Embedded Files
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Through this webquest, you will research four major elements within the Black American experience in the 1910s & 1920s:
The Great Migration
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Hellfighters
The Red Summer Race Riots
At the end of this webquest, you will be asked to formulate a claim in response to the question: What event or cultural phenomenon had the greatest impact on Black Americans during the 1910s and 1920s?
DAY 1 DIRECTIONS
DAY 1 DIRECTIONS
DAY 1
The Great Migration
Read the introduction.
Analyze the Great Migration Map and Langston Hugh's poem to answer questions 1 & 2.
Read W.E.B. DuBois' explanation of the Great Migration, then answer question 3.
Examine a Jacob Lawrence painting of your choice and answer questions 4 & 5.
The Harlem Renaissance
6. Read the "Required Reading" and watch the video entitled "The Harlem Renaissance"; then answer question 6.
Read "The Birth of Jazz" and watch to Cab Calloway's performance in "Jumpin' Jive"; then, answer the questions in the form below.
DAY 2
The Harlem Hellfighters
7. Read the Introduction & watch the video on the Harlem Hellfighters; then answer question 7.
8. Read the W.E.B. DuBois piece entitled, "Returning Soldiers"; then answer question 8.
The Red Summer Race Riots
9. Read the article, then answer questions 9a-9c. Make sure to look at the images and primary sources throughout the article.
The Tulsa Massacre
10. Click through the linked NYTimes interactive article, "What the Tulsa Race Massacre Destroyed." Then answer question 10.
THE GREAT MIGRATION
THE GREAT MIGRATION
INTRODUCTION: The Great Migration was the mass movement of about five million southern Black people to the north and west between 1915 and 1960. During the initial wave the majority of migrants moved to major northern cities such as Chicago, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and New York, New York. By World War II, the migrants continued to move North but many of them headed west to Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, California; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington.
The first large movement of Black people occurred during World War I, when 454,000 Black southerners moved north. In the 1920s, another 800,000 Black people left the south. Migration continued for the next half century. As African Americans moved north in large numbers, they began to influence the culture of the places in which they settled.
*"Dixie" is a nickname for the Southern states.
1) Based on this map (above) of the Great Migration:
a. Which states are Black Americans leaving?
b. Which “destination” cities are Black Americans moving to?
2) Langston Hughes was a Black poet and a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Read the poem on the right (you can also listen to a reading of it below).
a. Based on Hughes' poem, what are three push factors that were pushing Black Americans to move out of the South?
b. How does Langston Hughes portray the attitude that many Black Americans had about leaving the south?
3) W.E.B DuBois, a Black American academic, frequently commented on the variety of factors affecting Black rights and equality. Read his commentary on the Great Migration (below) and use it to answer the analysis questions that follow.
a. [Close Reading] What were the three reasons W.E.B DuBois suggests that motivated African Americans to leave the south during the Great Migration?
b. [Analysis] Based on the reasons given for migration, how do you think African Americans who migrated to the north at this time envisioned their future life in the north?
4) Jacob Lawrence was a Black painter whose famous "Migration Series" depicts many aspects of Black migrants' experiences leaving southern rural areas.
a. Click the image on the left to be taken to a website archive of his work.
b. Choose ONE of Jacob Lawrence's paintings and answer the following questions about it:
What is being depicted in the painting?
Is this a push or pull factor of The Great Migration?
5. PUT IT ALL TOGETHER! Based on all the sources you viewed, what push or pull factor do you think contributed most to the Great Migration? Why?
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
REQUIRED READING: The Great Migration drew to Harlem some of the greatest minds and brightest talents of the day, an astonishing array of African American artists and scholars. Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, they produced one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the nation’s history—the Harlem Renaissance.
"Renaissance" is a French word that means "rebirth."
This cultural explosion also occurred in Cleveland, Los Angeles and many cities shaped by the great migration. Alain Locke, a Harvard-educated writer, critic, and teacher who became known as the “dean” of the Harlem Renaissance, described it as a “spiritual coming of age” in which African Americans transformed “social disillusionment to race pride.”
The Harlem Renaissance encompassed poetry and prose, painting and sculpture, jazz and swing, opera and dance. What united these diverse art forms was their realistic presentation of what it meant to be Black in America, what writer Langston Hughes called an “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves,” as well as a new militancy in asserting their civil and political rights.
