many of whom were supported by the White intellectual press, sought to establish an independent Black culture and to encourage racial pride. They rejected adherence to White cultural standards by Black artists.
EXAMPLE
Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” (selection provided below) called on African Americans to fight back in the aftermath of the race riots of 1919.Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”
“If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot . . .
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men, we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”
The “New Negro” Movement found its political expression in an ideology that celebrated a distinct racial identity, articulated nationalist goals, and embraced Africa as the true homeland of all people of African descent. This ideology is known as Pan-Africanism.
W. E. B. Du Bois was among the early proponents of Pan-Africanism, which is also referred to as Black nationalism. He encouraged Black Americans to work together in support of their interests and promoted Black literature and other expressions of Black culture. In 1919, Du Bois organized a Pan-African Congress in Paris, which met as Woodrow Wilson and other world leaders negotiated the Treaty of Versailles. The Congress appealed to the Allied Powers to grant self-determination to native people who lived in European colonies in Africa.
Marcus Garvey, who migrated to the United States from Jamaica in 1916, also advocated Pan-Africanism during the 1920s. Like Du Bois, Garvey was frustrated by U.S. racism. Unlike Du Bois, he did not believe that African Americans could overcome it. He was also skeptical of cooperation with Whites. As a result, Garvey started the “Back to Africa” Movement.
To move Black Americans to a (presumably) more welcoming home in Africa, Garvey founded the Black Star Steamship Line, a shipping and passenger service that began to operate in 1919. From his headquarters in Harlem, Garvey also started the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which attracted thousands of low-income working people. UNIA members, who wore colorful uniforms, lived according to the doctrine of “negritude,” which reversed the color hierarchy of White supremacy by elevating Blackness and identifying light skin as a mark of inferiority.
Like the body of work associated with the “New Negro” Movement, views on Pan-Africanism and Black political expression during the 1920s were diverse. The movement was divided between those who advocated for community cooperation and equal rights in the United States and those who advocated for autonomy and, if necessary, a move to Africa.
EXAMPLE
Class influenced Black political opinion. Many working-class African Americans supported Garvey’s movement because they had received little support from W. E. B. Du Bois (and the NAACP), whose approach appealed more to middle- and upper-class Black audiences.Source: This tutorial curated and/or authored by Matthew Pearce, Ph.D with content adapted from Openstax “U.S. History”. access for free at openstax.org/details/books/us-history LICENSE: CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 4.0 INTERNATIONAL
REFERENCES
Claude McKay, “If We Must Die,” 1919 Retrieved from bit.ly/1NLLhRI