African Americans in the 1920s to the 1930s

Created Oct 5, 2000 | Updated Apr 13, 2014

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<h1><a href="mailto:[email protected]"> Soaponarope</a><o:p></o:p></h1>

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 The
1920s and 1930s were a very important time for America. Before the stock market crash of 1929 and
the Great Depression, almost 80 million movie tickets were sold a week and 21
million cars were owned by American citizens.
In 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic Ocean nonstop and
captivated the imagination and admiration of the nation. Then in October 1929, the stock market
crashed and many people lost their jobs and all of their savings. This is when the Great Depression began. It took America many years to get out of
this Depression, but it was eventually overcome.<o:p></o:p>

 In
1909, the NAACP was formed to end racism in the United States and improve race
relations. A prominent black civil
rights leader of the early twentieth century, Marcus Garvey, spoke out against
the NAACP, because it was run mainly by whites. He encouraged the people to study and honor their African
heritage, and take pride in their black identity. He wanted the people to support his organization for racial
equality, UNIA. <o:p></o:p>

 While
Marcus Garvey was promoting UNIA, the NAACP began a campaign to end
lynching. Lynching is when a mob kills
a person, usually by hanging, outside of the law. This occurred often in southern towns and cities when a black
person was accused of a crime. Lynching
was illegal, but many times law enforcement would step aside and let the black
person be killed.<o:p></o:p>

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In To Kill a Mockingbird, the accused person, Tom
Robinson, was not lynched. This is
because, Atticus, the narrator’s father, was there to defend him. He became involved because he knew a group
of people would try to lynch Tom. <o:p></o:p>

 An
important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, James Weldon, the first black
executive in the NAACP, lobbied for a federal anti-lynching bill. Although the bill was not passed while James
was in office, lynchings became less common in the 1930s when the public
opinion began to question this cruel practice.<o:p></o:p>

 In
the 1920s the Harlem Renaissance began.
Harlem was a mainly African-American district in New York City. Poets such as Langston Hughes, Claud McKay,
and Courtee Cullen lived within blocks of musicians like Duke Ellington. Ideas were freely shared between artists in
many different fields of the arts like painting, music, and poetry. These African-Americans gave much to
American society, but got very little in return for their contributions. <o:p></o:p>

 America became fascinated with baseball, and its stars like Babe
Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Blacks were not
admitted to Major League Baseball, so they formed their own league, the Negro
Leagues. They also had many fine
players like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson.
Some white managers admitted later in their lives that they would have
happily paid thousands for some of the better black players. <o:p></o:p>

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Schedules for these teams
were hard, with some teams playing almost 300 games in a season. They had to do this to turn a profit,
because many white owners charged large amounts of money for the blacks to rent
their stadiums. The Negro Leagues
overcame these obstacles and became one of the most profitable black businesses
in the United States.<o:p></o:p>

 After
the Emancipation Proclamation blacks were slowly given some of the rights of
white people. Many southern states
passed laws restricting these rights, leading to the practice of
segregation. Laws designated certain
water fountains for white use, and others for blacks. Some businesses, like banks, would only lend money to white
people, and restaurants would not serve blacks. The north was a little more merciful towards blacks, but they did
not have equal rights even there. <o:p></o:p>

 Many
southern towns had “social laws” that showed what was expected from black
people. This included things such as,
not speaking to a white person unless spoken to. Black men were not allowed to look at white women unless they
were speaking to the women. <o:p></o:p>

 Black
children were not allowed to go to schools for white people. There were very few schools for black
children. Very few blacks were educated
enough to teach other children in these southern communities. Even if schooling was <o:p></o:p>

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available, many black children had to work in the
fields with their parents to help support their family. <o:p></o:p>

 I
think that the book To Kill a Mockingbird did a very good job reflecting
these aspects of black life. In the
book, Jem and Scout visit the area where most of the blacks live. Many of the children there could not read or
write. Cal, Atticus’s housekeeper, is
one of the few blacks in the town that can read and write, so she tries to
teach the younger kids, but many of them work out in the fields. Also, during Tom Robinson’s testimony to the
judge, he stated that he obeyed these
“social laws” by not going on the Ewells’s property unless he was
invited to. <o:p></o:p>

 Most
black people thought of church as a social event. The church was often used for other people during the week to
help pay the rent or taxes. Many
churches also had only one hymnbook. In
the book, Jem and Scout went to visit the church that Cal went to. This church had only one hymnbook. One person went up to the front of the
church and called out the first line of the song. The rest of the people in the congregation sang that line. The person would then read the next line,
and the people would repeat. The
Reverend at the black church gave fiery sermons that he put his heart
into. Jem said that at the white church
the mass was more “boring” than at Cal’s church. <o:p></o:p>

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 Blacks
who worked in whites houses often used the same restrooms and ate at the same
tables as their employers, but could not do things like this in the
public. Cal had a similar
situation. She had more freedom than
most of these people, because of Atticus’s beliefs.<o:p></o:p>

 In
the book, Tom Robinson was convicted mainly on the fact that he was black. The courts were the one place where blacks
were supposed to have equal rights as white people, but I think that this book
accurately portrays how little trust black people had in a system run by white
people. I think that the civil rights
movements of the 1960s had their beginnings in the 1930s, through the actions
of a few courageous black leaders and the support of decent men like Atticus.<o:p></o:p>

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