Fight for Racial Equality

When World War I came around, the moving of immigrants to the United States started to come to a minimum. The war affected the states and caused an increase in the need for workers, especially in the factories. At the time the factories were segregated, but because of the war, factory owners started hiring African Americans to fill the void left by the men that went to war. As a result of this, African Americans that were living in the South, which was pro-slavery, started moving further north. Because of the significant increase in the African American travels, The Great Migration was born. Throughout World War I, over one million African Americans left the South for the North, who was offering jobs, and therefore changed the racial balance in America. While the mass number of blacks that were in the states trying to better enrich their lives, there were over two hundred thousand of them fighting in the war in France, where racial segregation still existed. None of the black soldiers fought side by side with their white counterparts. While the blacks that were back in the states and the black soldiers overseas thought the times were getting better, they had no idea that even at war, fighting for one cause, racial inequality was still among them and no matter where they were it would linger over their heads.

“Segregation and disenfranchisement actually increased racial hatred, and several extremist white politicians fueled this flame” (Bowles, 2011, Ch 2.3). There was a long line of white Americans, especially politicians, who fueled this flame by speaking at campaigns to get their voice heard and to get more followers in their beliefs to keep things the way they were. Public displays of racial violence increased including lynching and race riots shortly followed.

In 1899 the American Anti-Imperialist League was formed. In their platform it stated the following: “We hold, with Abraham Lincoln, that "no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's...