UNIT 3: THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM
Topic 3.1
The Reconstruction Amendments
Required Course Content
SOURCES
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, 1865, 1868, and 1870 (from the Thirteenth, sections 1–2; Fourteenth, sections 1, 3, and 4; Fifteenth, sections 1–2)
Engraved Portrait of Five African American Legislators from Reconstruction Congresses, Early 1880s
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.1.A
Explain how the Reconstruction Amendments impacted African Americans by defining standards of citizenship.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.1.A.1
During Reconstruction (1865–1877), the federal government sought to reintegrate the former Confederate states and to establish and protect the rights of free and formerly enslaved African Americans, granting them citizenship, equal rights, and political representation in American government.
EK 3.1.A.2
The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) officially abolished slavery, or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime.
EK 3.1.A.3
The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) defined the principle of birthright citizenship in the United States and granted equal protection to all people. It overturned the Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) Supreme Court decision and related state-level Black codes.
EK 3.1.A.4
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1870) prohibited the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” thereby granting voting rights to Black men.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.1.B
Explain how the Fifteenth Amendment impacted African Americans’ participation in American politics.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.1.B.1
Black men’s access to the right to vote through the Fifteenth Amendment enabled their formal participation in American politics. The participation of thousands of African Americans (many formerly enslaved) in Southern politics was one of the most significant features of the Reconstruction era.
EK 3.1.B.2
During Reconstruction, nearly 2,000 African Americans served in public office from the local level through the United States Senate. Many of the rights gained by African Americans during Reconstruction were blocked during the Jim Crow era. African Americans would fight to reclaim rights in the 1960s that they earned in the 1870s.
SOURCE NOTES
The engraved portrait from the early 1880s depicts Hiram R. Revels (Mississippi), James T. Rapier (Alabama), Blanche K. Bruce (Mississippi), Joseph H. Rainey (South Carolina), and John R. Lynch (Mississippi).
In Mississippi, Senator Hiram Revels (of African and Indigenous ancestry) was the first African American to serve in either house of the United States Congress. Blanche Bruce (born enslaved) was the first African American elected to serve a full term in the United States Senate. John Lynch (born enslaved) was elected as the first African American Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives and was the only African American in the hundred following years to represent Mississippi in the United States House of Representatives.
In South Carolina, Joseph Rainey (born enslaved) was the first African American to serve in the House of Representatives and to preside over a debate in the House, and the longest serving Black lawmaker in Congress during Reconstruction.
In Alabama, James Rapier became the second Black Representative and founded the state’s first Black-owned newspaper.
Topic 3.2
Social Life: Reuniting Black Families and the Freedmen’s Bureau
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Elizabeth Brisco, ad in The Christian Recorder, Philadelphia, PA, 1864
An Act to Establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees, 1865
Circular No. 11 from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1867
Clarissa Reed, ad in the Southwestern Christian Advocate, New Orleans, LA, 1883
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.2.A
Describe the purpose of the Freedmen’s Bureau
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.2.A.1
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (The Freedmen’s Bureau) was established by Congress in 1865 and operated until 1872.
EK 3.2.A.2
The Freedmen’s Bureau was responsible for managing property abandoned and confiscated during the Civil War, but its primary function was to assist formerly enslaved people as they transitioned into American citizens. Assistance included providing clothing and food, legalizing marriages, and establishing schools.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.2.B
Explain how after abolition and the Civil War, African Americans strengthened family bonds that had been disrupted by enslavement.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.2.B.1
Centuries of enslavement disrupted family bonds among African Americans, as relatives were forcibly sold, relocated, and had their names changed repeatedly by their enslavers. Despite these challenges, African Americans created new kinship bonds and family traditions during and after slavery.
EK 3.2.B.2
After emancipation, African Americans searched for kin separated by the domestic slave trade. They relied on newspapers, word of mouth, and help from the Freedmen’s Bureau as they traveled to find lost family and friends.
EK 3.2.B.3
Enslaved African Americans’ marriages were not considered legally binding, though many enslaved people “jumped the broom” as a symbol of their union. After abolition, thousands of formerly enslaved African American men and women sought to consecrate their unions through legal marriage when it became available to them. Many adopted a new name that represented their status as free people and ability to shape their own identities.
