The major role played by African American women in the reconstruction era is revised and illustrated in Tera W. Hunter’s To Joy my Freedom and Elsa Barkley Brown’s article Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom. Both documents analyze the participation and involvement of black women in social and political activities inside of their communities. To Joy my freedom, written by Tera W. Hunter provides an inner look into the lives and strives of African American women – mainly working class – living in Atlanta between the eighteenth and nineteenth century, in the middle of one of the most belligerent environments created in the era of Reconstruction.
In the mid-to-late 1800s the African American community faced opposition and segregation. They were segregated from the whites and treated as second-class citizens. This segregation was caused in part by Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws separated races in schools, hospitals, parks, public buildings, and transportation systems. Both Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois had ideas on how to improve African American lives, Washington believed in starting at the bottom and working up whereas Du Bois had an opposing viewpoint he saw starting from the bottom as submissive and believed African Americans should hold important jobs in order to demand equal treatment.
The National Urban League was founded more than a century ago on September 29, 2010, primarily by Dr. George Edmund Haynes and Ruth Standish Baldwin. They are the largest community-based organization in the country, but they originally started as a small group trying to give voice to those that were oppressed: African Americans. To understand the importance of the initial grassroots movement of the National Urban League, one must first place into context the dangerous climate of America in the early twentieth century. Segregation was still allowed in many states, and it was only with the advent of civil rights laws did African Americans begin to make inroads in America society. The main goal of the National Urban League in the 1920s was to provide employment for African Americans in the urban cities, as many of them lived in poverty and homelessness.
The Voice of Change Throughout the nineteenth century, the African American social and economic life in the United States and parts of western Europe were revolutionized. A period to attain vast racial equality was quickly developed. Du Bois’ various ideas and activism was a key part to sparking the Civil Rights Movement. Du Bois used his journalistic writing to condemn the increased repression of formerly enslaved African Americans in the South in the form of legalized segregation and the rise of lynching.
Throughout African American History, there have been many migration concerning African Americans. From the Middle Passage, all the way to the Modern Migration that is happening right now. African Americans have been moved from where their African roots lies, to being moved all over the United States. These movements have done a great deal to African American History, as they have affected the customs that African Americans have practiced over time. These movements have been great in their own right, and the greatest one of all of them is the Great Migration.
African Americans face a struggle with racism which has been present in our country before the Civil War began in 1861. America still faces racism today however, around the 1920’s the daily life of an African American slowly began to improve. Thus, this time period was known by many, as the “Negro Fad” (O’Neill). The quality of life and freedom of African Americans that lived in the United States was constantly evolving and never completely considered ‘equal’. From being enslaved, to fighting for their freedom, African Americans were greatly changing the status quo and beginning to make their mark in the United States.
Americans had rarely accepted outsiders as equals, and that was the case with immigrants coming to the U.S in the 1840s to the 1920s. A time in America where immigrants were not considered inferior to native white Americans did not exist. The hatred of anything non-American, especially with the coming of World War I in 1914, would only cause more Americans to despise immigrants. Part of this was rooted simply in racism, which existed towards groups other than African Americans, but much of it was simply that Americans considered themselves the chosen people while everyone else was below them. Thus, despite immigrants being accepted into America, those immigrants were still treated far worse than white citizens between the 1840s and 1920s, for the prejudice against them was obvious even in the laws created.
At the beginning of the 1920’s, most African Americans lived in the Southern states. In hope for a better life, more African Americans moved to the Northern states. The 1920’s was a period of racial hatred (“Blacks Set Out in Search of a Better Life in 1920s American Society”). The United States suffered a series of race riots in a number of cities (“Blacks Set Out in Search of a Better Life in 1920s American Society”). The 1920’s however was only the beginning for African Americans standing up for their
The Great Migration was a time of change it was a time where African-Americans had the chance for a nice life. During this time people of color were moving to the northern half of the USA, in order to get a new start. During this they had to leave the only life they knew in hopes for something better in a different place. To begin with, after World War 1 began in 1914 industries lacked the laborers in their urban cities.
Between that time, African American Families moved from the South to the North and to the West. Following the Civil War, many African Americans had packed up and migrated to urbanized areas like Chicago and New York. By 1920, almost 300,000 African Americans had moved away from the south, Harlem being a very popular destination for the traveling families. New arrivals found jobs in slaughterhouses, factories and foundries, but working conditions were strenuous to their bodies and sometimes dangerous. Many didn 't consider the amounts of people that would be migrating to New York and that made competition for living space harder.
America’s Diverse Population In the nineteenth century, rates of immigration across the world increased. Within thirty years, over eleven million immigrants came to the United States. There were new types of people migrating than what the United States were used to seeing as well. Which made people from different backgrounds and of different race work and live in tight spaces together; causing them to be unified.
Between 1910 and 1930, African Americans migrated from the rural South to the urban North in search of better economic opportunities and as a means of escaping the racism of the South, but they were disillusioned with what they encountered. To begin, African Americans still experienced racism—segregation, profiling, and unjust law enforcement—In the North, though it was more subtle. As a result, blacks were forced into lower-paying jobs than whites. Thus, while the northern white, middle-class population grew wealthier during the post-WWI economic boom and were moving to the suburbs, blacks and other poor, working-class groups were left in the cities, the state of which grew progressively
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision formally introduced “Jim Crow” laws to the nation. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately maintained that, “as long as equal facilities were provided to citizens, classification of individuals by race was neither a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause nor inhibitory of the Black community’s advancement” (Guthrie, 2004, p 7-8). For the era, which followed the Supreme Court ruling, African Americans struggled for an equal life in society and tried to gain rights. With the creation of the NAACP in 1909 it “became instrumental in advocating the rights of its minority constituency…”
Critical analysis of push and pull factors of migration and with Also gendered migration Throughout human history migration has been part of human life. People have migrated between and within countries. With a compression of space and time by the process of globalization migration has escalated. The inequality and uneven economic development between and within countries has forced people from developing countries to developed countries and also from rural to urban areas. Lee (1966) introduced the concepts of push and pull factors as the determinants of migration.
Neoclassical Theory of Migration One of the oldest and most commonly used theory used to explain migration is the Neoclassical theory of Migration. Neoclassical Theory (Sjaastad 1962; Todaro 1969) proposes that international migration is connected to the global supply and demand for labor. Nations with scarce labor supply and high demand will have high wages that attract immigrants from nations with a surplus of labor. The main assumption of neoclassical theory of migration is led by the push factors which cause person to leave and the pull forces which draw them to come to that nation. The Neoclassical theory states that the major cause of migration is different pay and access to jobs even though it looks at other factors contributing to the departure, the essential position is taken by individual higher wages benefit element.
