Chapter 16 Conciliation, Agitation, and Migration: African Americans in the Early 20th Century

1. Chapter 16 Conciliation, Agitation, and Migration: African Americans in the Early 20th Century

2. Race and the Progressive Movement • Social problems • Industrialization, urbanization, and immigration • Solutions • Numerous efforts aimed at reforms • Middle- and upper-class white people • “Whites only” • Glimmer of hope for black people

3. The Tuskegee Machine • Booker T. Washington as a political figure • Connections - Theodore Roosevelt • Invited Washington to dinner at the White House • Regularly consulted each other on political appointments • Behind-the-scenes political activities • Conservative leader • Did not challenge white supremacy • Accepted equitable voting qualifications • Opposed women’s suffrage

4. Booker T. Washington Shares the Podium with President Roosevelt • Booker T. Washington had access to and influence among the most powerful political and business leaders in the United States. Here he shares the podium with President Theodore Roosevelt. Washington persuaded Republican leaders like Roosevelt to appoint black men to an assortment of federal offices and convinced businessmen to contribute sizable sums to black colleges and universities. Nevertheless, some African Americans criticized the Tuskegee leader for not speaking out more candidly in opposition to white supremacy and Jim Crow.

5. Opposition to Washington • Challenges to racial oppression • Afro-American League, 1889 • Pressed for civil and political rights • William Monroe Trotter – Harvard educated editor of the Boston Guardian • Labeled Washington – “the great traitor”, the “benedict Arnold of the Negro Race” • 1903 interrupted a Washington speech, spent 30 days in jail, newspapers labeled “the Boston Riot”

6. III. W. E. B. Du Bois • William Edward Burghardt Du Bois • Born and raised in Great Barrington, Massachusetts • Little overt racism • Fisk University • Harvard University • Earned Ph.D. in 1895 • Activist • The Souls of Black Folk • Critical of Washington’s gradualism

7. The Niagara Movement • Niagara Falls, 1905 • Emphatic and continual protest • Political rights • Equal treatment in public places • Discrimination in military • Booker T. Washington • Opposed • Paid for anti-movement advertising • Threatened loss of federal jobs for supporters

8. The Founders of the Niagara Movement • The founders of the Niagara Movement posed in front of a photograph of the falls when they met at Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, in 1905. W. E. B. Du Bois is second from the right in the middle row.

9. IV. The NAACP • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People -Founded 1909 • No direct link with Niagara Movement • Militant organization during the early years • Dedicated to racial justice • White leaders dominated and financed

10. Using the System • Full political and civil rights • Relied on judicial and legislative systems • Lawsuits and bills • Guinn v. United States, 1915 • Overturned Grandfather clause in Oklahoma • Dyer bill – US anti-lynching law. Passed in the House, blocked in the Senate. Never became law.

11. Du Bois and The Crisis • Director of publicity and research • The Crisis • NAACP publication • Denounced white racism • Demanded that black people stand up for civil rights • Did not provoke violence • Would not tolerate mistreatment • Propaganda tool • 30,000 subscribers, 1913

12. W. E. B. Du Bois • This early-twentieth-century illustration depicts a dapper young W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963). He was a key figure in opposing Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Machine. Du Bois helped found the NAACP and edited its publication, The Crisis, for two decades.

13. The Crisis • The first issue of The Crisis monthly magazine edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, was published in November 1910.

14. Washington versus the NAACP • Many NAACP leaders despised Washington • Washington • His followers returned the feelings • Worked to subvert the NAACP • Saw Du Bois as a puppet for white people • Refused to debate him • Manipulated white supremacists

15. The NACW and Phillis Wheatley Clubs • National Association of Colored Women, 1896 • Sought to end poverty and racial discrimination • 50,000 members and a thousand clubs nationwide • Rivalries and ideological disputes • Phillis Wheatley Clubs • Provided living accommodations for single, black working women in cities where YWCA denied rooms • Nurseries and domestic skills classes

16. Women’s Suffrage • Nineteenth Amendment • Division between black and white supporters • Opponents • Ratification would increase black voters • White women supported voting restrictions • Literacy and education • Black suffragists • Increased political power • Civil rights, improved education, and respect

17. Cool Down • Who had the better plan for black equality, WEB Dubois or Booker T. Washington? Explain the specific reasons for your choice.

