"I had been around here long enough to realize there wasn't very much work Negroes could get….[Black workers could either] go down to the sea in ships or work on the railroads."
- C.L. Dellums, Bay Area resident and vice-president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, recalling job opportunities in the Bay Area in 1923

The smiles on the faces of these four young men show pride in the work they are displaying as winners of the Clausen School Boy Scout competition. In 1924, the entire country's attitude mirrored the smiles on the faces of these boys. The U.S. had just emerged from World War I as a major world power. The country's economy was booming, andCalifornia's as well due to wartime spending on shipbuilding and manufacturing industries. Science and technology were flourishing with constant new developments while literature and culture similarly bloomed.

The young Black men pictured above were growing up in an era in which the enslavement of Blacks was more than two generations in the past, and global Black pride was being promoted by Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association, among others. The Harlem Renaissance in art, theatre, music, and-of course-literature was in full swing, celebrating the value of Black art and creativity.Blacks were expected to be conscious of their race; to be "race men" and "race women" fighting not just for rights and respect from whites and other races, but also for equal treatment under the law.

At the same time, most of the Southern United States vigorously implemented Jim Crow segregation in an attempt to stifle Black peoples' civil rights. Lynchings and other terrorist tactics were frequently used by Southern whites against Blacks, who continued in their exodus from the rural South to Northern cities. This Black population shift had begun in the 1880s and had picked up speed during World War I as Black men and women were recruited to work in war industries and support services.

On the West Coast, California was less impacted by Black migration from the South. California's Black population numbered around 21,645 in 1910, making this primarily urban population less than one percent of California's entire population. Yet California's Black community had successfully come together to gain civil rights for Blacks through high-profile court cases starting in the 1860s.In the 1890s, Black activist organizations such as the Afro-American League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People linked California Blacks to the statewide and nationwide struggle for Black rights.

Economically, however, Black Californians were still restricted. While there was no legal segregation, Blacks in California in 1910 were still limited to the same occupations of the previous century: domestic workers and manual laborers. Successful Black professionals, entrepreneurs, and even Black millionaires certainly existed but were the exception, not the rule. The large-scale recruiting of Blacks to work in World War I war industries was the first sign that changes to the economic situation of Blacks in California might be possible.

In Los Angeles in 1918, the Black community, which expanded shortly before World War I to become larger than those of Oakland and San Francisco, elected the first Black assemblyman to the California State Congress. Black men and women had access to higher-paying skilled wartime jobs, and urban Black communities in major California cities expanded. However, with the end of World War I came the end of war industry jobs. The U.S. may have celebrated the victorious conclusion of the war, but Black communities in California were hard-hit. True changes in employment opportunities for Blacks would have to wait.

Standards:
11.5 Students analyze the major political, social, economic, technological, and cultural developments of the 1920s. (11.5.2, 11.5.5)

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