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At the beginning of the 20th century, there was more racial prejudice and animosity towards those who some people did not consider to be 'real' Americans.

• In 1900 there were 12 million black people living in the USA and 75 per cent of them lived in the south.
• Although slavery had been abolished in the 1860s, white people controlled southern states using Jim Crow laws to segregate the black population and discriminate against them. These laws prevented them from voting, gaining a good education and getting decent jobs.
• The majority of black Americans were not able to profit from the flourishing economy of the 1920s. This was especially true in the southern states where the economy was based on agriculture, and crop prices fell throughout the 1920s.

Migration to the north and west

Industrial development had created a demand for manufactured goods and jobs were created in the industrial cities of the north.

Between 1916-1920 almost 1 million black people went north in the Great Migration to cities like Chicago, New York and Detroit in search of work. Although there were no Jim Crow laws, black Americans were still treated as second class citizens in the northern cities. Due to low wages they lived in poor neighbourhoods, like Harlem in New York, called ghettos.

In 1919 there were riots in 20 US cities as racial tension between black and white people increased. This was one of the factors that sparked the increase in the membership of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).