1910s - 1920s
THE GREAT MIGRATION AND THE
HARLEM RENAISSANCE
The Great Migration
 First wave (1915-25): 1.7 million
 Reasons:
 need for black labor to replace
immigrants during World War I
 Boll weevil infestations in South
 Jim Crow & lynching
 Took bottom-end jobs &
employed family strategies
 Mostly young, inexperienced adults
 Depended on women’s wages
 Had trouble adjusting to industrial
work discipline
 Sometimes recruited as
strikebreakers
 led to hostilities with unions
 West Virginia coal mines paid
$3.20 - $5.00 for 8-hour day
Letters to the Chicago Defender
The Great Migration
Chicago Monument
“The Reason”
Chicago Race Riot, 1919:
Background
 Clearly defined black belt emerged after Great Fire of
1871
 Mostly on South Side
 Over 80% of blacks in 1910 not native to Illinois
 By 1910, over 30% lived in predominantly black
neighborhoods, 60% in neighborhoods at least 20% black
 Black population doubled in less than a decade to
109,000 by 1920
 Led to firece competition for jobs, housing, etc.
 Resentment built as blacks moved into previously all-white
neighborhoods
 Economic & political competition especially with Irish
Americans
Chicago Race Riot, 1919
 Returning WWI veterans determined to make America
“safe for democracy”
 10 soldiers lynched, along with 65 other blacks, in 1919
 25 race riots across country, but Chicago was the worst
 Riot began July 27 when 17-year-old Eugene Williams
killed for crossing color line at beach
 13 days of sporadic violence left
 38 dead (15 white, 23 black) and 537 injured (178 white, 342
black, 17 unknown)
 White mobs burned sections of South Side, leaving over
1,000 homeless
Chicago Race Riot: Map
Chicago Riot Photographs
Langston Hughes
(1902-1967)
 Attended Columbia &
Lincoln Universities
 Weary Blues (1926)
 Fine Clothes to the Jew
(1927)
Countee Cullen
(1903-1946)
 Studied at New York
University (B.A., 1925) &
Harvard (M.A., 1926)
 Color (1925) – first book of
poems, published at age
22
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
 Emigrated from
Jamaica in 1912 at age
21
 Attended Tuskegee &
Kansas State
 Harlem Shadows
(1922) – poems
 Home to Harlem (1928)
– novel
Zora Neale Hurston
(1903-1960)
 Attended Howard
University & graduated
from Barnard College in
1928
 Did graduate work at
Columbia University
 Collected African American
folk tales
 Their Eyes Were Watching
God (1937)
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
 Born & raised in
Washington, D.C.
 Duke Ellington
Orchestra opened at the
Cotton Club in Dec. 1927
 Hired composerarranger Billy Strayhorn
in 1938