Friday, February 26, 2010

How did the Race Movement affect Southern life?

Like my predesessors wrote, blacks came back from the war hoping for some equal treatment, like they had received from their European allies. But what they got instead was extreme disillusionment with the white people who were even more into segregation and racism than before. The war didn't cause any mass emotional bonding between "the negro and the white man." To the contrary, after the war things were so bad that people started supporting Marcus Garvey in thinking that they should form their own nations in Africa. They no longer supported W. E. B. Du Bois' theory of the "New Negro." His theory of fighting in the war to prove equality failed, and Garvey's quasi-military stance seemed more appropriate in light of the white American's prejudice. This shows in my project of the Atlanta Woman's Club, when black women began forming their own clubs instead of caring that the white women wouldn't accept them. One club led by a colored woman actually got into the General Federation of Women's Clubs, but only accidentally, and the GFWC told the club that they had made a mistake and they were no longer a member of this prestigious federation (Gere and Robbins).

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