EK 3.2.B.4
Many African Americans established a tradition of family reunions, an outgrowth of their post emancipation search to connect with long-lost relatives and friends. Modern family reunions preserve and celebrate Black families’ history, resilience, music, and culinary traditions.
SOURCE NOTE
Founded in 1852, The Christian Recorder, the official newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (the first Black denomination in the United States) is the oldest continuously published African American newspaper in the United States.
Topic 3.3
Black Codes, Land, and Labor
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Land Order for Richard Brown, 1865
Circular No. 8 from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1866
Juvenile Convicts at Work in the Fields, 1903
Picture Postcard of a North Carolina Convict Camp, Circa 1910
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.3.A
Explain how Black Codes undermined the ability of African Americans to advance after the abolition of slavery
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.3.A.1
In 1865 and 1866 during Presidential Reconstruction, many state governments enacted Black Codes—restrictive laws that undermined newly gained legal rights of African Americans and controlled their movement and labor. Black Codes aimed to restore the social controls and surveillance of earlier slave codes.
EK 3.3.A.2
Black Codes restricted the advancement of African Americans by limiting property ownership or requiring entry into labor contracts. Many annual labor contracts provided very little pay; some who tried to escape a labor contract were whipped, and those without a labor contract could be fined or imprisoned for vagrancy.
EK 3.3.A.3
One set of Black Codes disrupted African American families by allowing their children to be taken by the state and forced to serve unpaid apprenticeships without their parents’ consent.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.3.B
Explain how new labor practices impeded the ability of African Americans to advance economically after the abolition of slavery
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.3.B.1
In 1865, Union General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15, which aimed to redistribute about 400,000 acres of land between South Carolina and Florida to newly freed African American families in segments of 40 acres.
EK 3.3.B.2
President Andrew Johnson revoked Special Field Orders No. 15, and confiscated plantations were returned to their former owners or purchased by northern investors. As a result, African Americans were evicted or shifted into sharecropping contracts.
EK 3.3.B.3
Through sharecropping, landowners provided land and equipment to formerly enslaved people or indigent whites, who were required in exchange to return a large share of the crops to the landowner, making economic advancement very difficult.
EK 3.3.B.4
Through crop liens, farmers who began with little or no cash received food and supplies on credit, borrowing against their future harvest to acquire farming equipment and supplies. Their harvested crops often did not generate enough money to repay the debt, creating a vicious cycle of debt accumulation.
EK 3.3.B.5
Through convict leasing, southern prisons profited by hiring out African American men imprisoned for debt, false arrest, or other minor charges to landowners and corporations. Prisoners worked without pay under conditions akin to those of slave labor.
Topic 3.4
The Defeat of Reconstruction
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling, 1896
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.4.A
Explain how Reconstructionera reforms were dismantled during the late nineteenth century.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.4.A.1
After the election of 1876 and the Compromise of 1877, some states began to rewrite their state constitutions to include de jure segregation laws.
EK 3.4.A.2
Black voting was suppressed through measures such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses.
EK 3.4.A.3
African Americans were endangered by acts of racial violence (e.g., lynching) and retaliation from former Confederates, political terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and others who embraced white supremacist doctrine.
EK 3.4.A.4
The Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, upheld a Louisiana law mandating segregated passenger coaches for railroad transportation. This doctrine of “separate but equal” became the legal basis for racial segregation in many facets of American society.
EK 3.4.A.5
In practice, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision legalized separate and unequal resources, facilities, and rights. It would take another Supreme Court ruling with Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, for “separate but equal” to begin to be dismantled.