18. IX. Presidential Politics • “The Party of Lincoln” • Occasionally rewarded support with federal jobs • Regularly punished for the color of their skin • Taft tolerated restrictions on southern black voters • Denied entrance to 1912 Republican convention

19. Woodrow Wilson • Some black leaders supported democrat Woodrow Wilson • New Jersey reform governor • Scholar • Wilson ignored black people • Permitted segregation • Federal agencies and buildings • Defended separation of races as a way to avoid friction

20. X. Black Men and the Military in World War I • World War I • Rampant racism and rigid segregation • 10,000 black regulars in U.S. Army, 1917 • 5,000 black men in the Navy • Most were waiters, kitchen attendants, stokers • Marine Corps did not admit black men

21. African-American Troops, 1918 African-American troops on the march near Verdun in France in 1918.

22. Discrimination and Its Effects • Black men lived in tents, no floors, no blankets • Low morale • White men failed to salute black officers • Military did not plan to use black troops in combat • Only 42,000 out of 380,000 • Little military training • Laborers, construction, kitchen workers

23. XI. Race Riots • Atlanta, 1906 • Springfield, 1908 • East St. Louis, 1917 • Houston, 1917 • Chicago, 1919 • Elaine, 1919 • Tulsa, 1921

24. Major Race Riots, 1900–1923 In the years between 1900 and 1923, race conflicts and riots occurred in dozens of American communities as black people migrated in increasing numbers to urban areas. The violence reached a peak in the immediate aftermath of World War I during the Red Summer of 1919. White Americans—in the North and South—were determined to keep black people confined to a subordinate role as menial laborers and restricted to well-defined all-black neighborhoods. African Americans who had made significant economic and military contributions to the war effort and who had congregated in large numbers in American cities insisted on participating on a more equitable basis in American society.

25. The Greenwood Neighborhood in Flames During the Riot This is the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in flames during the riot in June 1921.

26. Rosewood • 50 miles west of Gainesville – primarily black town • White married woman was beaten by her white adulterer • Claimed she was robbed and raped by black men • Accused man was abducted and lynched for the rape • Black people armed to defend themselves • Word spread and several hundred whites traveled to Rosewood to hunt black people • Officially 6 dead blacks • Believed body count is approx. 100 • Burned town, survivors fled, hid in swamp, never returned • Town of Rosewood removed from the map • No government response • 1993 Florida became the first state to award damages to survivors and decedents of survivors for the racially based massacre.

27. XII. The Great Migration • Why migrate? • Southern agricultural disasters, 1910s • Labor shortages during World War I • To escape the most blatant Jim Crow laws • Bleak culture of rural South • Destinations • Most went to Midwest or northeastern locales • Few went west

28. Black Population Growth in Selected Northern Cities, 1910–1902

29. The Great Migration and the Distribution of the African-American Population in 1920 Map 16–2. The Great Migration and the Distribution of the African-American Population in 1920 Although several hundred thousand black Southerners migrated north in the second and third decades of the twentieth century in the largest internal migration in American history, most African Americans remained in the southern states.

30. XIII. Northern Communities • Segregation usually less overt • Embraced Jim Crow • Southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois • Chicago • Harlem • “Negro Capital of the World”

31. The Expansion of Black Harlem, 1911–1930 Before the American Revolution, Harlem was a small Dutch village located at the northern end of Manhattan Island. In the early twentieth century, African Americans transformed it into a thriving black metropolis. Migrants who arrived either after a short trip of just a few miles from the “Tenderloin” or “San Juan Hill” sections of midtown Manhattan or after much longer journeys from the Carolinas or Georgia took over block after block of Harlem homes and apartments.

32. XIV. Families • Migration strained families • Family members left behind • Men found work as unskilled laborers in factories • Women worked as domestics • Younger women lured into prostitution • Most black families survived intact • Northern black families two-parent households