African American Immigration Dbq

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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