Topic 3.5
Disenfranchisement and Jim Crow Laws
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Excerpt from Chapter 1 of A Red Record by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 1895
Segregated Water Fountains (date unknown)
Segregated Restrooms, Circa 1960
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.5.A
Explain how the introduction of Jim Crow laws impacted African Americans after Reconstruction.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.5.A.1
The term “Jim Crow” originated in the 1830s as a derogatory term for African Americans. Jim Crow laws were local and state-level statutes passed primarily (but not exclusively) in the South under the protection of the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
EK 3.5.A.2
Jim Crow laws limited African American men’s right to vote and enforced the racial segregation of hospitals, transportation, schools, and cemeteries for Black and white citizens. Jim Crow–era segregation restrictions would not be overturned until the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.5.B
Describe the responses of African American writers and activists to racism and anti Black violence during the nadir.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.5.B.1
African American Studies scholars refer to the period between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Second World War as the “nadir,” or lowest point of American race relations. This period included some of the most flagrant public acts of racism (including lynching and mob violence) in United States history.
EK 3.5.B.2
African American journalists and writers of the era highlighted the racism at the core of Southern lynch laws that sought to justify the rampant, unjust killing of Black people.
EK 3.5.B.3
African American activists responded to attacks on their freedom with resistance strategies, such as trolley boycotts. Activists relied on sympathetic writers in the press to publicize mistreatment and murder of African Americans.
Source Notes
The term “Jim Crow” originated in the 1830s. Thomas Dartmouth (T.D.) Rice, a white stage performer, donned blackface makeup and performed an act called “Jump, Jim Crow” wherein he caricatured African Americans in speech and dance. The popularity of Rice’s performance and stereotypes led to “Jim Crow” becoming a common, derogatory term for African Americans.
Rayford W. Logan, a Pan-Africanist and historian of the post-Reconstruction period, named this period “the nadir.”
Born into slavery, Ida B. Wells-Barnett became a journalist, civil rights advocate, and feminist active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her writings described how lynching aimed to terrorize African Americans from seeking any form of advancement. Wells proposed that every African American own a Winchester to protect themselves in light of the increase in anti-Black violence following Reconstruction.
Topic 3.6
White Supremacist Violence and the Red Summer
Required Course Content
SOURCES
“If We Must Die” by Claude McKay, 1919
Photograph of the Greenwood District Burning During the Tulsa Race Massacre, 1921
Photograph of Black Men with Hands Raised During the Tulsa Race Massacre, 1921
Photograph of Destruction in Greenwood After the Tulsa Race Massacre, 1921
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.6.A
Describe the causes of heightened racial violence in the early twentieth century.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.6.A.1
Between 1917 and 1921 there was a proliferation of racial violence incited by white supremacists. The acute period of tensions in 1919 is known as the “Red Summer.”
EK 3.6.A.2
In the summer of 1919, a global flu pandemic, competition for jobs, and racial discrimination against Black First World War veterans all contributed to a rise in hate crimes across the country. More than 30 urban race riots occurred that summer.
EK 3.6.A.3
In 1921, a mob of white residents and city officials incited the Tulsa race massacre, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Tulsa race massacre destroyed more than 1,250 homes and businesses in Greenwood, also known as “Black Wall Street,” which was one of the most affluent African American communities in the United States.
EK 3.6.A.4
Racial violence in the twentieth century prevented many African American families from passing down wealth and property.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.6.B
Explain how African Americans responded to white supremacist attacks in the early twentieth century.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.6.B.1
African Americans resisted white supremacist attacks on their communities through political activism, published accounts, and armed self defense.
EK 3.6.B.2
Racial discrimination and violence, coupled with lack of economic opportunities in the South, spurred the beginnings of the Great Migration.
Source Notes
James Weldon Johnson, an African American writer and activist, coined the term “Red Summer.”
In “If We Must Die,” Jamaican poet Claude McKay, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, encouraged African Americans to preserve their dignity and fight back against anti-Black violence and discrimination.
The United States Senate did not classify lynching as a hate crime until 2018, and it did not become a federal law until March 2022. The brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 demonstrates the longevity of lynching as a tactic of white supremacist violence.
