During the 1920s, racism, especially to the African Americans, had reached an unprecedented scale and range. Thousands of African Americans were lynched, falsely accused and tens of thousands were segregated, failed to receive the equal benefits and opportunities from the mainstream society led by white people. Started from this point, in Harlem in New York City, African Americans organized together to fight for their own benefits.
During the time white supremacy prevailed, the African Americans suffered, but then resisted with their pens. In 1899, an illiterate sharecropper Sam Hose was accused of killing his landlord and raping the landlord’s wife. Even though other people professed that he was defending himself during a violent argument, he was still assumed guilty and was brutally killed in front of 4,000 people. In Atlanta, on September 22, 1906, about 10,000 white mobs started killing all the African Americans they could find including children just because of the news of a series of suspected rapes of white women by African Americans. Harvard University’s first African American Ph.D. W.E.B. Du Bois was shocked and determined to turn the table for themselves. He joined The Crisis, the publication of NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). In his writing, he tried to visualize the issues of racism and convey the positive images of black people to catch public attention and promote the status of African Americans. Furthermore, he distributed the publications to the members in Congress, wanting to seduce the government to improve the situations of African Americans. Later, the Dyer Bill defined lynching as the murder of U.S Citizen.
Meanwhile, the other African American activists like Marcus Garvey in Harlem were fighting for a prosperous life in New York City. They created their own city-spade in Harlem to let people like writers, artists, and performers to participate in the discussion of racism. “They created the image of a ‘New Negro’- independent, proud, and willing to fight against racism”(Jaffe 161). It shows that they were having the capability to participate in society as the other ethnic groups did in the US. They were not inferior to white people. Eventually, a series of such events, which called Harlem Renaissance, successfully arose the public attention, generalizing the idea of racial equality to the whole city even the country.
“Let the world understand that 400,000,000 Negroes are determined to die for liberty. If we must die we shall die nobly. We shall die gallantly fighting on the battle heights of Africa to plant the standard that represents liberty” Marcus Garvey had a different vision of the future of African Americans. He wanted to establish the community and systems controlled by black people. He intended that moving to Africa was the only way for black Americans to completely avoid racism. His organization Universal Negro Improvement Association(UNIA), funded by its transportation business Black Star Line, tried to help the African American to move to Africa.
All the efforts that African Americans did in the past intended to improve the social equality in the US, but it was more than just equality. It means that the colored people, the minorities in the country started to think about themselves as the citizens or one of the masters of the United States and were holding the benefits of the country to fight against the racism. It was an improvement of status and human rights for African American, but it was more like the self-redemption: they just fight for what they were supposed to have hundreds of years ago.
-Z.L
