Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What do you know about the reasons for and effects of the Great Migration? How did the Great Migration lead to an explosion of Black American art and literature?

Teaching Suggestion: The Great Migration began in 1916, when millions of Black Americans escaped the dehumanizing and violent Jim Crow laws in Southern states and migrated north to cities like New York and Philadelphia. Though racism and segregation did exist in the Northern states, Black Americans were freer there to find employment and communities without punishing, harassing laws. The NAACP developed in response to attacks of domestic terrorism throughout the US at the time; lynching, for example, in which Black Americans were tortured and hanged in often public events after being accused of a crime without a formal hearing, was a common horror. In the 1920s and 1930s, the NAACP lobbied Congress to make lynching illegal. Diasporas of Black Americans to Northern cities led not only to autonomous political movements but also to an explosion of cultural and literary movements. The New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance established a new era of Black culture, the influence of which is still evident in American literature, history, and art today.