Instructions: You will need to include materials from lecture. Healey book, and assigned videos. The essay needs to be no less than three pages and no more than five pages, double spaced, and submitted to the course dropbox. The deadline is as late as possible and no additional time will be given under any circumstance. If the final is not submitted by the deadline, a student will receive a zero.
Instruction please outline which story you are writing about
In “Race: A Powerful Illusion” race is established as a social construction rather than a biological characteristic. Why does race remain such as salient characteristic? Start your essay by discussing the main sociological theorists, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Patricia Hill Collins emphasizing how each of these theories address power. How does the importance of the contact situation, group competition, and power relate to the experiences of African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanic Americans. End your essay by discussing the best way for Americans to deal with this topic including in your personal lives, Gordon State College, the state of Georgia, and the United States.
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4.3 The Great Migration (Early 1900s to 1970s)
Learning Objective4.3
Explain the significance of the Great Migration and the origins of Black protest.
Black Americans had a choice that wasn’t available under slavery: freedom of movement. They weren’t legally tied to a specific master or plot of land. Slowly at first, Black Americans left the South to seek opportunities elsewhere. This massive population movement, called the Great Migration, happened in waves like European immigration.
In discussing the Great Migration, some people say that Black Americans voted against southern segregation with their feet. By 1920, approximately one million Blacks had moved away from the South; by 1978, almost six million had left. Their migration increased when hard times hit southern agriculture and it slowed during better times.
As Figure 4.1 shows, the Black population was highly concentrated in the South as recently as 1910, a little more than a century ago. By 1990, Black Americans had become much more evenly distributed across the nation, settling in the Northeast and the upper Midwest. Since 1990, the distribution of the Black population has remained roughly the same, with about 55% living in the South (Tamir, 2021).
Figure 4.1 Distribution of the Black American Population in the United States, 1790–1990
Source: Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce.
FIGURE 4.1 DESCRIPTION
Figure 4.2 shows that in addition to movement from the South, the Great Migration also involved migration from the countryside to the city. A century ago, Black people were overwhelmingly rural; as of the 2010 census, more than 90% live in urban areas. Thus, an urban Black population living outside of the South is a 20th-century phenomenon.
Figure 4.2 Percentage of Black Americans Living in Urban Areas, 1890–2010.
Source: 1890–1960—Geschwender (1978); 1980 and 1990—Pollard & O’Hare (1999); 2000—U.S. Census Bureau (2000a); 2010—U.S. Census Bureau (2013).
FIGURE 4.2 DESCRIPTION
The significance of this population redistribution is manifold. Most important, Black Americans moved from areas of great resistance to racial equality to areas of lower resistance to social change. In northern cities, for example, it was far easier for Black people to register and vote. As their political power increased, Black Americans were able to acquire crucial resources for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Life in the North
What did Black American migrants find when they got to the industrializing cities of the North? Life in the North was better for most of them. The growing northern Black American communities relished the absence of Jim Crow laws and oppressive racial etiquette, the relative freedom to pursue employment, and the greater opportunities for education. Many aspects of Black American culture—literature, poetry, and music—flourished in this new atmosphere of freedom. However, life in the North fell far short of utopia as Black Americans faced new forms of oppression and exploitation called de facto segregation, which we’ll discuss in Chapter 5 (Wilkerson, 2011).
Competition With White Ethnic Groups
It’s useful to see the movement of Black Americans out of the South in terms of their relationships with other groups. Southern Blacks began to move to the North at about the same time as the New Immigration from Europe (see Chapter 2) began to end. By the time substantial numbers of black Southerners began arriving in the North, European immigrants and their descendants had had years, decades, and even generations to establish themselves in Northern job markets, political systems, labor unions, and neighborhoods.
Many European ethnic groups had also experienced discrimination and rejection, and their hold on economic security and status was tenuous for much of the 20th century (see Chapter 2). Frequently, they saw Black migrants as a threat to their hard-won status, a belief reinforced by the fact that industrialists and factory owners often used Black Americans as strike-breakers during strikes. White ethnic groups responded by developing defensive strategies to limit the perceived dangers presented by migrants from the South. They tried to exclude Black Americans from their labor unions and other associations and limit their impact on the political system. Often, they successfully maintained segregated neighborhoods and schools (although the legal system outside the South didn’t sanction overt de jure segregation).
