African-American Rights Movements: Interwar Period

The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from about 1916 to 1970.

When millions of African-Americans fled the South in search of a better life, they remade the nation in ways that are still being felt.

Like so many before them, the men and women who were part of the Great Migration felt compelled to migrate to escape persecution and to search out economic opportunity. In the 20th Century, this meant the atrocities of the Jim Crow South combined with the employment opportunities afforded by labor shortages in the Industrial North. The combination led millions to leave the only world they knew for a new and uncertain life.

While no group escaped the economic devastation of the Great Depression, few suffered more than African Americans.

The Roosevelt administration could not pass legislation for the New Deal without the votes of the southern delegations. In the tradition of the Solid South they acted as a unified bloc. As a price for their votes they demanded and got modifications to social and economic programs that cut racial minorities out of the picture.

The nation’s most devastating economic downturn, the Great Depression, affected blacks more adversely than any other group of Americans. Throughout this economic crisis unemployment rates were considerably higher for blacks than for whites.

While some African Americans were successful in retaining their land and establishing farms, this became more difficult in the 1920s and 1930s.

Trade unionist and civil-rights leader who was a dedicated and persistent leader in the struggle for justice and parity for the black American community.

Regarded as the leader of the largest organized mass movement in black history and the progenitor of the modern Black Is Beautiful revival that reached its apogee in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States.

We should recognize Robinson’s contributions on the diamond and the ways he maintained his outward composure while facing blatant racism. However, we must also remember the courageous and confrontational moments when Robinson openly pushed back against Jim Crow segregation in the United States.