Learn about African American history with these old magazine articles. Find information on Black Civil Rights violations in the 1920s.
By citing numerous examples of American jurisprudence spanning the early to mid-Fifties, this uncredited journalist illustrates that the era of Jim Crow was being disassembled brick-by-bigoted-brick:
All across the South, the segregation wall is cracking. The hammer is being wielded by the courts… The executive branch is also moving into the civil rights field.
Here is a Crisis Magazine summary of the all the various lynchings that had been recorded in the United States between the years 1885 through 1918. Additional lists are provided that give an account of the participating states for the year 1918, the genders of the victims and the racial group to which they belonged.
Click here for the Ku Klux Klan Archive.
Like the article posted above, this essay serves as further evidence that the immediate post-war years in America were ones in which the foundations for the civil rights movement were established; foundations on which the civil rights leaders of the Sixties and Seventies would rely upon to guarantee the forward momentum of the movement.
The attached article pertains to the necessary work that was being done by the National Urban League.
Upon reading this piece, we’re sure you’ll recognize that the author knew full well that the article should have been titled, The Answer to the White Problem.
The subject addressed in this article pertains to the greatest act of cruelty that was ever thrust upon African-Americans by the white hegemony – for it was the one scheme designed to guarantee their continuing poverty.
Paul Robeson (1898 – 1976) was a multi-talented man and this article lays it all out.
Paul Robeson thinks of himself as conclusive proof that there is no such thing as a backward race. Given a few generations of equal opportunities, he believes, any people – Eskimos, Malayans, Fijians or the Untouchables of India – can produce as talented statesmen, scientists, educators, inventors and artists as the whites.
From time to time, certain young politicians suddenly capture the attention of their fellow Americans. One such individual is 30-year-old Julian Bond (1940 – 2015), a Negro legislator in the state of Georgia House of Representatives.
A profile of Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887 – 1940), Jr.; National Hero of Jamaica. During his lifetime Garvey worked as a publisher, a journalist, and an entrepreneur. A devoted Black nationalist and a black separatist, Marcus Garvey was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He rubbed a good many white folk the wrong way and this article from The Literary Digest covers much of his activities leading up to 1922.
This short notice from a 1917 Georgia newspaper documented the heavy numbers involved in what has come to be known as the Great migration as more and more African-Americans abandoned their homes in the Southern states preferring life in the North. It is believed that between the years 1910 through 1940, some 1.6 million African Americans participated in this exodus. The Southern journalist who penned these three paragraphs clearly felt a sense of personal rejection:
The worthless ones are remaining here to be cared for… The departure of these Negroes is not spasmodic. It is a steady drain of the best class of laborers that the South now has. Just what remedy is to prevent it we do not know.
Another article about the great migration can be read here.
In 1928 the presiding übermensch of the KKK, Hiram Evans (1881 – 1966), saw fit to make a sartorial change in his terrorist organization by declaring that there would be no need in the future for any face-covering to be worn by any member. The article is primarily about the rapid disintegration that the Klan was experiencing and the tremendous loss in it’s over all social appeal throughout the country.
It was a success, temporarily, because it appealed to the playboy instinct of grown-ups and offered burning phrases of patriotism as the excuse for gallivanting about… It failed because its ‘patriotism’ was not real, but ancient bigotry in new a guise… It failed finally, because the genuine American sense of humor finally asserted itself and laughed at the Klan out of court.
In 1928 the presiding übermensch of the KKK, Hiram Evans (1881 – 1966), saw fit to make a sartorial change in his terrorist organization by declaring that there would be no need in the future for any face-covering to be worn by any member. The article is primarily about the rapid disintegration that the Klan was experiencing and the tremendous loss in it’s over all social appeal throughout the country.
It was a success, temporarily, because it appealed to the playboy instinct of grown-ups and offered burning phrases of patriotism as the excuse for gallivanting about… It failed because its ‘patriotism’ was not real, but ancient bigotry in new a guise… It failed finally, because the genuine American sense of humor finally asserted itself and laughed at the Klan out of court.