Among the Renaissance’s most significant contributors were intellectuals W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Cyril Briggs, and Walter Francis White; electrifying performers Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson; writers and poets Zora Neale Hurston, Effie Lee Newsome, Countee Cullen; visual artists Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage; and an extraordinary list of legendary musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ivie Anderson, Josephine Baker, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, and countless others.
The Harlem Renaissance’s impact on America was undeniable. The movement brought notice to the great works of African American art, and inspired and influenced future generations of African American artists and intellectuals. The self-portrait of Black life, identity, and culture that emerged from Harlem was transmitted to the world at large, challenging the racist and disparaging stereotypes of the Jim Crow South. In doing so, it radically redefined how people of other races viewed African Americans and understood the African American experience.
Most importantly, the Harlem Renaissance instilled in African Americans across the country a new spirit of self-determination and pride, a new social consciousness, and a new commitment to political activism, all of which would provide a foundation for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, it validated the beliefs of its founders and leaders like Alain Locke and Langston Hughes that art could be a vehicle to improve the lives of the African Americans.
Click here to read in Russian / Нажмите здесь, чтобы прочитать на русском языке
ОБЯЗАТЕЛЬНАЯ К ЧТЕНИ: Великая миграция населения привлекла в Гарлем некоторые из величайших умов и ярких талантов того времени, удивительное множество афроамериканских художников и ученых. Между окончанием Первой мировой войны и серединой 1930-х годов они положили начало одной из самых значительных эпох культурного самовыражения в истории страны — Гарлемскому Ренессансу.
«Ренессанс» — французское слово, означающее «возрождение».
Этот культурный взрыв также произошел в Кливленде, Лос-Анджелесе и многих городах, сформировавшихся в результате великой миграции. Ален Локк, писатель, критик и педагог, получивший образование в Гарварде и ставший известным как «декан» Гарлемского Возрождения, описал его как «духовное взросление», в ходе которого афроамериканцы превратили «социальное разочарование в расовую гордость».
Гарлемский Ренессанс охватывал поэзию и прозу, живопись и скульптуру, джаз и свинг, оперу и танец. Что объединяло эти разнообразные формы искусства, так это их реалистичное представление о том, что значит быть черным в Америке, то, что писатель Лэнгстон Хьюз назвал «выражением нашей индивидуальной темнокожей личности», а также новая воинственность в отстаивании своих гражданских и политических прав. .
Среди наиболее значительных вкладчиков эпохи Возрождения были интеллектуалы В.Э.Б. Дюбуа, Маркус Гарви, Сирил Бриггс и Уолтер Фрэнсис Уайт; потрясающие исполнители Жозефина Бейкер и Пол Робсон; писатели и поэты Зора Нил Херстон, Эффи Ли Ньюсом, Каунти Каллен; художники-оформители Аарон Дуглас и Огаста Сэвидж; и выдающийся список легендарных музыкантов, в том числе Луи Армстронг, Каунт Бэйси, Юби Блейк, Кэб Кэллоуэй, Дюк Эллингтон, Билли Холидей, Айви Андерсон, Жозефина Бейкер, Фэтс Уоллер, Джелли Ролл Мортон и многие другие.
Влияние Гарлемского Возрождения на Америку было неоспоримо. Это движение привлекло внимание к великим произведениям афроамериканского искусства, а также вдохновило и повлияло на будущие поколения афроамериканских художников и интеллектуалов. Автопортрет афроамериканской жизни, идентичности и культуры, возникший в Гарлеме, был передан всему миру, бросая вызов расистским и пренебрежительным стереотипам Юга Джима Кроу. При этом оно радикально изменило то, как люди других рас смотрели на афроамериканцев и понимали афроамериканский опыт.
Самое главное, что Гарлемский Ренессанс привил афроамериканцам по всей стране новый дух самоопределения и гордости, новое общественное сознание и новую приверженность политическому активизму, и все это послужило основой для Движения за гражданские права в США. 1950-е и 1960-е годы. Тем самым он подтвердил убеждения своих основателей и лидеров, таких как Ален Локк и Лэнгстон Хьюз, о том, что искусство может стать средством улучшения жизни афроамериканцев.
6) Read the passage above and watch the video below. Using both these secondary sources, answer:
a. [Close Reading] What lasting impacts did it have on Black communities throughout America?
b. [Analysis] How was the Harlem Renaissance revolutionary for Black culture in America?
