In this lecture, Professor Holloway continues discussing African American political possibilities in the second half of the 1930s by examining the new mentality at work in black America. He focuses on the National Negro Congress, the Marian Anderson Easter Sunday Concert, and the March on Washington movement. These examples reveal the diverse strategies and organizing methods employed during this era, as the federal government learned that it could not afford to ignore black leaders the way it had since the founding of the Republic.

The Harlem Renaissance brought together legions of black writers, artists, musicians, and intellectuals who celebrated black culture and romanticized its connections to an African past. In this lecture, Professor Holloway documents some of the expressions of the Harlem Renaissance (also known as the New Negro Renaissance), the political and cultural movement that claimed Harlem as its figurative capital.

In this lecture, Professor Holloway expands our understanding of “The Great Migration” by looking at what happens when African Americans settled in Northern and Midwestern cities. He examines the 1917 East St. Louis race riot, the 1919 Chicago race riot, and the NAACP’s Silent Protest Parade from New York City’s Fifth Avenue to Harlem.

In this lecture, Professor Holloway explains the two major schools of thought that emerged at the end of the century to solve the problems of black social and economic distress. The accommodationists, like Booker T. Washington, believed that the quickest way to improve the quality of black life was to forge a social peace with powerful whites, temporarily accepting the continued separation of the races and advocating vocational education as a pragmatic way for blacks to improve their lives. Opposed to Washington were people like Anna Julia Cooper and W.E.B.

After the massive cultural shift that the South endured under Reconstruction, white Southerners were determined to fight back. In this lecture, Professor Holloway discusses the complicated meaning of Redemption as white Southerners rose up, reclaimed, and redeemed that which they thought was theirs. During this era, African Americans experienced extreme forms of violence as whites guaranteed the return of power, including the resurgence of the KKK, as well as gerrymandering and poll taxes to ensure the elimination of blacks as a voting class.