Students will analyze the systems that limited Black political, social and economic power across the United States in the early 20th century and the ways that Black people and communities pushed back against those systems.
Essential Knowledge
2.A. The migration of Black people from the South to cities in the North is often called the Great Migration. This population shift increased Black voting strength at the national level and created networks and connections that were crucial to the Black freedom struggle.
2.B. Racial discrimination was a national issue. Jim Crow laws were put in place to control Black people, enforcing de jure segregation—the legal segregation of public and private facilities. While Jim Crow laws were more prevalent in the South, segregation was still common in the North as African Americans were actively denied access to decent housing and jobs.
2.C. Across the nation, white supremacists used violence and racial terror to enforce segregation and destroy the economic and political power of Black communities.
2.D. In the 1930s, projects and policies designed to expand the U.S. economy during the Great Depression excluded Black Americans and simultaneously helped to build white wealth.
2.E. The white supremacist policies and violence of the early 20th century—and Black people’s resistance to this oppression—continue to affect the economic, social and political power of Black communities, even as activists today look for ways to address these historical wrongs.
Related Resources
- [2.A.] To examine the cultural impact of the Great Migration—and to learn more about what life was like for African Americans at this time—students can look to contemporary art and literature. The painter Jacob Lawrence, for example, produced a series about the Great Migration. Students can learn more about each piece, including historical background, through the Museum of Modern Art’s online interactive exhibition One-Way Ticket.
- [2.A.] To recognize ways the Great Migration established and strengthened networks among Black people across the United States, students can review primary sources. The Library of Congress online exhibit The African-American Mosaic spotlights these connections in the collection “Chicago: Destination for the Great Migration,” with letters written to Black churches and other organizations listed in the Chicago Defender as support systems for Black people in the North.
- [2.A.] A 1918 “Letter From Mrs. J.H. Adams, Macon, Georgia, to the Bethlehem Baptist Association in Chicago, Illinois”—available from the LFJ text library or the Library of Congress—in which she asks for help finding employment in the North, indicates some of the actions that African Americans took in search of improved living conditions.
- [2.A.] For another glimpse of life during the Great Depression and beyond through a Black artist’s perspective—and for an example of how artists of the time were conceptualizing and representing a national Black American identity beyond the South—students can read the 1937 poem “For My People” by Margaret Walker, available from the LFJ text library.
- [2.B.] The LFJ text “Jim Crow Is Watching” provides a brief introduction to Jim Crow laws, along with examples of those laws and text-based questions.
- [2.B.] To better understand Jim Crow and to offer context that connects this era to the modern civil rights movement, educators can use the LFJ lesson “Jim Crow as a Form of Racialized Social Control,” developed around an excerpt from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.
- [2.B.] To learn about the struggles African Americans faced in the South, examine primary sources in contemporary newspapers. “A Lie Nailed” (available in the LFJ text library) is an 1893 editorial in The Appeal, a prominent Black newspaper from Minnesota, that details the treatment of Black people on trains in the South.
- [2.C.] To introduce the history of the Red Summer of 1919, educators can share the PBS American Experience article “Red Summer: When Racist Mobs Ruled.”
- [2.C.] To better understand both this history of violence and how it has still largely been left unaddressed, explore the changing historical representations and misrepresentations of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. “The Massacre of Black Wall Street,” an illustrated history from HBO published by The Atlantic, offers a good introduction to this topic.
- [2.C.] The New York Times interactive feature “What the Tulsa Race Massacre Destroyed” can help students recognize the prosperity Black Oklahomans had built in Greenwood and comprehend the scope of the violence.
- [2.C.] The Zinn Education Project provides additional history, teaching activities and book recommendations about Tulsa in “Burned Out of Homes and History: Unearthing the Silenced Voices of the Tulsa Massacre.”
- [2.D.] To learn about redlining and the impact of the New Deal on Black Americans, use the LFJ lessons based on The Color of Law, a 2017 book detailing the history of redlining. “The Color of Law: Creating Racially Segregated Communities” and “The Color of Law: Winners and Losers in the Job Market” explore this history.
- [2.D.] The University of Minnesota Libraries site Mapping Prejudice has extensive resources for teaching about housing discrimination. Their resource “What Is a Covenant?” shows how segregation was enforced by private companies and racist homeowners’ associations through housing covenants.
- [2.D.] The federal government also used redlining to guide the approval and denial of home loans for African Americans administered by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). To better understand how lenders and insurance providers worked to ensure segregated communities, review the preface and sections 226-235 of the 1936 FHA Underwriting Manual.
- [2.E.] For an overview of how policies from the early 1900s continue to reinforce economic inequality today, read Trymaine Lee’s article “A Vast Wealth Gap, Driven by Segregation, Redlining, Evictions and Exclusion, Separates Black and White America,” which is available as part of the 1619 Project of The New York Times.
- [2.E.] For an example of how one family’s inheritance was destroyed by racial violence and government policy, how that loss continues to affect the family today, and how they’ve fought for reparations, read and discuss the 2021 NBC News article “How One Beach City’s Racial Reckoning Is Putting California’s Racist History Front and Center.” And read an updated 2023 account of the situation in “A Once-Thriving Black-Owned Beach Is Returned to Its Rightful Owners” from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
- [2.E.] To better understand how the population shifts of the Great Migration helped provide a foundation for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and continue to influence present-day movements, students can read excerpts or the entirety of Isabel Wilkerson’s article “The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration.”
- [2.E.] For further understanding of how the massacre in Tulsa continues to affect people and communities in the present, students can read two articles: “One of the Last Survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre—107 Years Old—Wants Justice,” from The Washington Post, and “The Tulsa Race Massacre was 100 Years Ago. Its Oldest Living Survivor, Viola Fletcher, Told Her Story to Congress,” from Essence. These articles share the story of Viola Fletcher, who was 7 years old at the time of the massacre and was still fighting for reparations in 2021 when she testified about her experience before a U.S. congressional committee.
