Isabel Wilkerson is very thorough in this reading. She covers the exodus of blacks from the Deep South beginning with the First World War up to the end of the Civil Rights Movement, and even slightly beyond. Because this occurrence of migration lasted for generations, it was hard to see it while it was happening, and most of its participants were unaware that they were part of any analytical change in black American residency, but in the end, six million African Americans left the South during these years. And while Jim Crow is arguably the chief reason for this migration, the settings, skills, and outcomes of these migrants ranged as widely as one might expect considering the movement’s longevity. I liked Wilkerson’s depiction of Ida Mae,
Using The Shifting Grounds of Race by Scott Kurashige focuses on the role of African Americans and Japanese Americans played in the social and political struggle that re-formed twentieth-century Los Angeles. By linking important historical events, such as Black Civil rights movement, NAACP, and Japanese Alien Land Law, internment camps, Kurashige also explains the classical black & white separation to then explore the multiethnic magnitudes of segregation and integration. Understanding how segregation, oppression, and racism shaped the area of Los Angeles became a shared interest between African American and Japanese Americans living together within diverse urban communities. Using this newly profound empowered a mental state that prepared
Whites took “the wretched conditions” of Paradise Valley as “the fault of irresponsible blacks, not greedy landlords or neglectful city officials,” and because housing was a “powerful symbol of ‘making it’”, whites in Detroit saw this plight as “personal failure and family breakdown,” (Sugrue, 216-217). As a result of the social changes which emerged during the postwar period, Sugrue explains that “Detroit was… torn by cataclysmic violence…” (Sugrue, 260). Sugrue’s claim that, rather than taking the riot of 1967 as the catalyst for urban crisis in Detroit, one must understand a number of factors which preceded the riot in order to understand this issue, is well-defended by numerous anecdotes detailing the the history of Detroit since the postwar period.
It has been over fifty years since slavery had ended in the South with the enactment of the 13th amendment, leaving all former slaves and African-Americans free. The Great Migration, which started in the 1910s, was seen by African-Americans as a new hope, a chance to leave what they saw as the restricting rural South to find better opportunities, jobs, and the private life in the North. In 1917, when most of the migrations occurred, ten-year-old Rubie Bond and her parents left Mississippi to travel to Wisconsin. Fifty years later, in “Beloit Bicentennial Oral History Project” (1976), Rubie Bond was interviewed as part of Beloit College Archives’ project to document the history of the Great Migration. In her interview, Bond recollected why her family and many others left the South.
As Hunter mentions, “By the end of the (19th) century, African Americans had deployed a multitude of strategies in the workplace, in their neighborhoods, and in the political arena to protect their personal dignity and the integrity of their families and communities”. In order to address these topics, she recurs to newspaper articles, personal testimonies, historical documents, and photographs, among others; in order to compile a series of life experiences that give proof about the complex situations that African American communities faced and their relation to the organizing process of African American
Driven from Home, written by David Silkenat, is a book that studies North Carolina's refugee crisis throughout the Civil War. This refugee crisis, occurring in the American Civil War period, was prominent among many peoples, including African Americans and poor whites, both of which were affected by the occurring war. In his introduction, Silkenat stresses the idea of continuing to gain knowledge on historical events, noting historians such as Leslie Schwalm, Yael Sternhell, and Jim Downs, all of whom have helped deepen the understanding of the refugee crisis itself. This book is no exception, allowing for and building off of the new information that has been recently researched and discovered, creating a deeper explanation of the topic for
Thesis: In “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, Malcolm X in his telling of his life to Alex Haley uncovers the theme of positive and negative environments unearthed by the interaction of African Americans and White Americans in his life and what those kinds of environments inherently produce. Annotated Bibliography Nelson, Emmanuel S. Ethnic American Literature: an Encyclopedia for Students. Greenwood, An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2015.This encyclopedia points out that the negative interaction he held with the white man as a young hustler was countered by these same experiences pushing Malcolm X to reclaim his “African identity”. This shows, as described by the cited work, what a man pushed by his negative interactions with the oppressive white men is willing to do to find his identity (i.e. through hustling).
The “Black Great Migration” represents one of the greatest social, political, and economic alterations in American history.
James was the pastor of one of the largest African-American churches in their town. The family’s friendship with the Raglans was inspiring and opened up many doors across racial lines. Displacement in this essay was defined as being in a culture
After the British and French war, Peters’s family, hundred members of the Black Guides and Pioneers evacuated from New York to Nova Scotia. However, “in Nova Scotia the dream of life, liberty, and happiness became a nightmare. Some 3,000 ex-slaves found that they were segregated in impoverished villages, given small scraps of often untillable land, desprived of rights normally extended to British subjects, and reduced to peonage by a white population whose racism was as congealed as the frozen winter soil of Nova Scotia.” (Nash 7). At this new place, African Americans were treated really badly.
The Great Migration was a movement in which African-Americans moved to the northern United States. The movement takes place after slavery was ended. NBC News published an article titled, “Great Migration Shortened Lives of Blacks Who Fled Jim Crow South,” the article wrote about how the migration shortened the lives of blacks who fled the south. The poem, “One-Way Ticket,” by Langston Hughes, a famous poet from the time of the Harlem Renaissance, showed how the life of an African-American was during this time period. Both texts tell about how the Harlem Renaissance effects the lives of people in that time period and now.
Professor Khalil Girban Muhammad gave an understanding of the separate and combined influences that African Americans and Whites had in making of present day urban America. Muhammad’s lecture was awakening, informative and true, he was extremely objective and analytical in his ability to scan back and forth across the broad array of positive and negative influences. Muhammad described all the many factors during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries since the abolition of slavery and also gave many examples of how blackness was condemned in American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Muhammad was able to display how on one hand, initial limitations made blacks seem inferior, and various forms of white prejudice made things worse. But on the other hand, when given the same education and opportunities, there are no differences between black and white achievements and positive contributions to society.
“Long, hot summers” of rioting arose and many supporters of the African American movement were assassinated. However, these movements that mused stay ingrained in America’s history and pave way for an issue that continues to be the center of
Frederick Douglass’s “What the Black Man Wants” captures the need for change in post Civil War America. The document presses the importance for change, with the mindset of the black man being, ‘if not now then never’. Parallel to this document is the letter of Jourdon Anderson, writing to his old master. Similar to Douglas, Mr. Anderson speaks of the same change and establishes his worth as freed man to his previous slave owner. These writings both teach and remind us about the evils of slavery and the continued need for equality, change, and reform.
The African – American 's Assimilation into White America America is often considered the land of opportunities, a place where people can have a fresh start, a clean slate. America is a land that is made up of immigrants. Over the centuries America has been a place where people dream to live in, however the American dream wasn 't as perfect as believed; there were issues of race inferiority, slavery and social inequality amongst other problems. When a person arrives into a new society he has a difficult task ahead of him- to assimilate into that new society- which includes the economical, cultural, political and social aspects. In the following paper I will discuss how the African American, who came as slaves to America, has fought over the centuries to achieve equality in a white society that discriminated them.