From 1900 to 1940, nationalism flourished, two World Wars shook society, and huge populations of African Americans migrated to Northern cities. The tumultuous era fractured previous identities held in society, both for Americans in general and African Americans. After the end of slavery, newly-freed African Americans struggled to redefine their identity from inferior slave to complex citizen. African Americans fought to find their place in a society that increasingly tried to exclude them through segregation, lynchings, and Jim Crow laws. African Americans of the time were both optimistic and pessimistic about their newfound freedom, pa**ionate for the opportunity to shape their identities while also worried about where they fit into their hostile society. 1905: The Niagara Movement " I been t'inkin' 'bout de preachah; whut he said de othah night,
'Bout hit bein' people's dooty, fu' to keep dey faces bright;
How one ought to live so pleasant dat ouah tempah never riles,
Meetin' evahbody roun' us wid ouah very nicest smiles.
"Dat's all right, I ain't a-sputin' not a t'ing dat soun's lak fac',
But you don't ketch folks a- grinnin' wid a misery in de back;
An' you don't fin' dem a-smilin' w'en dey's hongry ez hin be,
Leastways, dat's how human natur' allus seems to 'pear to me." --from "Philosophy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1903 1910: The first civil ordinance segregating neighborhoods "... I was occupied in debating with myself the step which I had decided to take. I argued that to forsake one's race to better one's condition was no less worthy an action than to forsake one's country for the same purpose. I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead." -- from The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, 1912 1910-1930 (approximately): The First Great Migration "Some of her (Fern's) family were about, but they moved away to make room for me. Damn if I knew how to begin. Would you? Mr. and Miss So-and-So, people, the weather, the crops, the new preacher, the frolic, the church benefit, rabbit and possum hunting, the new soft drink they had at old Pap's store, the schedule of the trains, what kind of town Macon was, Negro's migration north, bollweevils, syrup, the Bible--to all these things she gave a yessur or na**ur..." -- from "Fern" in Jean Toomer's Cane, 1923 1914: The beginning of World War 1 "You'll see pretty browns in beautiful gowns,
You'll see tailor-mades and hand-me-downs,
You'll meet honest men and pick-pockets sk**ed,
You'll find that business never closes till somebody gets k**ed.
I'd rather be here than any place I know,
I'd rather be here than any place I know.
It's goin' to take the Sergeant
For to make me go." -- from "Beale Street Blues" by W.C. Handy, 1917 1919: Claude McKay publishes "If We Must Die," one of the first examples of Harlem Renaissance writing "Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one d**hblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!" -- from "If We Must Die" by Claude McKay, 1919 1920: Andrew Rube Foster helps establish the Negro National Baseball League "... King Solomon Gillis had longed to come to Harlem. The Uggams were always talking about it; one of their boys had gone to France in the draft and, returning, had never got any nearer home than Harlem. And there were occasional 'colored' newspapers from New York: newspapers that mentioned Negroes without comment, but always spoke of a white person as 'So-and-so, white.' That was the point. In Harlem, black was white. You had rights that could not be denied you: you had privileges, protected by law." -- from "The City of Refuge" by Rudolph Fisher, 1925 1931: Scottsboro Boys Trial "I remember the very day that I became colored. Up to my thirteenth year I lived in the little Negro town of Eatonville, Florida. It is exclusively a colored town. The only white people I knew pa**ed through the town going to or coming from Orlando. The native whites rode dusty horses, the Northern tourists chugged down the sandy village road in automobiles. The town knew the Southerners and never stopped cane chewing when they pa**ed. But the Northerners were something else again. They were peered at cautiously from behind curtains by the timid. The more venturesome would come out on the porch and watch them go past and got just as much pleasure out of the tourists as the tourists got out of the village." -- from "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" by Zora Neale Hurston, 1928 1939: The beginning of World War 2 " I'm white inside,
It don't help my case,
'Cause I can't hide what is on my face.
"I'm so forlorn,
Life's like a thorn,
My heart is torn.
Why was I born?
What did I do to be so black and blue?" --from the song "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue" by Thomas "Fats" Waller, Andy Razaf, and Harry Brooks, 1929