African American migration Many Black people left the South in an attempt to find better living and working conditions. Logan notes that in the spring of 1879, "some 40,000
Negroes virtually stampeded from
Mississippi,
Louisiana,
Alabama, and
Georgia for the
Midwest. The largest number fled to
Kansas". More significantly, beginning in about 1915, many Black people moved to Northern cities in what became known as the
Great Migration. Through the 1930s, more than 1.5 million Black people would leave the South for better lives in the North, seeking work and the chance to escape from lynchings and legal segregation in the South. While they faced difficulties, overall, they had better chances in the North. They had to make great cultural changes, as most went from rural areas to major industrial cities, and they also had to adjust from being rural workers to being urban workers. As an example, in its years of expansion, the
Pennsylvania Railroad recruited tens of thousands of workers from the South. In the South, alarmed whites, worried that their labor force was leaving, often tried to prevent Black migration, proving their dependency on Black labor. Black Americans who fled racial oppression either returned to retrieve the rest of their family or sent train tickets back home. In response, as white southerners observed train platforms packed with African Americans, several cities passed ordinances that made it illegal for trains to accept pre-paid tickets. There were ordinances put in place to also prevent group travel of Black families or clusters of African Americans who tried to purchase group rates.
Northern reactions During the nadir, Northern areas struggled with upheaval and hostility. In the Midwest and West, many towns posted
"sundown" warnings, threatening to kill African Americans who remained overnight. These "sundown" towns also expelled African Americans who had settled in those towns both before and during Reconstruction. Monuments to Confederate War dead were erected across the nation – as far away as in Montana, for example. Black housing was often segregated in the North. There was competition for jobs and housing as Black people entered cities which were also the destination of millions of immigrants from
eastern and southern Europe. As more Black people moved north, they encountered racism where they had to battle over territory, often against
Irish American communities, including in support of local political power bases. In some regions, Black people could not serve on juries.
Blackface shows, in which whites dressed as Black people portrayed African Americans as ignorant clowns, were popular in both the North and South. The
Supreme Court reflected conservative tendencies and did not overrule Southern constitutional changes resulting in disfranchisement. In 1896, the Court ruled in
Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" facilities for Black people were constitutional; the Court was made up almost entirely of Northerners. However,
equal facilities were rarely provided, as there was no state or federal legislation requiring them. It would not be until 58 years later, with
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), that the Court overruled the decision. While there were critics in the scientific community such as
Franz Boas,
eugenics and
scientific racism were promoted in academia by many scientists, like
Lothrop Stoddard and
Madison Grant, who struggled to find "scientific evidence" for the racial superiority of whites and, even when unable to find such evidence, worked to justify
racial segregation and second-class citizenship for Black people.
Ku Klux Klan Numerous Black people had voted for Democrat
Woodrow Wilson in the
1912 election, based on his promise to work for them. Instead, he segregated government workplaces and employment in some agencies. The film
The Birth of a Nation (1915), which celebrated the original
Ku Klux Klan, was shown at the
White House to President Wilson and his cabinet members. Writing in 1921 to
Joseph Tumulty, Wilson said of the film "I have always felt that this was a very unfortunate production and I wish most sincerely that its production might be avoided, particularly in communities where there are so many colored people." used in
Birth of a Nation The Birth of a Nation resulted in the rebirth of the Klan, which in the 1920s had more power and influence than the original Klan ever did. In 1924, the Klan had four million members. It also controlled the governorship and a majority of the state legislature in
Indiana, and exerted a powerful political influence in
Arkansas,
Oklahoma, California, Georgia,
Oregon, and
Texas.
Mob violence and massacres In the years during and after
World War I there were great social tensions in the nation. In addition to the Great Migration and immigration from Europe, African American Army veterans, newly demobilized, sought jobs, and as trained soldiers, were less likely to acquiesce to discrimination. Massacres and attacks on Black people that developed out of strikes and economic competition occurred in
Houston,
Philadelphia, and
East St. Louis in 1917. In 1919, there were so many violent attacks in several major cities that the summer of that year became known as
Red Summer. The
Chicago race riot of 1919 erupted into mob violence for several days. It left 15 whites and 23 Black people dead, over 500 injured and more than 1,000 homeless. An investigation found that ethnic Irish, who had established their own power base earlier on the
South Side, were heavily implicated in the riots. The 1921
Tulsa race massacre in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, was even more deadly; white mobs invaded and burned the
Greenwood district of Tulsa; 1,256 homes were destroyed and 39 people (26 Black, 13 white) were confirmed killed, although recent investigations suggest that the number of Black deaths could be considerably higher. ==Legacy==