THE BIRTH OF JAZZ
THE BIRTH OF JAZZ
The music that percolated in and then boomed out of Harlem in the 1920s was jazz, often played at speakeasies offering illegal liquor. Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem residents, but outside white audiences also.
Some of the most celebrated names in American music regularly performed in Harlem—Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and Cab Calloway, and Ella Fitzgerald often accompanied by elaborate floor shows.
While it was fashionable to frequent Harlem nightlife, entrepreneurs realized that some white people wanted to experience Black culture without having to socialize with African Americans and created clubs to cater to them that allowed only white patrons, though the musicians, dancers, and servers were almost always Black.
7) Watch the video to the right entitled "Jumpin' Jive" - then answer the questions in the form below.
STOP! END OF DAY 1!
STOP! END OF DAY 1!
START OF DAY 2!
START OF DAY 2!
THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS
THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS
INTRODUCTION: The Harlem Hellfighters were the most celebrated African-American regiment (group of soldiers) in World War I. They confronted racism even as they trained for war, helped bring jazz to France, and battled Germany longer than almost any other American soldiers. Like their predecessors in the Civil War, these African-American troops fought a war for a country that refused them basic rights – and their bravery stood as a rebuke to racism, a moral claim to first-class citizenship.
They were mostly New Yorkers, the first black troops in their state’s National Guard. After years of lobbying by civic leaders from Harlem, Manhattan’s celebrated black neighborhood, Governor Charles Whitman finally formed the all-Black unit in 1916, as the U.S. prepared for possible entry into World War I.
The majority of the enlistees actually came from Harlem, which was home to 50,000 of Manhattan’s 60,000 African-Americans in the 1910s. Others came from Brooklyn, towns up the Hudson River, and New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Some were teens, some in their mid-40s. Some were porters, doormen, or elevator operators, some teachers, night watchmen or mailmen. Their motives included adventure, patriotism and pride. “To be somebody you had to belong to the 15th Infantry,” wrote enlistee Arthur P. Davis of Harlem.
7) Once you have read the Introduction and watched the video above, answer:
In what ways did the US military discriminate against Black soldiers during WWI?
How did soldiers like Henry Johnson prove themselves while fighting against German soldiers?
How were Black soldiers treated upon returning home to America from the war?
Below is an excerpt from a piece written by W.E.B. Dubois, entitled "Returning Soldiers," about Black soldiers returning home to America at the end of World War 1.
8) Based on the piece above:
a. According to DuBois, what 5 things does the US do to its Black citizens?
b. Towards the end of this piece, why does DuBois insist that Black people keep fighting for democracy in America?
THE RED SUMMER of 1919
THE RED SUMMER of 1919
REQUIRED READING: During the Red Summer, massive anxiety became mass violence. Between April and November of 1919, there would be approximately 25 instances of mob violence, 97 recorded lynchings, and a three day long massacre in Elaine, Arkansas during which over 200 Black men, women, and children were killed after Black sharecroppers tried to organize for better working conditions. The Ku Klux Klan, which had been largely shut down by the government after the Civil War, experienced a resurgence in popularity and began carrying out dozens of lynchings across the south.
Just a few years earlier, many young Black men had heeded Wilson’s call to make the world “safe for democracy” and gone off to fight for America in one of history’s bloodiest wars. Now, they had come back to a country that recognized neither their service nor their humanity. Having just returned from battle, however, Black veterans were not inclined to take the abuse lying down. Across the country, former soldiers used their government-provided weapons training to defend their neighborhoods against vicious white mobs.
“Black people [formed] self-defense organizations to try to keep white folks from terrorizing their communities,” says Simon Balto, a Professor of African American History at The University of Iowa. “Black veterans are instrumental in that.”
Washington D.C had 5,000 black veterans and for many of them, self-defense was a last resort after decades of government inaction. One of the first people killed in Washington D.C.’s violence was a 22-year-old black veteran named Randall Neal. Many of the city’s white-owned newspapers fanned the flames of terror, reporting on fabricated instances of Black men assaulting white women. In one case, The Washington Post ran a front page story advertising the location for white servicemen to meet and carry out further attacks on Black residents in the city.
