PROSPERITY DEPRESSION THE NEW DEAL American History II

PROSPERITY, DEPRESSION, & THE NEW DEAL American History II - Unit 4 Ms. Brown

Review • How did the radio change life in the 1920 s? • Quicker distribution of news coverage, entertainment, new forms of advertising, shared American experience • What were some common characteristics of flappers in the 1920 s? • Distinct fashion – short hair, waist-less dresses • Assertive and independent • What double standard did women face in the 1920 s? • Women were encouraged to be sexy and fashionable but were criticized by society, while men enjoyed sexual freedom and looser social standards without criticism. • While many women entered the workforce in WWI and the 1920 s, what types of challenges did women face? • Few managerial jobs, earned less $ than men for same work

4. 3 – HARLEM RENAISSANCE

The Great Migration • 1910 -1930 - The Great Migration • hundreds of thousands of blacks left the rural South/west for urban northern cities in search of new jobs • end of 1920 s - over 40% of African Americans lived in cities • However, northern cities were not very receptive to the massive increase black residents each year → increased race riots and racial violence “Some said goodbye cheerfully… others fearfully, with terrors of unknown dangers in their mouths… others in their eagerness for distance and said nothing. The daybreak found them gone. The wind said North. ” - Zora Neale Hurston

African American Goals • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) • founded in 1909, WEB Du Bois • The Crisis - national magazine • 1920 s - push for civil rights gains through legislative means - James Weldon Johnson (poet, lawyer, NAACP executive secretary) pushed for antilynching laws, but Congress passed none • NAACP continued to organize against lynchings, and slowly, they decreased to an extent

Marcus Garvey • Many blacks supported slow and difficult legal change, but also faced daily threats of violence and discrimination • Marcus Garvey (Jamaican immigrant) believed blacks should build a separate society • 1914 - founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, moved to NYC 1918 to recruit members • mid-1920 s - UNIA claimed 1 million followers, appealed to black pride

Marcus Garvey • Encouraged followers to return to Africa, help native people there throw off white colonial oppressors, and build independent black nations • appealed to African Americans and blacks in the Caribbean and Africa • support declined in the mid-1920 s when Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and jailed • Garvey left a legacy of newly awakened black pride, economic independence, and interest in African heritage

The Harlem Renaissance • a literary and artistic movement in the 1920 s celebrating African-American culture • Many blacks migrated to Harlem (a neighboorhood in NYC) • residents from the South, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti • “Black capital of America” • suffered from overcrowding, unemployment, and poverty → in part the inspiration for the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance • 1920 s • led by well-educated, middle-class, blacks • expressed a new pride in the African American experience • celebrated black heritage, emphasized the trials of being black in a white world

African American Writers Writer Background Known for. . . Claude Mc. Kay novelist and poet, Jamaican immigrant, militant Songs of Jamaica, “The Harlem Dancer” expressed the pain of life in black ghettos and in a white-dominated society encouraged blacks to resist prejudice/discrimination Langston Hughes poet, from Missouri I, Too , Dream Deferred (Harlem), Various poems, short stories described difficulties for working-class blacks poetry read to the tempo of jazz and blues music Zora Neale Hurston novelist and poet, from Florida, Their Eyes Were Watching God potrayed the lives of unschooled, poor Southern blacks celebrated the “common person’s art form” - ways blacks developed to survive slavery and the Jim Crow South

African American Performers Performer Background Known for. . . Paul Robeson actor, son of a one-time slave acclaimed performance in Shakespeare’s Othello in London and NYC Louis Armstrong trumpet player, lived in New Orleans and NYC astounding sense of rhythm and ability to improvise became the most important and influential musician in the history of jazz helped popularize “scat”- improvised jazz singing using sounds instead of words Edward “Duke” Ellington jazz pianist and played at the famous NYC Cotton Club composer, played 1920 -30 s - won fame as a top American at NYC’s Cotton composer Club Bessie Smith female blues singer outstanding 1920 s vocalist 1927 - highest paid black artist in the world

“When the Negro was in Vogue” • Read the excerpt from Langston Hughes’ autobiography. DO NOT answer the questions on the sheet. DO answer the questions below: 1. Why did Hughes and other Harlemites prefer not to visit the Cotton Club and Lennox Ave? 2. How do you think whites viewed life in Harlem for African Americans? 3. Do you believe the white perspective aligned with actual life in Harlem in the 1920 s? 4. What is ironic about the situations Hughes describes in the 2 nd half of the excerpt? 5. What does Hughes mean when he states: “it was the period when the Negro was in vogue. ”