Editing African Americans (section)

===Great migration and civil rights movement===
{{Main|Great Migration (African American)|l1=Great Migration|civil rights movement}}
[[File:Omaha courthouse lynching.jpg|thumb|right|A group of White men pose for a 1919 photograph as they stand over the Black victim, Will Brown, who had been [[lynched]] and had his body mutilated and burned during the [[Omaha race riot of 1919]] in [[Omaha, Nebraska]]. Postcards and photographs of lynchings were popular souvenirs in the US.<ref>Moyers, Bill. [https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html "Legacy of Lynching"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170829121124/https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html |date=August 29, 2017 }}. PBS. Retrieved July 28, 2016.</ref>]]
The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South sparked the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]] during the first half of the 20th century which led to a growing African American community in [[Northern United States|Northern]] and Western United States.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/great_migration.html|title=The Great Migration|access-date=October 22, 2007|website=African American World|publisher=[[PBS]]|year=2002|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012201420/https://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/great_migration.html|archive-date=October 12, 2007}}</ref> The rapid influx of Blacks disturbed the racial balance within Northern and Western cities, exacerbating hostility between both Blacks and Whites in the two regions.<ref>Michael O. Emerson, Christian Smith (2001). "Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America". p. 42. Oxford University Press</ref> The [[Red Summer]] of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the US as a result of race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities, such as the [[Chicago race riot of 1919]] and the [[Omaha race riot of 1919]]. Overall, Blacks in Northern and Western cities experienced [[Racism against Black Americans|systemic discrimination]] in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for Blacks were routed to the lowest-status and restrictive in potential mobility. At the 1900 [[Hampton Negro Conference]], Reverend Matthew Anderson said: "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South."<ref>{{cite book|title=Annual Report of the Hampton Negro Conference|chapter=The Economic Aspect of the Negro Problem|first=Anderson|last=Matthew|series=Hampton bulletinno. 9–10, 12–16|editor1-last=Browne|editor1-first=Hugh|editor2-last=Kruse|editor2-first=Edwina|editor4-last=Moton|editor3-last=Walker|editor3-first=Thomas C.|editor4-first=Robert Russa|editor4-link=Robert Russa Moton|editor5-last=Wheelock|editor5-first=Frederick D.|publisher=Hampton Institute Press|location=[[Hampton, Virginia]]|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gkQ9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA39|hdl=2027/chi.14025588?urlappend=%3Bseq=43|volume=4|year=1900|page=39|access-date=November 19, 2020|archive-date=January 7, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240107112637/https://books.google.com/books?id=gkQ9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref> Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, [[Exclusionary covenants|restrictive covenants]], [[redlining]] and [[racial steering]]".<ref>{{cite journal|last=Tolnay|first=Stewart|title=The African American 'Great Migration' and Beyond|journal=Annual Review of Sociology|year=2003|volume=29|issue=1 |pages=218–221|doi=10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100009|jstor=30036966}}</ref> While many Whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward African Americans, many other Whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions, a process known as [[White flight]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Seligman|first=Amanda|title=Block by block: neighborhoods and public policy on Chicago's West Side|year=2005|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=978-0-226-74663-0|pages=213–14}}</ref>

[[File:Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after being arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white passenger on a segregated municipal bus in Montgomery, Alabama.jpg|thumb|left|[[Rosa Parks]] being fingerprinted after being arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus to a White person]]
Despite discrimination, drawing cards for leaving the hopelessness in the South were the growth of African American institutions and communities in Northern cities. Institutions included Black oriented organizations (e.g., [[Urban League]], [[NAACP]]), churches, businesses, and newspapers, as well as successes in the development in African American intellectual culture, music, and popular culture (e.g., [[Harlem Renaissance]], [[Chicago Black Renaissance]]). The [[Cotton Club]] in Harlem was a Whites-only establishment, with Blacks (such as [[Duke Ellington]]) allowed to perform, but to a White audience.<ref>{{cite book |title=Ella Fitzgerald |date=1989 |publisher=Holloway House Publishing |page=27}}</ref> Black Americans also found a new ground for political power in Northern cities, without the enforced disabilities of [[Jim Crow]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Tolnay|first=Stewart|title=The African American 'Great Migration' and Beyond|journal=Annual Review of Sociology|year=2003|volume=29|issue=1 |page=217 |doi=10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100009|jstor=30036966}}</ref><ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Wilkerson |first=Isabel |date=September 2016 |title=The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/long-lasting-legacy-great-migration-180960118/ |magazine=Smithsonian Magazine |access-date=November 19, 2019 |archive-date=February 15, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200215000512/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/long-lasting-legacy-great-migration-180960118/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

