Obstacles to civil rights: the Great Migration and division

• Many black Americans who moved north still faced racism, poverty and discrimination.
• Rapid migration created overcrowded ghettos, poor housing and unhealthy living conditions.
• Political influence increased, but progress towards equal rights remained slow.
• Civil rights leaders disagreed on how equality should be achieved, creating divisions within the movement.
• The NAACP campaigned against segregation, disenfranchisement and lynching but faced strong opposition.
• Many black Americans continued to face economic hardship, police harassment and racial prejudice despite some cultural and political gains.

Many black people believed the North was a land of opportunity where they could find the American Dream of wealth, health and happiness. Consequently the Northern industrial cities saw a remarkable increase in black populations.

By 1920:

• New York was home to 152,000 black people – an increase of 66.3%
• Philadelphia was home to 134,000 black people – up 58.9%
• Chicago was home to 109,000 black people – up 148.2%

Throughout the 1920s, Southern black people continued their movement to the North, taking jobs in the expanding industrial sector. Between 1920 and 1930, 824,000 black Americans had moved north.

It is worth noting, however, that despite this demographic shift, in 1930 over 50% of the America's black population still remained in the rural South.

The influx of black Americans from Southern states, led to the development of urban ghettos in larger, industrialised cities in the north such as New York and Chicago.

Harlem in New York was a white middle class residential area in 1910, yet housed 165,000 black people by 1930. The population growth caused a profound housing shortage.

• Rents in Harlem doubled in the period 1917-1927.
• Landlords converted houses into rooming houses (bedsits for rent) and properties soon fell into disrepair.
• The poor conditions led to the spread of disease and crime.

There was a major occupational shift. By 1930, more black men held blue-collar jobs in factories rather than working rural jobs in agriculture.

The Great Migration, growing literacy, and increasing organisation within black communities resulted in an increase in black cultural and expression. Black intellectuals, writers, musicians and artists reflected their own lives and experience, partly reacting against images of black people created by white people.

The 1920s were to become known as the Jazz Age. This music was largely the creation of black musicians from New Orleans.

During the 1920s the craze swept the country. White musicians took it up, and for the first time it seemed as if white audiences seemed to appreciate black culture.

Black women also got to enjoy critical and financial success in the arts. Singers such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey became household names.

Black culture and creativity exploded. Poets, playwrights, authors and composers such as Langston Hughes and jazz musicians like Duke Ellington flourished in an environment that nurtured and celebrated black creativity.

This intellectual and creative movement, centred in Harlem, a predominantly black district of New York, became known as the Harlem Renaissance (1919-1930).

The Harlem Renaissance was not a unified group with a shared message. There was debate about what aspects of black lives should be reflected:

• The Crisis newspaper presented positive imagery of black people and their lives with the aim of encouraging black pride and overcoming stereotypes.
• Some saw this idea of 'racial uplift' as elitist and removed from real black lives.
• Writers like Langston Hughes rejected this moral position, feeling it was more important to reflect black lives as they really were.
• Blues musicians sang songs that reflected life in the rural south, including poverty, crime and violence.
• Bessie Smith and others sang about love, sex, drink and heartbreak.
• Some feared this continued black stereotypes.

Similar debates existed between leaders and organisations working to improve black lives.

With the migration north and a growing black presence in many US cities, there came a slow but steady growth of political influence. Black people became freer to speak and act in the Northern states, and they gained political leverage by concentrating in large cities.

• Black voters became increasingly important to the predominantly white urban political parties.
• There were more opportunities for black politicians.
• Republicans and Democrats courted support from black voters.
• Black political leaders became better recognised and able to win influence within wider American society.

This political power enabled them to elect representatives to State legislatures and US Congress, and to put pressure on political parties in closely contested elections. Through such means, black Americans were better placed to fight to protect the rights that they already had and also to fight for more freedoms.

In the early decades of the 20th century, organisations were formed to fight for the rights and interests of black people in America.

