The Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

🚆 The Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance (1910–1940)

Part 1 of 7 — Foundations & Key Concepts

Why this unit matters

Between 1910 and 1970, ~6 million African Americans moved from the rural South to northern, midwestern, and western cities — fleeing Jim Crow and pulled by industrial labor demand. In neighborhoods like Harlem, this demographic shift produced an unprecedented flowering of Black literature, music, theater, and political thought.

Core concepts

🔑 Key Concept: AP African American History rewards arguments that combine specific evidence (named figures, dates, primary sources) with claims about causation, continuity, and change.

📖 Key Figures of Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

⚠️ AP Alert: Strong responses cite specific figures by name and date — e.g., 'Robert S. Abbott (1870–1940)' rather than 'a famous leader.'

Concept Check 🎯

Historical Context

Primary sources to know

• Locke, The New Negro (1925) — Anthology of essays, fiction, poetry, and visual art.
• Hughes, 'The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain' (1926) — Aesthetic manifesto of the renaissance.
• Hurston, Mules and Men (1935) — Ethnographic recording of Black folk culture.

Applied Recall ✍️

Use the exact historical term:

1. Universal Negro Improvement Association — Garvey's mass organization

2. Solidarity across the African diaspora

3. Du Bois's term for the educated Black elite he saw as race leaders

Match the Concepts 🔍

AP-Style Application 🎯

🚆 The Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

Part 2 of 7 — Key Processes & Mechanisms

What drove Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance?

This part focuses on the mechanisms — the systematic processes that produced the patterns historians describe.

Mechanisms in action

Causal chains

AP responses on Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance should make causation explicit. A strong sentence might be:

Because push factors intensified, communities responded by new negro, which in turn produced pull factors.

Concept Check 🎯

Applied Recall ✍️

1. Which figure (1870–1940) is associated with Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance?

2. Which figure (1887–1940) shaped this mechanism?

3. Which figure (1885–1954) extended it?

Trace the Mechanism 🔍

AP-Style Application 🎯

🚆 The Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

Part 3 of 7 — Patterns, Regions & Case Studies

Specific cases — not abstractions

Comparing cases

AP comparison prompts ask you to identify a specific similarity AND difference between cases. For Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance, useful comparisons include:

• 1916 first wave of Great Migration intensifies vs. 1917 East St. Louis riot
• 1917 East St. Louis riot vs. 1919 Red Summer
• 1919 Red Summer vs. 1929 Great Depression

Strong comparison sentence

Both 1916 first wave of Great Migration intensifies and 1917 East St. Louis riot involved push factors, but they differed in the specific actors and consequences involved.

Concept Check 🎯

Applied Recall ✍️

1. Name the event: Wartime labor need pulls workers north.…

2. Name the event: White mobs attack Black workers; ~100 killed.…

3. Name the event: White-on-Black violence in 25+ cities; Chicago riot kills 38.…

Match Cases to Patterns 🔍

AP-Style Application 🎯

🚆 The Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

Part 4 of 7 — Connections Across the Diaspora

How Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance connects to other units

Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance does not stand alone. Strong AP responses connect it to WWI & WWII Era, because wartime mobilization continued the migration's economic pull.

Connection table

Specific cross-unit connections

Each event above interacts with WWI & WWII Era — either as cause, consequence, or parallel.

Concept Check 🎯

Applied Recall ✍️

1. Which figure connects Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance most directly to WWI & WWII Era?

2. What is the analytical term for outcomes reinforcing their own causes?

3. What is the AP term for combining evidence from multiple units?

Map the Connections 🔍

AP-Style Application 🎯

🚆 The Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

Part 5 of 7 — Continuity & Change Over Time

Tracing Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance through 1910–1940

AP CCOT (Continuity and Change Over Time) prompts ask: what changed, what stayed the same, and what drove the change?

Specific moments of change

Strong CCOT sentence

Although push factors continued throughout 1910–1940, the events of 1929 Great Depression marked a decisive shift in how Black communities engaged with it.

Concept Check 🎯

Applied Recall ✍️

1. An aspect of Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance that persisted: ___

2. An event that marked decisive change: ___

3. The AP analytical category for tracking these together: ___

Continuity vs Change 🔍

AP-Style Application 🎯

🚆 The Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

Part 6 of 7 — Source & Evidence Workshop

Working with primary sources for Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

AP DBQ-style work expects students to identify a source's purpose, audience, point of view, and historical situation — and to use that analysis to support a claim.

Primary sources for this unit

• Locke, The New Negro (1925) — Anthology of essays, fiction, poetry, and visual art.
• Hughes, 'The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain' (1926) — Aesthetic manifesto of the renaissance.
• Hurston, Mules and Men (1935) — Ethnographic recording of Black folk culture.

Source-analysis workshop

For each source, ask:

1. Who is the author? What is their position relative to events?
2. When was it produced? Before, during, or after the events described?
3. For whom was it written? Audience shapes argument.
4. What does it claim? What does it leave out?

Worked example

Locke, The New Negro (1925) — Anthology of essays, fiction, poetry, and visual art. A strong AP citation reads: 'According to Locke, The New Negro (1925), …' followed by an inference about authorial purpose.

Concept Check 🎯

Applied Recall ✍️

1. Name the source: Anthology of essays, fiction, poetry, and visual art.…

2. Name the source: Aesthetic manifesto of the renaissance.…

3. Name the source: Ethnographic recording of Black folk culture.…

Match Sources to Their Function 🔍

AP-Style Application 🎯

🚆 The Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

Part 7 of 7 — AP Exam Strategy & Review

What the AP exam expects on Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

Multiple choice

• Stimulus-based questions citing a primary source — apply contextualization.
• Comparison and CCOT prompts — recall specific dated events.
• Synthesis prompts — connect to WWI & WWII Era.

Short Answer & Essay

• Name two specific figures, two specific events, and one primary source.
• State a clear, defensible thesis and tie evidence to claim.
• Acknowledge regional, gender, or class differences when relevant.

Master review for Great Migration & Harlem Renaissance

Concepts to define on demand

Figures to deploy

Events to cite

Sources to attribute

• Locke, The New Negro (1925) — Anthology of essays, fiction, poetry, and visual art.
• Hughes, 'The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain' (1926) — Aesthetic manifesto of the renaissance.
• Hurston, Mules and Men (1935) — Ethnographic recording of Black folk culture.

Concept Check 🎯

Applied Recall ✍️

Name one figure, one event, and one primary source you would deploy in an essay on this unit:

1. Figure: ___

2. Event: ___

3. Source: ___

Match the AP Skill to the Move 🔍

AP-Style Application 🎯