Racial tensions

• Slavery had been abolished in 1863, but despite this many African Americans, particularly those in the Southern states, were still suffering from prejudice and discrimination in the 1920s
• Many African Americans still worked for plantation owners on their land, or as servants in their homes
• Most African Americans were denied access to higher education, good jobs and the right to vote
• Faced with such discrimination and poverty, many African Americans moved north
• Through the 1920s the African-American population of both Chicago and New York doubled
• In the North, African Americans had a better chance of getting good jobs and a good education
• Many African Americans in the Northern cities lived in great poverty
• In Harlem in New York they lived in poorer housing than whites, yet paid higher rents
• They had poorer education and health services than whites
• In Chicago African Americans suffered great prejudice from longer-established white residents
• If they attempted to move out of the African-American belt to adjacent neighbourhoods, they got a hostile reception
• When African Americans attempted to use parks, playgrounds and beaches in the Irish and Polish districts, they were set upon by gangs of whites calling themselves 'athletic clubs'
• The result was that African-American communities in Northern areas often became isolated ghettos
• Ku Klux Klan


  A white supremacy movement that used violence to intimidate African Americans
• The Ku Klux Klan was revived after the release of the film The Birth of a Nation in 1915
• The film glorified the Klan as defenders of decent American values against renegade African Americans and corrupt white businessmen
• President Wilson had it shown in the White House and said: 'It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.'
• With such publicity from prominent figures, the Klan became a powerful political force in the early 1920s and subjected African Americans to vicious racist attacks
• Between 1919 and 1925 over 300 African Americans were murdered by lynching
• Many reports describe appalling atrocities at which whole families, including young children, clapped and cheered