African Americans in the African Americans were Jim Crow laws in the
South had little chance of socially isolated. South did not provide
advancement. Many equal protection in
Restricted from use
worked as sharecroppers voting, access to
of public services
for White landowners. Poorly maintained, business opportunities,
Some worked as segregated schools education, political office,
housekeepers, field Rented housing in or career advancement.
workers, road one area of city or African Americans were
maintenance, and other on farms jailed for small offences.
low wage jobs.
Primary Resources: Maps, Letters, Photographs
1918
1905: Chicago Defender founded
1909: National Association for the 1917: America enters WWI
Advancement of Colored People founded May 15th: The Defender promotes May 15th, 1917 as
in New York (NAACP) the date for the Great Northern Drive.
1910: Chicago has 44,000 African
Hostility between black population and whites causes
American residents. Detroit has 6,000.
1915: Henry Ford sent Scouting Agents to Race Riots in East St. Louis, Illinois
recruit mainly African Americans 1917: Marcus Garvey founds the United Negro
1915: Start of the Great Migration Improvement Association
Impact
Political: Migration to the urban North
established African Americans as a
prime element of the new Democratic
Party coalition that began to unite in the
late 1920s and swept Franklin D.
Roosevelt to power in 1933.
Social: Discrimination against African
Americans even in the North helped to
fuel the growing consensus that
inequality was unacceptable and that
Blacks, with the help of sympathetic
whites, must work together to end Jim
Crow segregation.
Cultural: African American music,
literature and art impacted the identity
of American art forever through the
Harlem Renaissance.