Chapter 5 CAPES

New homes and New Sound

What is the Great Migration in US history ?

• Also known as The Great Northward migration or the Black Migrant is a 1920s phenomenon where millions of black people left the rural south for urban cities in the North of the US. Before the war, during, and after.

Why did they leave the south ? (2 points)

• Better job opportunities: the cotton market was disrupted by the war, labor shortage and vacant factory unskilled jobs.

• To escape lynchings, the revival of the KKK, racial tensions, Jim crow laws that followed them everywhere.

Was there another migration happening at the same time ?

Yes, another migration in the south of the US itself was happening. Black tenant farmers left their rural areas to go to urban cities in the south» result: predominantly urban black population in the whole of the US.

Which states did they specifically leave ?

Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas. (no surprise there)

Which cities did they go to ?

Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland.

Chicago however was the main migration capital as an industrial hub, an important rail junction and a meatpacking hub. A black district known as the South Side of Chicago was born.

Which businesses did black migrants lean towards ?

They went for Sports, cabarets, and entertainment seeing that they were barred from businesses and government jobs.

What kind of advocacy work accompany the Great migration ? (3 points)

• National Urban League founded in 1911: goal is to expand and offer job opportunities for new arrivals.

• The NAACP had more than 400 chapters by 1920 fighting for desegregation, end to lynching and better opportunities.

• Many protests in Black colleges (crisis at Fisk university, strike at Howard University) to demand AA management for AA colleges

What reaction did the migration illicit ? (3 points)

• postwar reaction: worst race riots ever seen in US history

• violence suffered by black veterans returning to the south

• The Chicago race riot of 1919: two full weeks of conflict with more than 40 people dead, many AA losing their homes, mobs burned houses, businesses, shops, etc. The Illinois Governor called in National Guard units because it was that bad. It was the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919.

Who is Marcus Garvey and what is Garveyism ? (8 points)

• Jamaican political activist with great oratory skills and who never actually went to Africa.

• Founder of UNIA: The Universal N@gro Improvement Association. 1920: more than 2 million members on 4 continents.

• Ideologies: Pan-Africanism, Black Nationalism, Separatism, Back to Africa movement

• Condemned assimilation, ‘miscegenation’, mixed-race individuals (His envisioned African empire is reserved for pure black individuals)

• Named himself the provisional president of Africa.

• Had plans for a Black Star Line to transport AA back to Africa: he was actually embezzling money.

• Notable enemy: DuBois.

• 1927: deported by Coolidge to Jamaica.