omed. Black writers produced numerous works and in a different style than earlier. Instead of imitating white works, the new works explored black life and culture in both the northern industrial cities and rural South. A striking example of this development in New York City has been called the Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro Movement. Notable among the movement’s authors was Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Wallace Thurman, and Claude McKay. The onset of the Great Depression brought an end to the movement, as the writers scattered looking for employment. The musicians, however, grew into legendary figures.
Even with the predominance of racism, acceptance of cultural works by blacks was growing in mainstream American culture. This trend may have served to open the door to some black leaders gaining access by the late 1920s to positions of slightly greater authority.
Voting Patterns of Black Americans
Following the end of the American Civil War the nation adopted the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting black Americans voting rights. However, the amendment was only a brief declaration that races should be treatment equally. The matter of actually establishing voter qualifications was still left strictly to the states. The prospect of a black vote was met with strong resistance throughout the South. Intimidation by such white supremacist organizations as the Ku Klux Klan became increasingly violent in an attempt to prevent blacks from voting. The Klan’s hooded midnight riders terrorized blacks by burning crops, whipping, clubbing, and murdering victims. By 1900 all 11 former Confederate states made it virtually impossible for blacks to vote.
The southern states carefully worded their voting requirements to avoid obvious Fifteenth Amendment violations. As long as state voter eligibility requirements did not openly discriminate on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” they were not considered unconstitutional. Though appearing to apply to all men equally, in actuality the requirements were directed against persons of color. States used a variety of measures to exclude the black vote: literacy tests, white-only primaries, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses. These techniques proved successful in excluding blacks from political participation until the mid-1960s. Consequently, whites completely dominated all levels of government in the Southern states through the 1930s and for the following few decades.
By the 1890s the popular voter eligibility requirements in the South were the grandfather clause and literacy tests. Grandfather clauses required all voters to show that their ancestors were eligible to vote in 1866. Blacks in 1890 had no ancestors who were eligible to vote in 1866 because the Fifteenth Amendment had not been passed yet to grant such rights to blacks. If a person could not show proof of 1866 voting ancestors, then they had to pass a literacy test. Nearly all black men in the South were disqualified from voting. As was often the case, most whites did not have to take literacy test, even though many could not read, because typically most white men had ancestors eligible to vote in 1866. Finally, in 1915 in Guinn v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled grandfather clauses unconstitutional.
With the ban on grandfather clauses, white-only primaries became the next barrier raised to block black voters. Under laws adopted by most Southern states, political parties could set their own rules for membership. The Democratic Party became organized as private clubs in each state and excluded all blacks. Only party members could vote for candidates in its primaries. Since the Democratic Party overwhelmingly dominated politics in the South, whoever won the Democratic primaries would readily win the general election. Any black votes cast in the general election were, therefore, usually meaningless. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Grovey v. Townsend (1935) that since the political parties had become private clubs and not p