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Period 7, Day 1-2: The Great Migration & the Harlem Renaissance

Last updated over 1 year ago
14 questions
Note from the author:
Content Objective: I will be able to understand the relationship between the Great Migration, Jim Crow, and the Harlem Renaissance.

Standard Objective: I will be able to draw connections between events (cause/effect).

Click here for the slides from today.
Content Objective: I will be able to understand the relationship between the Great Migration, Jim Crow, and the Harlem Renaissance.

Standard Objective: I will be able to draw connections between events (cause/effect).

Click here for the slides from today.
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Warm Up: Please rate how well you understood last night's pre-work on a scale from 1 to 4. If you have any questions, drop them in the "Show Your Work" area.

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Warm Up: What do you already know about Chicago in the 1920s?

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Warm Up: One interesting historical fact I learned from the pre-work is…

Required
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By the 1920s, a _______ of the US population lived in cities rather than in rural areas. Cities, like _______ , offered economic opportunities to women, migrants, and immigrants, as well as the passage of new immigration restrictions. _______ like Jane Addams sought to improve the lives of women, children, and immigrants. At the _______ House, Addams taught immigrants English and how to adjust to city life.
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In Period 5, we learned that the Northern part of the U.S. was quite _______ and had much larger cities than in the South. Starting in 1916: _______ African Americans moved from the rural south to northern industrial cities. By 1970 over _______ of African Americans lived in the Northern areas whereas only _______ lived there in 1900.
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Which statement is best supported by the graph and the information in our class notes?

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Review: Based on what we've already covered in APUSH, why do you think millions of Black Americans wanted to leave the South in the early 20th century?

Your response should identify one specific historical example and explain its connection to the prompt in complete sentences.

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Due to the racial _______ that pervaded in most northern states, the areas in which African Americans were allowed to settle were _______ due to redlining.  Thus, cities within cities arose. _______ , in New York City, for example became a destination for thousands. It became the _______ of African American culture and art. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s and 1930’s gave voice to the yearnings of African Americans.
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Are you familiar with any of these authors or books? If so, explain.

Applying Knowledge: Today and the next day, we set out to answer two questions:
  • What was life like in the North for African American migrants?
  • How did the Harlem Renaissance transpire?
Excerpt 1: The Harlem Renaissance was a phase of a larger New Negro movement that had emerged in the early 20th century and in some ways ushered in the civil rights movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The social foundations of this movement included the Great Migration of African Americans from rural to urban spaces and from South to North; dramatically rising levels of literacy; the creation of national organizations dedicated to pressing African American civil rights, “uplifting” the race, and opening socioeconomic opportunities; and developing race pride, including pan-African sensibilities and programs. Black exiles and expatriates from the Caribbean and Africa crossed paths in metropoles such as New York City and Paris after World War I and had an invigorating influence on each other that gave the broader “Negro renaissance” (as it was then known) a profoundly important international cast.

The Harlem Renaissance is unusual among literary and artistic movements for its close relationship to civil rights and reform organizations. Crucial to the movement were magazines such as The Crisis, published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Opportunity, published by the National Urban League; and The Messenger, a socialist journal eventually connected with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a Black labor union.

The Harlem Renaissance had many sources in Black culture, primarily of the United States and the Caribbean, and manifested itself well beyond Harlem. As its symbolic capital, Harlem was a catalyst for artistic experimentation and a highly popular nightlife destination. Its location in the communications capital of North America helped give the “New Negroes” visibility and opportunities for publication not evident elsewhere. Located just north of Central Park, Harlem was a formerly white residential district that by the early 1920s was becoming virtually a Black city within the borough of Manhattan. Other boroughs of New York City were also home to people now identified with the renaissance, but they often crossed paths in Harlem or went to special events at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Black intellectuals from Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and other cities (where they had their own intellectual circles, theatres, and reading groups) also met in Harlem or settled there. New York City had an extraordinarily diverse and decentred Black social world in which no one group could monopolize cultural authority. As a result, it was a particularly fertile place for cultural experimentation.
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In what ways should the Harlem Renaissance be considered part of a global pan-African movement?

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How did Harlem become the birthplace for the Harlem Renaissance?

Excerpt 2: While the most celebrated poets of the Harlem Renaissance were men—Hughes, McKay, Cullen—Black women’s poetry was far from incidental to the movement. Poems by Alice Dunbar Nelson, Helene Johnson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Angelina Weld Grimké, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Anne Spencer appeared frequently in periodicals, although only Georgia Douglas Johnson published full volumes of poetry (including The Heart of a Woman, and Other Poems [1918] and Bronze [1922]). Women poets negotiated a number of difficulties concerning gender and tradition as they sought to extricate themselves from stereotypes of hypersexuality and primitive abandon. Attempting to claim femininity on terms denied them by the dominant society, they worked variously within and against inherited constraints concerning the treatment of love and nature as well as racial experience in poetry.

A significant proportion of poets, as well as other participants in the Harlem Renaissance, were gay or bisexual, including McKay, Cullen, Locke, Dunbar Nelson, Richard Bruce Nugent, and perhaps Hughes. References to lesbian sexuality were also well-known in blues songs by Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. The Renaissance participated in what one scholar termed “the invention of homosexuality” in American culture during the early 20th century, when sexual identities came to be defined and policed in new ways. Drag balls were reported in Black newspapers, sometimes disparagingly. In part because of lax policing, Harlem was known as a destination for whites seeking illicit sexual thrills, but it also allowed for discreet liaisons through which long-term same-sex relationships developed both within and between the races. According to some critics, the renaissance was as gay as it was Negro. However, with the exception of Nugent, gay sexuality among the well-known writers and artists was discreet and mostly closeted.
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In what ways did LGBTQ figures from the Harlem Renaissance lay the groundwork for the emerging Civil Rights Movement?

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Exit Ticket: In what ways did the Harlem Renaissance lead to what we see in modern times with African Americans thriving in various areas of entertainment, business and creative industries?

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Exit Ticket: Please evaluate how well you understood today’s lesson on a scale from 1 to 4: