African American History from the 1910s to 1940s

1. The Great
Migration: art
and history
connections

3. The Black Belt
• The Black Belt is a region of
the Southern United States.
• Because this area was developed for
cotton plantations based on enslaved
African-American labor.
• agricultural region in the American
South characterized by a history of
plantation agriculture in the 19th
century and a high percentage of
African Americans outside metropolitan
areas
• they were enslaved before the Civil
War and many continued to work in
agriculture for decades afterward.

5. THE CENSUS OF 1850 YEAR GAVE “PITT COUNTY 13,397
POPULATION, DIVIDED AS FOLLOWS:
WHITES, 6,677;
SLAVES, 6,633;
FREE NEGROES, 87.” SOURCE: SKETCHES OF PITT COUNTY BY HENRY T. KING (1909)

7.  World War One
1914-1918
 USA neutral until
1917
 US economy
benefits from
munitions sales
 Job opportunities
in cities.

9.  In 1900, only
740,000 African
Americans lived
outside the South,
just 8 percent of the
nation's total black
population.
 By 1970, more than
10.6 million African
Americans lived
outside the South,
47 percent of the
nation's total.

10. Factory jobs in northern cities

11. Other factors to the GREAT
MIGRATION
 1913 to 1915, falling
cotton prices brought
on an economic
depression that
seriously hurt
southern farmers,
both black and white.

12. Other factors to the GREAT
MIGRATION
An infestation
of boll weevils
destroyed much
of the cotton
crop between
1914 and 1917

13. Other factors to the GREAT
MIGRATION
 In the Mississippi
Valley, severe floods in
1915 ruined crops and
homes,
 Blacks especially
suffered because they
lived in
disproportionate
numbers in the
Mississippi Valley's
bottomlands.

14. Pull Push
GREAT
MIGRATION
$$ Job
Opportunities
Hope for better
life and MAYBE
an escape from
racism
Floods
Boll weevils /
Cotton
Lack of Economic
Opportunity
Racism

15. The Harlem Renaissance
 the name
given to the
cultural,
social, and
artistic
explosion that
took place in
Harlem
between the
end of World
War I and the
middle of the
1930s.

16. Aaron Douglas
 Moved to NYC in 1925
 Settled in Harlem
 He gained the attention of
W. E. B. Du Bois who was
calling for young African
American artists to express
their African heritage and
African American folk culture
in their art.
 Called the "Father of African
American arts."

19. Jacob Lawrence
 1917-2000
 Parents moved from the rural
South to find a better life in the
North.
 He came to New York in 1930,
at the age of thirteen, and
quickly discovered art as a
means of expression.
 Lawrence’s education in art was
both informal—observing the
activity and rhythms of the
streets of Harlem—and formal,
in after-school community
workshops at Utopia House and
later at the Harlem Art
Workshop.

20. Jacob Lawrence:
Migration of the Negro (series)
 In 1941, Jacob Lawrence,
then just 23 years old,
completed a series of 60
small tempera paintings
with text captions about
the Great Migration
 The collection of
paintings in this series are
divided between two
museums,
 the even numbers going
to the Museum of
Modern Art in New York
City ( MOMA )
 the odd numbers to
the Phillips Collection
in Washington, D.C.

22. Assignment:
 Locate and research a painting by Jacob
Lawrence and/or Aaron Douglas
 The Phillips Collection
 Upload it to your thinglink account
(www.thinglink.com)
 Connect the image to history by “tagging” it
with at least three informational tags that
explain how the image reflects events
American History.