Slavery was more than an economic institution; it had completely radicalized the nation. Identity was inextricably tied up with race; even after emancipation, blacks were not truly free, and were certainly not equal. Even in the North, African Americans were second-class citizens, but it was in the South where racism truly flourished. Jim Crow was the most notable manifestation of official policies that preserved racist institutions for generations. When the Great Depression hit, African-Americans in the South were hit especially hard. The Great Depression was one of the major triggers of the great migration of African Americans from the south to the north. Unfortunately, African Americans fared little better socially or economically when they migrated to northern cities. Competition for unskilled and low-wage positions was reaching a peak, causing racial tensions to escalate. The labor movements were not only fledgling, but just as racially segregated as any other social or political institution in America. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies did much to turn around the economy and opened up new opportunities for African Americans, but it was not until the Civil Rights movement that official top-down policies would make a more meaningful difference by outlawing Jim Crow, segregation, and other vestiges of slavery. Even after the Civil Rights movement and all it did to loosen the shackles of oppression, it too decades before there was a sign that Martin Luther King’s dream could be made real: the Obama Presidency. Even while continually being oppressed, African-Americans rose all the way to the top. They endured racial segregation, fought relentlessly for Civil Rights, and went from being slaves to the President of the United States. In addition to the failure of Reconstruction, the Great Depression dramatically impeded social, political, and economic progress for all Americans—especially African Americans. With limited opportunities in traditional Southern sectors open to African-Americans, like sharecropping, African Americans migrated in unprecedented numbers to northern urban centers in search of new opportunities like factory work. Unfortunately, the Great Depression hit everyone, including factories, and as many as half of all African Americans were unemployed and many destitute (“Great Depression and World War II”). Things were worse in the south due to more violent forms of racism. Yet African Americans worked hard to overcome systematic, violent, and institutionalized racism. One way that African Americans in the South...

Especially for black women in the South, survivalist entrepreneurialism empowered the African American community through small local businesses catering to the black community. This model of economic self-empowerment has remained a mainstay of African American culture ever since, and has enabled the trajectory from slavery to being at the top.
Resentment towards the influx of African Americans into the white-dominated labor market fomented racial tensions throughout the nation. Nowhere were racial tensions more apparent than the South, and particularly with Jim Crow. An abundance of primary source evidence shows how terrible Jim Crow was, and what a complete affront to the principles of the nation. Jim Crow was not just a metaphor but a reality, a daily living reality for millions of people. In fact, Jim Crow was not just a Southern phenomenon but a nationwide scourge. Newspaper articles from places as seemingly far removed from slavery as possible, like Minnesota, show how African Americans located no peace or security and were subject to Jim Crow laws (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016810/1904-11-12/ed-1/seq-4/). Jim Crow was a legal system, too, making it impossible to subvert effectively. Yet Jim Crow was more than just a system of unjust laws; Jim Crow was embedded in the culture, manifest in popular culture such as music like the Jim Crow song (https://www.loc.gov/resource/amss.as106690.0). Minstrel shows were also a popular culture example of how central racism was to American culture. On an even more sinister note, blacks were systematically prevented from exercising their constitutionally protected right to vote, they were systematically prevented from attending the best public schools, they were subject to signs like “Negroes and Dogs Not Allowed,” (Patterson, n.d., p. 1). Every conceivable arena of daily life was segregated, from hospitals to movie theaters.

Because of the failures of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, powerful black thinkers devised methods of self-empowerment that would subvert white authority. Individuals like W.E.B. DuBois did a tremendous amount to change American society. The founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), still one of the premier self-empowerment organizationsn for African Americans, W.E.B. DuBois received his Bachelor’s, Masters, and PhD from Harvard University and taught sociology at the University…