Topic 3.7
The Color Line and Double Consciousness in American Society
Required Course Content
SOURCES
“We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1895
Excerpts from The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903 (selections from “The Forethought,” “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” “Of Alexander Crummell,” and “The Afterthought”)
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.7.A
Explain how groundbreaking texts like Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” and Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk—and the dialogue these texts generated—portray Black humanity and the effects of racism on African Americans at the turn of the twentieth century.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.7.A.1
The symbols of “the mask” (in “We Wear the Mask”) and “the Veil” (in The Souls of Black Folk) represent African Americans’ separation from full participation in American society and struggle for self-improvement due to discrimination.
EK 3.7.A.2
The metaphor of the “color line” refers to racial discrimination and legalized segregation that remained in the United States after the abolition of slavery. Du Bois identified “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”
EK 3.7.A.3
“Double consciousness” refers to the internal conflict experienced by subordinated groups in an oppressive society. Double consciousness gave African Americans a way to examine the unequal realities of American life.
EK 3.7.A.4
Double consciousness resulted from social alienation created through racism and discrimination. However, it also fostered agency, adaptation, and resistance.
Topic 3.8
Lifting as We Climb: Uplift Ideologies and Black Women’s Rights and Leadership
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Excerpts from A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South by Anna Julia Cooper, 1892 (“Our Raison d’Être” and “Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race”)
“The Atlanta Exposition Address” by Booker T. Washington, 1895
“How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping” by Nannie Helen Burroughs, 1900
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, 1900
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.8.A
Describe strategies for racial uplift (or social advancement) proposed by African American writers, educators, and leaders at the turn of the twentieth century.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.8.A.1
In the wake of abolition, some African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington advocated for industrial education and training as a means of economic advancement and independence.
EK 3.8.A.2
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois debated different strategies for Black advancement. Washington’s speech “The Atlanta Exposition Address” suggested that African Americans should remain in the South and focus on gaining an industrial education before political rights. Du Bois, instead, promoted a liberal arts education and a civil rights agenda.
EK 3.8.A.3
Educators and activists called for women’s education and suffrage to promote greater inclusion of Black women in American society. Nannie Helen Burroughs, an educator, suffragist, church leader, and the daughter of enslaved people, helped establish the National Association of Colored Women (1896) and founded a school for women and girls in Washington, D.C. (1909). EK 3.8.A.4
African American literature, poetry, and music encouraged African Americans to take pride in their heritage and cultural achievements. Writer and diplomat James Weldon Johnson and his brother created the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which became known as the Black National Anthem.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.8.B
Describe ways that Black women promoted the advancement of African Americans.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.8.B.1
Black women leaders advocated for the rights of Black women during the Women’s Suffrage movement of the early twentieth century.
EK 3.8.B.2
Black women’s leadership was central to rebuilding African American communities in the generations after slavery. Black women entered the workforce to support their families and organized labor unions with the goal of fair treatment.
EK 3.8.B.3
Black women leaders, including churchwomen, created clubs and denominational organizations that countered race and gender stereotypes by exemplifying the dignity, capacity, beauty, and strength of Black women.
Topic 3.9
Black Organizations and Institutions
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Advertisement for Madam C.J. Walker Products, 1906–1950
Photograph of a Convention of Madam C.J. Walker Agents at Villa Lewaro, 1924
Clock Used by the Citizens Savings and Trust Company, 1920–2013
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.9.A
Explain how African Americans promoted the economic stability and well-being of their communities in the early twentieth century.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.9.A.1
In response to their ongoing exclusion from broader American society, many African Americans created businesses and organizations that catered to the needs of Black citizens and improved the self-sufficiency of their communities.
EK 3.9.A.2
The expansion of the Black press played a crucial role in African American communities by providing news to African Americans locally and nationally, documenting aspects of community life, and serving as a vehicle for protesting racial discrimination.
EK 3.9.A.3
African Americans continued to transform Christian worship in the United States and created their own institutions. The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) was founded in 1816 as the first Black Christian denomination in the United States, and after Reconstruction, the number of Black churches increased significantly.
EK 3.9.A.4
Black churches served as safe spaces for organizing, worship, and cultural expression. They created leadership opportunities that developed Black activists, musicians, and political leaders. EK 3.9.A.5
African American inventors and entrepreneurs like Madam C.J. Walker, the first woman millionaire in the United States, developed products that highlighted the beauty of Black people, fostered Black economic advancement, and supported community initiatives through philanthropy.