By the 1950s, the [[civil rights movement]] was gaining momentum. A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage about injustice was that of [[Emmett Till]], a 14-year-old boy from Chicago. Spending the summer with relatives in [[Money, Mississippi]], Till was killed for allegedly having [[wolf-whistle]]d at a White woman. Till had been badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was shot in the head. The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the Black community throughout the US.<ref name="Atlantic">{{Cite news|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/how-the-blood-of-emmett-till-still-stains-america-today/516891/|title=How 'The Blood of Emmett Till' Still Stains America Today|last=Newkirk II|first=Vann R.|work=The Atlantic|access-date=July 29, 2017|archive-date=July 28, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170728213446/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/how-the-blood-of-emmett-till-still-stains-america-today/516891/|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Vann Newkirk]] wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of [[White supremacy]]".<ref name="Atlantic"/> The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an [[all-White jury]].<ref>Whitfield, Stephen (1991). A Death in the Delta: The story of Emmett Till. pp 41–42. JHU Press.</ref> One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, [[Rosa Parks]] refused to give up her seat on the bus in Alabama—indeed, Parks told Emmett's mother [[Mamie Till]] that "the photograph of Emmett's disfigured face in the casket was set in her mind when she refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus."<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Assassination of Fred Hampton|last=Haas|first=Jeffrey|publisher=Chicago Review Press|year=2011|isbn=978-1569767092|location=Chicago|page=17}}</ref>

[[File:March on washington Aug 28 1963.jpg|thumb|[[March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom]], August 28, 1963, shows civil rights leaders and union leaders]]
The [[March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom]] and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on presidents [[Presidency of John F. Kennedy|John F. Kennedy]] and [[Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson|Lyndon B. Johnson]]. Johnson put his support behind passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and [[Trade union|labor unions]], and the [[Voting Rights Act]] of 1965, which expanded federal authority over states to ensure Black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/intro/intro_b.php|title=History of Federal Voting Rights Laws: The Voting Rights Act of 1965|publisher=United States Department of Justice|access-date=August 12, 2017|date=August 6, 2015|archive-date=January 6, 2021|archive-url=https://archive.today/20210106161217/https://www.justice.gov/crt/history-federal-voting-rights-laws|url-status=live}}</ref> By 1966, the emergence of the [[Black Power]] movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the civil rights movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from White authority.<ref name="abbeville">{{cite web|url=https://www.abbeville.com/civilrights/washington.asp |title=The March On Washington, 1963 |access-date=October 22, 2007 |publisher=Abbeville Press |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012121716/https://abbeville.com/civilrights/washington.asp |archive-date=October 12, 2007 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

During the post-war period, many African Americans continued to be economically disadvantaged relative to other Americans. Average Black income stood at 54 percent of that of White workers in 1947, and 55 percent in 1962. In 1959, median family income for Whites was $5,600 ({{Inflation|US|5600|1959|fmt=eq}}), compared with $2,900 ({{Inflation|US|2900|1959|fmt=eq}}) for non-White families. In 1965, 43 percent of all Black families fell into the poverty bracket, earning under $3,000 ({{Inflation|US|3000|1965|fmt=eq}}) a year. The 1960s saw improvements in the social and economic conditions of many Black Americans.<ref name="ReferenceA">''The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II'' by William H. Chafe {{ISBN?}}{{page needed|date=November 2024}}</ref>

From 1965 to 1969, Black family income rose from 54 to 60 percent of White family income. In 1968, 23 percent of Black families earned under $3,000 ({{Inflation|US|3000|1968|fmt=eq}}) a year, compared with 41 percent in 1960. In 1965, 19 percent of Black Americans had incomes equal to the national median, a proportion that rose to 27 percent by 1967. In 1960, the median level of education for Blacks had been 10.8 years, and by the late 1960s, the figure rose to 12.2 years, half a year behind the median for Whites.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>