Washington D.C. also had a vibrant Black middle class that epitomized Black people’s slow but expanding economic and social advances. The cities’ Black population was growing rapidly thanks to the Great Migration and in 1919, they made up a quarter of the population. They also held many jobs in the federal government and at the country’s first Black-owned bank, the Industrial Savings bank. It was a limited but steady march forward—one that many white people felt needed to be stopped. After four days of racist mob violence in Washington D.C., an estimated 40 people were killed and dozens more were injured. The chaos was only quelled when 2,000 federal troops were deployed onto the city streets at the end of the month—just in time for the riots to spread to Chicago.
Just two days after federal troops withdrew from Washington D.C., a Black teenager was killed by a white man in Chicago, lighting the match that would kick off a week of violent riots. By the end, 15 white people and 23 black people would be dead, over 500 people would be injured, and over 1,000 black families would be homeless after their homes were burned down. The teenager, 17-year-old Eugene Williams, was floating on a homemade raft off the shores of Lake Michigan, trying to escape the city’s oppressive summer heat, when a white man named George Stauber started pelting him with rocks. Williams had unwittingly drifted past the line that divided the "white beach" from the "Black beach." A rock hit Williams in the head, knocking him unconscious. His body went limp and slipped into the lake. No one got to Williams in time to save him.
A white police officer refused to arrest Stauber, despite a growing crowd of angry witnesses to the murder. By the time Williams’ lifeless body had been removed from the lake, a crowd of around a thousand Black people had gathered, demanding action. For many, Williams’ death was a microcosm of the longstanding violence perpetrated against Black Americans without consequence.
In response to the protest, armed white men jumped in cars and tore through the city streets, firing into black homes and businesses. A white mob marched down the street, assaulting Black pedestrians and torching black homes. Still, police refused to act.
“When the riot explodes it’s not so much some kind of a spontaneous event as it is a culmination,” Balto explains. In the two previous years, white supremacists had bombed over 25 Black homes in an effort to keep black people out of the city. The police never intervened.
Veterans in Chicago formed militias to defend Black homes, neighborhoods, and families when the police and government refused. In the time following Williams’ death, one group of Black veterans broke into an armory and stole weapons they then used to beat back a white mob. “Because many of them have actually seen battlefield combat, they are willing and capable of using violence for the purpose of self-defense,” says Balto.
Throughout the summer, Black veterans around the country took inspiration from the actions of their brethren in Washington D.C. and Chicago and followed suit. In a riot in South Carolina, one preacher reportedly said of the Black self-defense units: “The males carried their guns with as much calmness as if they were going to shoot a rabbit in a hunt, or getting ready to shoot the Kaiser’s soldiers.”
As bloodshed spread nationally—to South Carolina, Nebraska, Florida, Ohio, among others—veterans continued to be targeted. At least 13 veterans were lynched across the United States after the war. Many of them were in uniform which, when worn in public, many white people saw as an affront to America’s racial caste system. It was the opposite of the reception many Black soldiers believed they would receive when returning home.
The conclusion of the summer of 1919 would not be the end of mass violence against Black Americans—far from it. Two years later would see one of the worst instances of racial violence in American history, The Tulsa Race Massacre, during which a white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in the predominantly black Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa. News reports were largely squelched, despite the fact that up to 300 people were killed and thousands left homeless
It did, however, signal a permanent shift in the way Black people responded to white violence in the United States and presaged increasing self-defense tactics, including when Black veterans once again mobilized during the violence in Tulsa. For many Black people, the way veterans responded to the bloodshed added a sliver of inspiration to the terror of that summer.
Before the war, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had 9,000 members yet by the early 1920s it had 100,000, signaling a growing boldness and cohesion to the organizing that would eventually plant the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement.
9. "Red Summer" Article questions:
a. Broadly speaking, where was violence towards Black Americans occuring? (refer also to the map below). Who was responsible for committing this violence?
b. How did the police react in most instances of violence against Black Americans? Support your answer with specific evidence.
c. What did Black Americans do to fight back against white violence? How were Black WWI veterans instrumental (key) to helping their communities defend themselves?
Locations of Race Riots during the "Red Summer" of 1919:
The Tulsa Massacre & the Bombing of "Black Wall Street"
The Tulsa Massacre & the Bombing of "Black Wall Street"
10. Use the interactive 3D model below to explore the history of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Open the webquest below in a new tab, then click through it. Make sure to read the "blurbs" as you click through each screen.
10a. What were the long-term impacts of white mob violence destroying this center of Black wealth?
b. Most Americans have never heard of this event because it's rarely taught in US History classes in schools. How would you describe the Tulsa Race Massacre to someone who knew nothing about it?
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