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Station 4

The Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

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Building Knowledge Together

In Period 5-6, we learned that the Northern part of the U.S. was quite industrial and had much larger cities than in the South. Starting in 1916: 6 million African Americans moved from the rural south to northern industrial cities. By 1970 over 50% of African Americans lived in the Northern areas whereas only 10% lived there in 1900.

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Building Knowledge Together

Review: There are numerous reasons why millions of Black American families left the South in the early 20th century – some even fled in secret overnight!

Push or Pull Factor?

  • Suppression of Black voting rights
    • Poll Taxes
    • Literacy Tests
  • Segregation via Jim Crow laws
    • “Separate but equal” ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson
  • Rise of the KKK
    • Lynchings
    • “Birth of a Nation”
  • “Sharecropping“ contracts
  • Job prospects in industrial cities
  • Full citizenship in the North

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Building Knowledge Together

Due to the racial discrimination that pervaded in most northern states, the areas in which African Americans were allowed to settle were limited due to redlining. Thus, cities within cities arose. Harlem, in New York City, for example became a destination for thousands. It became the center of African American culture and art. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s and 1930’s gave voice to the yearnings of African Americans.

Some of the most celebrated names in American music regularly performed in Harlem—Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and Cab Calloway, often accompanied by elaborate floor shows.

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