Different groups and their leaders took different approaches, and sometimes ended up in conflict with each other. These differences reflected division between north and south, urban and rural, elites and ordinary people.

It can be argued that infighting between different leaders and groups divided the black community and acted as an obstacle to change.

There were three main leaders and organisations involved:

• Booker T. Washington
• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Marcus Garvey

Born into slavery in 1856, and liberated during the American Civil War, Booker Taliaferro Washington became one of the most important black intellectuals and public figures of the early 20th century.

Washington was a co-founder of the Tuskegee University which provided high quality education to black students.

Washington was a strong believer that black Americans need to be self-reliant. He taught black students valuable skills such as how to run a business, trades such as building, joinery, and plumbing, and modern farming techniques.

He was one of the founders of the National Negro Business League, which helped to start many black businesses. In cities such as New York and Chicago, a successful African American middle class started to emerge.

Washington gained support from white politicians and leaders and was seen as a spokesman for black Americans. He formed relationships with influential white politicians and powerful industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. This secured support and funding for the university.

In 1901, he met and dined with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House – the first time a black man had met a serving President as an equal.

He also gained support from some black Americans, particularly in the rural south.

Washington gave a speech on his pragmatic approach in Atlanta in 1895:

It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.

The speech received a standing ovation from the mostly white members of the audience. But black leaders in the north, saw Washington's position as an unacceptable compromise. The speech was labelled The Atlanta Compromise, and he was criticised by W.E.B. Du Bois and others.

Later black civil rights leaders criticised some of Washington's beliefs. For example, they claimed that Washington did not challenge the 'separate but equal' segregation laws.

Privately, Washington did work to encourage or protect civil rights, secretly financing legal action against segregation and prevention of black voting.

While some black Americans were able to improve their economic situation during Washington's lifetime, there were no gains made in terms of political participation or civil rights. It could be argued that during this time segregation and the exclusion of black people from voting and politics became more established in the South.

Although Washington died in 1915, his influence continued beyond this:

• His policy of 'accommodation' was soon overtaken by demand for quicker civil rights progress.
• The focus of the Tuskegee University expanded from practical and business-based skills, to wider academic achievement.
• His ideas that black people should improve their own lives through work, and setting up their own businesses and organisations without relying on white people would prove longer lasting, and would influence leaders including Marcus Garvey.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was born in Massachusetts. He was the first black person to earn a PhD from Harvard University and became a leading intellectual leader for black Americans.

He carried out research into the lives of black communities and concluded that white discrimination was the main obstacle to improving the lives of black Americans.

Du Bois believed black people should not sacrifice political rights in exchange for economic opportunities. He thought that black Americans should demand full citizenship and equal rights immediately. For most of his life, his focus was on achieving equality through integration.

The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defence,—else what shall save us from a second slavery? – W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

He was highly critical of Washington’s acceptance of segregation… In 1909 he helped establish the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and edited its newspaper, The Crisis.

The NAACP was an interracial organisation that campaigned against disenfranchisement, racial segregation, and white supremacy. It fought racial discrimination through publicity campaigns, protests, court cases, public inquiries and other moderate tactics.

In 1919 it launched a campaign against lynching. An anti-lynching bill, making lynching a federal offence, passed the House of Representatives in 1922, was defeated by a group of Southern Senators. Despite defeat, the agitation did bring about a reduction in lynching offences.

From 1919 onwards, W.E.B. Du Bois organised a series of Pan-African conferences in an attempt to create an international black movement.

However, despite all the vigour and occasional success, the early NAACP was dominated by white people and well-off black Americans and failed to inspire the black urban masses.

Du Bois called for a "talented tenth" of highly-educated black Americans to act as leaders for the civil rights movement. This led to accusations that he was elitist and that he was out of touch with the issues that ordinary black people faced, especially in the rural south.

Du Bois’s efforts helped lay the foundations for the later civil rights movement. The legal and political campaigns of the NAACP eventually contributed to many of the civil rights gains achieved in the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless, Du Bois became increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of progress.

Later in life he turned towards socialism and communism, which led to disagreement with others in the NAACP. Eventually he left the USA to live in Ghana.

Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born politician, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, (UNIA) in 1914, and this organisation was to attract major public attention in the US during the 1920s.

With many black war veterans at the core, the movement soon spread from New York to many other cities.

Garvey had nothing but contempt for organisations like the NAACP that aimed to bring blacks and whites together.

He preached that whites were devils whose racial bias was so deeply ingrained that it was futile to appeal to their sense of justice.

Garvey’s appeal was his assertion of pride in being black:

• He publicised and celebrated black achievements.
• He opposed inter-racial marriages.
• He argued that blacks throughout the world were one people.

He linked the struggle for black civil rights in America to the freeing of Africa from colonial rule. Garvey encouraged skilled black Americans to go to their ‘African homeland’. His slogan became ‘Back to Africa’, as he claimed that the only hope was to flee America and build a new Black Republic in Africa.

The message of ‘black is beautiful’ built racial pride among the masses of poor and unskilled city blacks. It was an intoxicating vision, of bringing all the scattered children of Africa into one mighty force.

The UNIA encouraged black people to begin commercial business ventures. He believed that developing separate black institutions would make most progress.

The UNMA grew with remarkable speed. Membership was strong from the new black middle class but attracted followers from virtually every segment of black America.

The movement had swollen to 6 million members by 1923. But many black leaders, including the NAACP and Socialists were highly critical of Garvey.

In June 1922, Garvey met with the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and invited him to speak at a UNIA convention. He said of the Klan:

I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies…as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together.

The meeting caused outrage. Black civil rights leaders organised a 'Garvey must go' campaign. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in 'The Crisis':

Marcus Garvey is, without doubt, the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and in the world.

Despite tremendous achievements in building black morale there was no strategic plan for the future. In 1923, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud. He was imprisoned in 1925, pardoned, and then deported 2 years later. He died in obscurity in 1940.

The Black Pride movement and Garvey’s ventures collapsed with the onset of the Great Depression.

However, the memory of his movement lived on. An element of racial pride was kept alive and resurfaced again years later in the Black Power movement of the 1960s.

Despite some progress in political representation and a growing appreciation for black culture and creativity, little had been achieved in the drive to improve the urban poverty that many black Americans experienced in the north.

• The majority of black workers were still not unionised and so not represented in the workplace.
• Many black Americans were not interested in politics and did not join reform movements.
• Most black Americans were simply too preoccupied with earning a living.

Despite this, black communities in the north were in a far better position to improve their status than black communities in Southern states. They could vote, participate more in civil affairs, and had more economic opportunities.

Despite police harassment and the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan, black people in northern cities lived in a far less violent society. However, most concentrated upon improving their standards of living rather than joining the black advancement pressure groups.

The early decades of the 20th century saw a large scale migration of black Americans from the rural Southern states of the US to larger, industrialised cities in the north.

By 1920:

• New York was home to 152,000 black people – an increase of 66.3%
• Chicago was home to 109,000 black people – up 148.2%

Most of these migrants were drawn by the prospect of better paying jobs and freedom from the persecution, bigotry and violence they had experienced in the South. Life in the cities was far from perfect, however:

• The Great Migration gave black Americans more opportunities, but many still faced discrimination and poverty in northern cities.
• Rapid migration led to overcrowded ghettos such as Harlem, with rising rents, poor housing, disease and crime.
• Despite cultural success during the Harlem Renaissance, racial inequality and economic hardship remained widespread.
• Black Americans gained more political influence in the North, but progress towards equal rights was often slow and limited.
• Civil rights leaders Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey disagreed over how to achieve equality, creating divisions within the movement.
• Many black workers remained poorly represented, while large numbers of black Americans were focused on earning a living rather than joining reform organisations.
• The NAACP campaigned against segregation, disenfranchisement and lynching, but faced strong opposition and achieved only limited short-term success.
• Although conditions were generally better than in the South, black Americans still faced racism, police harassment, and Ku Klux Klan intimidation.