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Sample Student final exam answers 2019 (2019 final exam assignment) Part 3: Model Research Reports |
LITR 4340
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Erica Adams
News You Can Use: The Great Migration
After careful consideration and going back and forth, I
was finally able to pick the topic: News You Can Use: The Great Migration. I
decided on this topic after a discussion with Dr. White. Initially, I was not
able to pinpoint a topic and put my finger on anything definitive. Prior to
choosing this topic, I had heard of the Great Migration, but I could not really
tell you any specific details about it, or the significance of it to immigrant
or minorities. Writing this paper will not only give me in site on this
unfamiliar topic, but also allow me to share the information with others.
One of the reason this topic stood out to me is because
it is a part of my own history. Who does not want to learn more about their
heritage and where they came from? The progression of my people within the
United States had a great impact on the nation, intentionally and
unintentionally.
The Great Migration was known as the Black Migration and
the Great Northward Migration. During this movement, 6 million African Americans
decided to leave good old rural Southern United States and migrate to the urban
Northeast and Midwest. This movement began about 1916 and went on until about
1970. Not only were the African Americans moving north, they were moving to more
urban areas versus rural. This movement was significant; so significant, that
prior to 1910, 90% of the African American population lived in the Southern
United States. After the migration just over 50% lived in the South still, and
just under 50% had moved to the North and the majority of both populations had
become urbanized.
Some northern city destinations for the migration
included Richmond, D.C, Baltimore, New York, and Newark. Destinations in the
west included Los Angeles and San Francisco. St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit
were also included in the top cities to migrate to.
Later on, Nicholas Lemann, a graduate of Columbia
University School of Journalism and staff writer for the New Yorker, described
the Great Migration as one of the largest and fastest moving mass movements in
history. Although this was written in 1991, it is still true today. The move was
not caused by immediate threat of execution or starvation. It was simply African
Americans taking a stand against the economic and social standings they knew,
and finding something new and different.
According to history.com, the African Americans were
forced out of their cities by the lack of economic opportunities and unpleasant
segregation laws. The idea to go north came from the notion that industrial
workers were needed during the time of World War I. The shortage was due to the
war beginning and the halt on the immigration of Europeans to America. During
this time, African Americans decided they would make a name for themselves by
facing racial prejudices head on. They were determined to create a black culture
that fit their needs.
For most, heading north was an escape from harsh, unfair
laws and unsatisfactory economic conditions. Many of the people, young and old
consistently wrote letter to the Chicago Defender asking them for help to come
north for work. Here is one of the letters:
LUTCHER, LA., May 13, 1917
Dear Sir: I have been reading the Chicago defender and
seeing so many advertisements about the work in the north I thought to write you
concerning my condition. I am working hard in the south and can hardly earn a
living. I have a wife and one child and can hardly feed them. I thought to write
and ask you for some information concerning how to get a pass for myself and
family. I dont want to leave my family behind as I cant hardly make a living for
them right here with them and I know they would fare hard if I would leave them.
If there are any agents in the south there havent been any of them to Lutcher if
they would come here they would get at least fifty men. Please sir let me hear
from you as quick as possible. Now this is all. Please dont publish my letter, I
was out in town today talking to some of the men and they say if they could get
passes that 30 or 40 of them would come. But they havent got the money and they
dont know how to come. But they are good strong and able working men. If you
will instruct me I will instruct the other men how to come as they all want to
work. Please dont publish this because we have to whisper this around among our
selves because the white folks are angry now because the negroes are going
north. * * *
This letter truly expressing the urgency for some of the
African Americans to make it up north. Going north was not just an escape, but
also a way to have a life, a way to provide, and a way to live like a normal
human being. These people had nothing; just the desire to go north where there
were better conditions and a chance to make a living. Some were even willing to
risk their lives and the little possessions they did have to take that leap of
faith.
Some of the migrants already had family living in the
north, which was very helpful for them. All they had to do was make it to the
north and they had assistance waiting for them. James Green was one of those
people. As a teenager, James migrated from Goldsboro, North Carolina to New York
to be with his aunt. Lucky for James, his journey was not as long as others.