Topic 3.10
HBCUs, Black Greek Letter Organizations, and Black Education
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, 1875
Botanist George Washington Carver with Students in his Laboratory at Tuskegee Institute, 1902
Omega Psi Phi Members with Baskets of Canned Food for Charity, 1964
Professor Gail Hansberry with Art History Student at North Carolina Central University, 1965
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.10.A
Describe the founding of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.10.A.1
Discrimination and segregation in education led African Americans to found their own colleges, the majority of which were established after the Civil War.
EK 3.10.A.2
The first HBCUs were private colleges and universities established largely by white philanthropists. Wilberforce University (Ohio, 1856), founded by leaders in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was the first university fully owned and operated by African Americans.
EK 3.10.A.3
Later HBCUs were established as land grant colleges with federal funding. The Second Morrill Act (1890) required that states either demonstrate that race was not a factor in admission to educational institutions or create separate institutions for Black students. As a result, 18 HBCUs were established.
EK 3.10.A.4
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, HBCUs emphasized two educational models: a liberal arts education (e.g., at Fisk University) and a vocational industrial model (e.g., at Tuskegee Institute).
EK 3.10.A.5
HBCUs were the primary providers of postsecondary education to African Americans up until the Black campus movement of the 1960s.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.10.B
Explain how the creation of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States impacted the educational and professional lives of African Americans nationally and internationally.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.10.B.1
The founding of HBCUs transformed African Americans’ access to higher education and professional training, which allowed many to rise out of poverty and become leaders in all sectors of society.
EK 3.10.B.2
HBCUs created spaces for cultural pride, Black scholarship, and activism, and helped address racial equity gaps in higher education.
EK 3.10.B.3
Black Greek-letter organizations (BGLOs) emerged across the United States, at HBCUs and predominantly white institutions. African Americans in BGLOs found spaces to support one another in the areas of self-improvement, educational excellence, leadership, and lifelong community service.
EK 3.10.B.4
The Fisk Jubilee Singers, a student choir at Fisk University, introduced the religious and musical tradition of African American spirituals to the global stage during their international tours.
Source Notes
Cheyney University (originally the Institute for Colored Youth, Pennsylvania, 1837) was the first HBCU founded. Howard University, in Washington, D.C., was named after the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, General Oliver O. Howard.
In the decades following abolition in Cuba and Puerto Rico, some Afro-Cuban and Puerto Rican students were drawn to educational opportunities at HBCUs such as Tuskegee Institute.
HBCUs comprise only 3 percent of America’s colleges and universities but count 40 percent of Black members of Congress and 80 percent of Black judges among their graduates.
A Different World, a spin-off of The Cosby Show, premiered in 1987. A Different World centered on a group of students at a fictional HBCU, Hillman College.
Topic 3.11
The New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Excerpt from The New Negro: An Interpretation by Alain Locke, 1925
Alain Locke's The New Negro explores the cultural and social evolution of African Americans, focusing on their self-expression and self-determination. He critiques the traditional portrayal of African Americans as external commentary, emphasizing the importance of understanding their authentic self-portraiture through artistic and cultural contributions. Locke highlights the transformation in the inner life and spirit of African Americans, documenting the emergence of the "New Nero" as a force in national and social progress. He aims to shift perspectives, allowing African Americans to articulate their identity and experiences while acknowledging the interplay between race and national life.
“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” by Langston Hughes, 1926
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.11.A
Describe ways the New Negro movement emphasized self-definition, racial pride, and cultural innovation.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.11.A.1
The New Negro movement encouraged African Americans to define their own identity and to advocate for themselves politically in the midst of the nadir’s atrocities.
EK 3.11.A.2
The New Negro movement pursued the creation of a Black aesthetic, which was reflected in the artistic and cultural achievements of Black creators.
EK 3.11.A.3
The New Negro movement produced innovations in music (e.g., blues and jazz), art, and literature that served as counternarratives to prevailing racial stereotypes. These artistic innovations reflected the migrations of African Americans from the South to urban centers in the North and Midwest.
