1916

The 'New Negro' as a political and cultural concept emerged in the mid-1910s, crystallized by the Red Summer of 1919 and the Great Migration. Unlike the accommodationist model associated with Booker T. Washington (who died in 1915), the New Negro demanded full and immediate civil and political rights, embraced armed self-defense, articulated Black pride and Pan-African identity, and rejected the idea that Black Americans should earn rights through respectability or deference. The term appeared in A. Philip Randolph's The Messenger, Marcus Garvey's Negro World, and W.E.B. Du Bois's The Crisis.

The 'New Negro' political and cultural concept emerged in the mid-1910s, crystallized by the Red Summer of 1919 and the Great Migration. Unlike the accommodationist model associated with Booker T. Washington, the New Negro demanded full and immediate civil and political rights, embraced armed self-defense, and articulated Black pride. The term appeared in The Messenger, Negro World, and The Crisis.

Jesse Washington, a 17-year-old Black farmhand convicted of murdering a white woman in Waco, Texas, was taken from the courthouse after a trial lasting one hour and subjected to one of the most documented spectacle lynchings in American history. A crowd of 15,000 watched as he was mutilated, castrated, and burned alive over two hours in a fire built in the public square. Photographs were taken and sold as postcards. The NAACP sent investigator Elisabeth Freeman, whose report — 'The Waco Horror' — was distributed as a pamphlet supplement to The Crisis and reached half a million readers.

Chicago's Black population grew from 44,000 in 1910 to 109,000 by 1920, a 148% increase driven by the Great Migration. Migrants were recruited by meatpacking companies and steel mills facing labor shortages due to WWI. Black newcomers were crowded into the South Side 'Black Belt' through restrictive covenants and violence against those who moved outside designated areas.

Chicago's Black population grew from 44,000 in 1910 to 109,000 by 1920, a 148% increase driven by the Great Migration. Migrants were recruited by Chicago meatpacking companies and steel mills facing labor shortages due to WWI cutting off European immigration. Black newcomers were crowded into the South Side 'Black Belt' through a combination of restrictive covenants, real estate steering, and violence against those who moved outside designated areas. The spatial concentration of Black poverty and opportunity in the Black Belt created both vibrant cultural institutions and conditions for the 1919 riot.

James Weldon Johnson became the NAACP's field secretary in 1916 and grew membership from 9,000 in 1916 to 90,000 by 1919. He became the first Black executive director of the NAACP in 1920 and led the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill campaign in Congress.

James Weldon Johnson, poet and author of 'Lift Every Voice and Sing,' became the NAACP's field secretary in 1916 and began building branches across the South and Midwest, growing membership from 9,000 in 1916 to 90,000 by 1919. His organizing built the NAACP into a genuine mass organization rather than a small Northern reform group. He became the first Black executive director of the NAACP in 1920 and led the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill campaign in Congress.

After the Supreme Court struck down Oklahoma's grandfather clause in Guinn v. United States (1915), the Oklahoma legislature immediately passed a new law giving all persons who had voted in 1914 (under the unconstitutional system) permanent registration, while requiring all others — effectively all Black voters — to register within a 12-day window or be permanently disenfranchised. The Supreme Court struck this down in Lane v. Wilson (1939), but Black voters had been effectively denied the franchise in Oklahoma for 24 more years in the interim.

Anthony Crawford, one of the most prosperous Black farmers in Abbeville County, South Carolina — owner of 427 acres — was beaten, jailed, and then lynched by a mob of several hundred men after arguing with a white merchant over the price of cottonseed. His family was run out of the county and forced to sell their land at distressed prices. The lynching illustrated how economic success by Black individuals was itself treated as a provocation, and how violence was used to suppress Black economic independence.

Millions of Black Southerners begin moving north and west, fleeing terror and seeking opportunity.