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January 1, 1863 - The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln.
"...they married; they attended school; they demanded wages; they refused to work for whites; they gathered together their families; they created black churches...held political meetings". (Hewitt, Nancy A. & Lawson, Steven, F. 2017. Exploring American Histories, A Survey With Sources. Boston/Newyork: Bedford/St.Martin’s). People naturally pool together based on their commonality, obstacle's and needs. -
This act protected freed slaves from the restrictions enforced via in the "black codes". https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-laws#black-codes.
These codes defined where a person could be and when person could be there. This was the beginning of pushing groups of persons together under a microscope thus pooling their talents. -
"Full and Equal Treatment " was truck down by the supreme court forcing the need for African Americans to polarize in order to live normal lives.
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As African Americans were not permitted to engage in white banking institutions, they were forced to create their own. This would be the signal of a growing black middle class with economic power. This is important as it not only shows the economic prosperity achieved by African Americans, but also the result of pushing them away to develop outside the mainstream.
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Plessy v Ferguson heralded the age of Jim Crow. Things would be separate but definitely not equal. The movement to keep African Americans away and protect “Americans” from the “inferior” actually helped to keep some resources within the community over time.
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The North Carolina Life Insurance Company was established by John Merrick. This was a prime example of African American entrepreneurship of the day. Being barred from the mainstream did not prevent business growth, it actually fed it.
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https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration African American Populations in some northern states increase as approximately 485,000 leave the southern states. New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia accounted for about 100,000 of migrated African Americans. Movement in such great numbers, and within this pushed together mixture of talents, by-products on either end of productivity cannot go unexpected.
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A parade organized by the United Negro Improvement Association, UNIA, in the streets of Harlem. One car displays a sign that reads 'The New Negro Has No Fear.' -
Wrote the Weary Blues in 1926.
A battery of activist and artist thrived during the Harlem Renaissance.
https://www.history.com/news/harlem-renaissance-writers -