EK 3.11.A.4
The New Negro movement encompassed several political and cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a flourishing of Black literary, artistic, and intellectual life that created a cultural revolution in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s that focused on self-pride, expression, and identity.
Topic 3.12
Photography and Social Change
Required Course Content
SOURCES
From James Van Der Zee’s Portfolio of Eighteen Photographs, 1905-38
“Miss Suzie Porter, Harlem” 1915
“Garveyite Family, Harlem,” 1924
“Swimming Team, Harlem,” 1925
“Couple, Harlem,” 1932
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.12.A
Explain how African Americans used visual media in the twentieth century to enact social change.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.12.A.1
African American scholars, artists, and activists turned to photography to counter racist representations that were used to justify their mistreatment and Jim Crow segregation.
EK 3.12.A.2
During the New Negro movement, African American photographers, seeking to create a distinctive Black aesthetic, grounded their work in the beauty of everyday Black life, history, folk culture, and pride in an African heritage.
EK 3.12.A.3
African American photographers, such as James Van Der Zee, recast global perceptions of African Americans by further illustrating the qualities of the “new negro.” They documented Black expression, labor, leisure, study, worship, and home life, and highlighted the liberated spirit, beauty, and dignity of Black people.
Source Notes
James Van Der Zee is best known for his photographs of Black Harlemites, particularly the Black middle class. He often used props (including luxury items) and special poses to capture the vibrant personalities of everyday African Americans and leading figures such as Marcus Garvey and Mamie Smith.
At the 1900 Paris Exposition, the Exhibit of American Negroes, curated by W.E.B. Du Bois, displayed more than 300 photographs of African Americans. The exhibit demonstrated the diversity and achievements of African Americans. It included dozens of charts and infographics in English and French with data grounded in demographic, scientific, and sociological research on the status of African Americans. The exhibit was visited by 45 million people and increased the global reach of the New Negro movement.
Topic 3.13
Envisioning Africa in Harlem Renaissance Poetry
Required Course Content
SOURCES
“Heritage” by Gwendolyn Bennett, 1922
“Heritage” by Countee Cullen, 1925
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.13.A
Explain how Harlem Renaissance poets express their relationships to Africa in their poetry.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.13.A.1
Harlem Renaissance writers, artists, and scholars explored connections to and detachments from their African heritage as a response to the legacies of colonialism and Atlantic slavery.
EK 3.13.A.2
Some Harlem Renaissance poets used imagery to counter negative stereotypes about Africa’s people and landscapes.
EK 3.13.A.3
Some Harlem Renaissance poets explored the relationship between Africa and African American identity and heritage through personal reflection.
Topic 3.14
Symphony in Black: Black Performance in Music, Theater, and Film
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Duke Ellington – “It Don’t Mean a Thing” (1943) (video, 2:45)
Katherine Dunham, Cabin in the Sky, 1940
Ethel Waters in Cabin in the Sky, 1943
Cast of Cabin in the Sky, 1943
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.14.A
Describe African Americans’ contributions to American music in the 1930s and 1940s
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.14.A.1
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age opened opportunities for African American record labels, musicians, and vocalists to gain a wider audience. The rise of radio broadcast African American genres including blues, gospel, and jazz across the nation.
EK 3.14.A.2
Blues music has its roots in slavery. Beginning as acoustic music in the American South, a new, electric version evolved as African Americans moved north during the Great Migration. The heightened emotion of blues music conveys themes such as despair and hope, love, and loss, using repetition, call and response, and vernacular language.
EK 3.14.A.3
Jazz has been described as the United States’ most distinctive contribution to the arts. Like blues, jazz originated among African American communities in the South (New Orleans) and developed new styles following migration to the North, Midwest, and West. From big band to free jazz, the genre continues to evolve in the present day.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.14.B
Describe African Americans’ contributions to American theater and film in the 1930s and 1940s.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.14.B.1
Black performers flourished in cabarets, on Broadway, and in film in the early twentieth century. Hollywood also produced all-Black musicals, such as Cabin in the Sky (1943) featuring prominent Black actors, musicians, and dancers. Ethel Waters was the first African American to star in her own television show (1939).