A sense of competition led to hostile relations between Black southern migrants and white ethnic groups, especially those in the lower-income classes. Ironically, newly arriving Black Americans actually helped white ethnics achieve upward mobility (see Ethnic Succession in Chapter 2). As whites became increasingly concerned about the growing presence of Black Americans, they increasingly accepted white ethnic groups (e.g., Ukrainians, Slovaks). Simultaneously, the more educated and skilled descendants of the original immigrants came of age and entered the workforce, further helping these groups rise in the social class structure (Lieberson, 1980).
For more than a century, newly arriving European immigrant groups helped to push earlier groups up the ladder of socioeconomic success. However, because Black Americans got to Northern cities after European immigration had been curtailed, no new immigrant groups arrived to continue this pattern of ethnic succession. Instead, American cities developed concentrations of low-income Blacks who were economically vulnerable and politically weak and whose position was further solidified by anti–Black prejudice and discrimination (Wilson, 1987).
The Origins of Black Protest
As mentioned earlier, Black Americans have always resisted their oppression. Under slavery, the inequalities they faced were so great and their resources so meager that their protest was ineffective. With the increased freedom following the abolition of slavery, a national Black American leadership developed and spoke out against oppression and founded organizations that eventually helped lead the fight for freedom and equality. Even at its birth, the Black protest movement was diverse and incorporated many viewpoints and leaders.
Booker T. Washington was the most prominent Black American leader prior to World War I. Born into slavery, Washington became the founder and president of Tuskegee Institute, a college in Alabama dedicated to educating Black Americans. His public advice to Black Americans in the South was to be patient, to accommodate the Jim Crow system for the time being, to raise their levels of education and job skills, and to take full advantage of whatever opportunities became available. This nonconfrontational stance earned Washington praise and support from the white community and widespread popularity in the nation. However, he worked behind the scenes to end discrimination and implement full racial integration and equality (Franklin & Moss, 1994; Hawkins, 1962; Washington, 1965).
A drawing by sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois based on his research.
W.E.B. Du Bois / Public Domain Review
LONG DESCRIPTION
Washington’s most vocal opponent was W. E. B. Du Bois, an activist and intellectual trained in sociology. (Many view him as the father of American sociology and he conducted important sociological research on the lives of Black Americans; see Morris, 2005.) Du Bois was born in the North and educated at some of the leading universities of the day. Among his many other accomplishments, Du Bois was part of a coalition of Blacks and white liberals who founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois rejected Washington’s accommodationist stance and advocated immediate pursuit of racial equality and a direct assault on de jure segregation (Morris, 2005). Almost from the beginning of its existence, the NAACP filed lawsuits that challenged the legal foundations of Jim Crow segregation (Du Bois, 1961). As you’ll learn in Chapter 6, this legal strategy eventually led to the demise of Jim Crow segregation.
Though Washington and Du Bois differed on strategy and tactics, they agreed on the goal of an integrated, racially equal nation. A third leader emerged early in the 20th century and called for a very different approach to the problems of U.S. race relations. Marcus Garvey immigrated to America from Jamaica during World War I. He argued that the white-dominated society was hopelessly racist and would never truly support integration and racial equality. He advocated separatist goals, including a return to Africa. Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914 in his native Jamaica and founded the first U.S. branch in 1916. Garvey’s organization helped to establish some of the themes and ideas of Black nationalism and pride in African heritage that would become prominent again in the pluralistic 1960s (Essien-Udom, 1962; Garvey, 1969, 1977; Vincent, 1976).
Booker T. Washington
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
W.E.B. DuBois
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Three early leaders of Black American protest: Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
These early leaders and organizations helped lay the foundations for later protest movements, but prior to the mid-20th century, they made few improvements in the situation of Black Americans. Jim Crow was a formidable opponent, and Black Americans lacked the resources to successfully challenge the status quo until some basic structural features of American society had changed (well into the 20th century).
