The Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan were interrelated phenomena in their relational effectiveness in shaping the social, cultural, and political aspects of the United States at the dawn of the 20th century. Equally, A. Philip Randolph’s “New Negro” as well as Hiram Evans’ “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism” aids in situating the changing nature of what it meant to be American in its sloth-like struggle to redound not just for its minorities but to have it seep back into the fabric of the country, the focus back onto its African Americans.
The Great Migration entailed millions of African Americans fleeing racial oppression in the rural South for better opportunities and to avoid economic violence. The deflection of multitudes heavily engaged the population of Northern cities with a taste as that of Harlem, which became a very efficient centre for fostering African American cultural and intellectual achievements during the Harlem Renaissance. Stimulated by people like A. Philip Randolph, this cultural consciousness marked the appeals for economic and social equality. Black people expressed pride in their own culture as they probed the stereotypes surrounding them (Summerville & Raymond, 2020). The period of the Harlem Renaissance was mainly characterized by a point in time when African American writers, artists, and thinkers jarred into a united effort to assert their humanity and vociferously call for recognition within the larger American narrative.
Philip Randolph, one of the reigning leaders in Civil Rights, conceptualized the “New Negro” identity in the popular symbolical power of empowering African Americans. He underscored the dire need for economic and social parity while condemning stereotypes based on race, especially among blacks (Summerville & Raymond, 2020). The Harlem Renaissance is said to have been an artistic and cultural movement that managed to gel somehow in 1920 and provided a means towards which African American authors, artists, and proponents could make a “no” response to the prevailing concept of black inferiority and at the same time, affirm their sense of humanity and dignity.
However, the migration of black people to Northern cities that occurred in the 1920s, by nature, increased racial tensions, illustrated by backlashes from groups like the Ku Klux Klan. In Hiram Evans’s “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,” the Klan is lauded as nativists, white supremacists and an anti-immigrant ideal. Evans depicts the group as protectors of American values and identity from the infiltrating races and minorities that threatened them (Evans, 1926). The Klan’s vision of America was aristocratic and thus sought to keep in check the status of the white power struggle over non-whites and the obliteration of non-white voices and cultures.
The basic conflicts introduced were conflicting visions for whom and by what values America would exist. It brings a certain forcefulness that characters such as Randolph and the coterie of Harlem Renaissance artists indeed fronted an effort to reform American definitions that stand opposed to the very racial hierarchies and were eminently more cosmopolitan. In substance, the Great Migration itself conveys the aspirations of African Americans to live better and to lay hold of their stake in the American story. The emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, on the other hand, symbolized their reactions to the which were frontal in their trepidation of racial and cultural displacement (Levi & William, 2019). The Klan’s exclusionist and intolerant ideology would squarely have bumped into the liberal democratic and pluralistic ideals being advocated by proponents.
Generally, the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan were all mere anecdotes in relation to phenomena that spoke to race, identity, and power in early 20th-century America. Ideological confrontations over diversity—racial equality against white supremacism—undeniably brought struggles to define who Americans are and who belongs within its borders.
References
Evans, H. W. (1926). The Klan’s fight for Americanism. The North American Review, 223(830), 33–63.https://www.jstor.org/stable/25113510
Levi, W. (2022). Badger state nationalism: World War I, the Ku Klux Klan, and the politics of Americanism in 1915-1930 Wisconsin.https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/masters202029/179/
Summerville, R. M. (2020). “Winning Freedom and Exacting Justice”: A. Philip Randolph’s Use of Proverbs and Proverbial Language. Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, 37(1), 281-310.https://hrcak.srce.hr/278196
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