Source Note
Duke Ellington produced the short musical film Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life (1934) depicting various scenes of African American life including work, love, and religious scenes.
Topic 3.15
Black History Education and African American Studies
Required Course Content
SOURCES
“The Negro Digs Up His Past” by Arturo A. Schomburg, in The New Negro: An Interpretation edited by Alain Locke, 1925
The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson, 1933
Carter G. Woodson believed education should empower individuals and communities, not just impart information, and that a "mis-education" could be a tool for social control, particularly for marginalized groups. He argued that education should inspire people to live more abundantly and address real-world problems, not just prepare them for jobs or roles dictated by others
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.15.A
Explain why New Negro movement writers, artists, and educators strove to research and disseminate Black history to Black students.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.15.A.1
New Negro movement writers, artists, and educators believed that United States schools reinforced the idea that Black people had made no meaningful cultural contributions and were thus inferior. They urged African Americans to become agents of their own education and study the history and experiences of Black people to inform their future advancement.
EK 3.15.A.2
Artists, writers, and intellectuals of the New Negro movement refuted the idea that African Americans were people without history or culture and created a body of literature and educational resources to show otherwise. The early push to place Black history in schools allowed the contributions of the New Negro movement to reach Black students of all ages.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO
3.15.B Describe the development and aims of the Black intellectual tradition that predates the formal integration of African American Studies into American colleges and universities in the mid twentieth century.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.15.B.1
The Black intellectual tradition in the United States began two centuries before the formal introduction of the field of African American Studies in the late 1960s. It emerged through the work of Black activists, educators, writers, and archivists who documented Black experiences.
EK 3.15.B.2
Beginning in the late eighteenth century, the African Free School provided an education to the children of enslaved and free Black people in New York. The school helped prepare early Black abolitionists for leadership.
EK 3.15.B.3
The Black Puerto Rican bibliophile Arturo Schomburg’s collection, donated to The New York Public Library, became the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
EK 3.15.B.4
The sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois’s research and writings produced some of the earliest sociological surveys of African Americans.
EK 3.15.B.5
Anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston’s writings documented forms of African American culture and linguistic expression.
EK 3.15.B.6
The historian Carter Godwin Woodson founded what became Black History Month, in addition to publishing many works chronicling Black experiences and perspectives in history.
Source Notes
The son of formerly enslaved people, Carter Godwin Woodson became the founder of what is now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH); created Negro History Week, which became Black History Month; and published many works of African American history that started with African origins through the early twentieth century.
Arturo Schomburg’s collection included rare artifacts that reflected the diverse artistic, literary, and political contributions of the African diaspora, including correspondence that belonged to Toussaint L’Ouverture, newspapers originally published by Frederick Douglass, and poems by Phillis Wheatley.
Topic 3.16
The Great Migration
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Anonymous Letter Beckoning African Americans to leave the South, published in The Messenger, March 1920, in Call and Response, 258
The Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence, 1940–1941 (various panels, in particular Panel No. 1)
Map of The Great Migration
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.16.A
Describe the causes of the Great Migration.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.16.A.1
The Great Migration was one of the largest internal migrations in United States history. Six million African Americans relocated in waves from the South to the North, Midwest, and Western United States from the 1910s to 1970s.
EK 3.16.A.2
Labor shortages in the North during the First World War and Second World War increased job opportunities in northern industrial cities, appealing to African Americans in search of economic opportunities.
EK 3.16.A.3
Environmental factors, such as floods, boll weevils, and spoiled crops, left many Black Southerners impoverished.
EK 3.16.A.4
African Americans relocated in search of safety for their families. The dangers of unmitigated lynching and racial violence prompted many Black people to leave the Jim Crow South.
EK 3.16.A.5
A new railway system and the Black press made the Great Migration possible. Trains offered a means to travel, and the Black press provided encouragement and instructions for African Americans leaving the South.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.16.B
Explain the impact of the Great Migration on Black communities and American culture.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.16.B.1
The effects of the Great Migration transformed American cities, Black communities, and Black cultural movements. The migration infused American cities such as New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles with Black Southern culture, creating a shared culture among African American communities across the country.