There were migrants coming from Deep South Texas to Baltimore, which was not
quite the same journey.
There were issues leading up to the migration, which were
the jumpstart of this revolutionary movement. After the Civil War, the dominant
culture was widely spread across the South in the 1870s. At this time, Jim Crow
laws were greatly in effect, and everyone had to abide by them. The blacks in
the south were forced to earn their living working on the land using the black
code and sharecropping system. Black codes were restrictive laws designed to
limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap
labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. The sharecropping
system was a form of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to
use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of
land. Although the Ku Klux Klan had officially dissolved in the late 1800s, they
continued to work underground and wreaked havoc on the blacks that were still in
the south. This havoc included intimidation, violence, and even lynching.
By the beginning of 1920, about one million blacks had
left the south to move up to the cities. In the decade between 1910 and 1920,
the percentage of the black population in the north had enormously increased as
the need to get out of the south heightened. New York black population was up 66
percent, Chicago was up 148 percent, Philadelphia was up 500 percent and Detroit
was up 611 percent. It was much easier to find work once they arrived in the
north. The Bureau of Labor Statistics stated that the job market offered them
employment in factories, slaughterhouses and foundries. They typically wound up
in dirty, backbreaking, unskilled, low wage occupations.
Although the work was dangerous, many migrants believed it was better
than what was offered in the south.
Because the women had a difficult time finding work, the
competition for domestic labor was at an all-time high. Because of the
increasingly high number of migrants, the housing market was at an all-time low.
The living spaces in the north were overcrowded and so were the cities. As a
result of this tension in the housing market, many blacks decided to create
their own cities, sometimes within other cities. This gave them room to adopt
the growth of a new African American culture.
The example of this that most people are familiar with is
Harlem in New York City. Initially, Harlem was an all-white neighborhood, but by
1920, about 200,000 blacks had moved there. According to History.com, the Harlem
Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a
black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and
artistic explosion that resulted. The Renaissance lasted from the 1910s through
the mid-1930s. This period was known as a golden age in African American
culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art.
The Great Migration was also responsible for stirring up
political activism amongst African Americans. After being disenfranchised in the
south, they made their way to the north and west and found a public eye to be
the spotlight of.
The Great
Migration had a much deeper significance than the mass movement of a people. It
resulted in the nationalization of socioeconomic and political issues with
inequality, and was the beginning of African Americans gaining a voice within
politics itself. In addition, many social leaders were born of the Great
Migration, who made great strides contributing to civil rights. In The Houses
that Racism Built, Adelmann stated his belief that practices that became common
during the Migration laid groundwork for modern systematic inequality, such as
redlining and housing subsidies for white districts. Overall, the Great
Migration culminated in an enormous scale alteration of the human condition for
blacks and whites alike in America.
From this, we
learn that African American minorities did not immigrate voluntarily like
traditional immigrants and coming to the land of the American Dream was a pure
nightmare for them. They did not encounter freedom and opportunity upon arrival,
but rather slavery and depression. African American immigrants are classified as
the slaves that escaped the south and moved north during the migration, and
other times as well. This move gave them a greater freedom, some citizenship
rights and more work opportunities than living down south. After all this, there
is still the question whether African Americans should give up the resistance to
assimilation?
Works Cited
Adelmann,
Larry. "Racial Preferences for Whites: The Houses that Racism Built." PBS.org.
Public Broadcasting Service, 29 June 2003. Web. 4 May 2019.
Crew, Spencer
R. "The Great Migration of Afro Americans, 1915-40." BLS.gov. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, n.d. Web. 11 May 2019
Editors, History.com. “Great
Migration.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 4 Mar. 2010,
www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration.
Editors, History.com. “Harlem
Renaissance.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009,
www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance.
“Journal of Negro
History,” Vol. IV, 1919, pp. 417, 302, 317,
327, 307, 59
"The Great
Migration: Migration Resources." The African American Migration Experience. The
New York Public Library, n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2019.