EK 3.16.B.2
The Great Migration transformed African Americans from primarily rural people to primarily urban dwellers. Black Southerners forged new connections to their northern environment, such as engaging with nature for leisure rather than livelihood/labor.
EK 3.16.B.3
As underpaid and disempowered Black laborers began to leave the South, racial tensions increased. Employers often resisted the flight of African Americans and at times had them unjustly arrested.
EK 3.16.B.4
The National Urban League was founded in New York City in 1910 as an interracial organization. The Urban League assisted African Americans migrating from the rural South during the Great Migration, helping them acclimate to northern urban life and secure housing and jobs. The Urban League would later support A. Philip Randolph’s 1941 March on Washington and work directly with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the Civil Rights movement.
Topic 3.17
Afro-Caribbean Migration
Required Course Content
SOURCES
Restricted West Indian Immigration and the American Negro” by Wilfred A. Domingo, 1924 (published in Opportunity, Oct. 1924, pp. 298–299)
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.17.A
Explain the reasons for the increase in Black Caribbean migration to the United States during the first half of the twentieth century.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.17.A.1
Afro-Caribbeans were affected by the decline of Caribbean economies during the First World War, and the expansion of United States' political and economic interests in the Caribbean, such as the acquisition of the Panama Canal (1903). They came to the United States for economic, political, and educational opportunities.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.17.B
Describe the effects of Afro Caribbean migration to the United States in the early twentieth century and the migration’s effect on African American communities.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.17.B.1
More than 140,000 Afro-Caribbean immigrants arrived between 1899 and 1937. Most settled in Florida and New York.
EK 3.17.B.2
The arrival of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to African American communities sparked tensions but also created new blends of Black culture in the United States.
EK 3.17.B.3
Afro-Caribbean migration to the United States increased the religious and linguistic diversity of African American communities in the United States, as many of the new arrivals were Catholic, Anglican, and Episcopalian and hailed from non-English-speaking islands.
EK 3.17.B.4
Afro-Caribbean intellectuals also contributed to the radicalization of Black thought in the twentieth century by infusing their experiences of Black empowerment and autonomy into the radical Black social movements of the time.
Source Notes
African and their descendants born in the West Indies first arrived in what became the United States in the seventeenth century when enslaved people from Barbados, Jamaica, and other British colonies in the Caribbean were brought to British North American colonies to work on plantations. In the early nineteenth century, in the wake of the Haitian Revolution, formerly enslaved people found refuge in cities like New Orleans, Charleston, Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.
Prominent early twentieth-century, Afro-Caribbean immigrants include Claude McKay (Jamaica), Arturo Schomburg (Puerto Rico), and Marcus Garvey (Jamaica).
Topic 3.18
The Universal Negro Improvement Association
Required Course ContentSOURCES
“Address to the Second UNIA Convention” by Marcus Garvey, 1921
Marcus Garvey at His Desk, 1924
Marcus Garvey in Harlem, 1924
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.18.A
Describe the mission and methods of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.18.A.1
Marcus Garvey led the largest pan-African movement in African American history as founder of the UNIA. The UNIA aimed to unite all Black people and maintained thousands of members in countries throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa.
EK 3.18.A.2
Marcus Garvey’s Back-to-Africa movement popularized the phrase “Africa for the Africans” and founded a steamship company, the Black Star Line, to repatriate African Americans to Africa.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
LO 3.18.B
Describe the impact of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) on political thought throughout the African diaspora.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
EK 3.18.B.1
Garvey inspired African Americans, who had faced intense racial violence and discrimination, to embrace their shared African heritage. He championed the ideals of industrial, political, and educational advancement and self-determination through separatist Black institutions.
EK 3.18.B.2
Garvey outlined the UNIA’s objective to achieve Black liberation from colonialism across the African diaspora. This framework became the model for subsequent Black nationalist movements throughout the twentieth century. The UNIA’s red, black, and green flag continuesto be used by advocates of Black solidarity and freedom worldwide.