Americans response to the cultural changes brought by the WWI, the Great Migration and Technology
Introduction
Change is inevitable, so they say. America before WWI, the great migration and technology were a dull America with people relying heavily on traditional methods of production. The rise of modernity brought numerous changes in the culture of the American citizens. For instance, before WWI, women were not allowed to vote, but the involvement of the men in the war meant that the nation was left with less taskforce. The women took over the roles previously taken by men. The women in the workforce organized themselves and formed movements to fight for their rights. By the time WWI was ending, women had held equal voting rights as men (lecture module 9). The change in women’s roles is just one example of the changes that America experienced with the rise of modernity. This paper will study the role of WWI, the Great migration, and the technology in the transformation of the American culture.
The entry of the USA in WWI changed the course of the war, and the war, in turn, changed the American culture (Textbook chapter 20 pg. 605-620). The war provided a transformative moment in the African-American culture. WWI started seemingly as a European conflict, but it soon became an event with social, economic, and political revolutionarily implications for the black people’s future. The black soldiers who participated in the WWI came back home with a realization that they weren’t any different from the white. In the home front, the black people also realized that they, too, had equal strength and determination as to the white people. The black people, therefore, contested for the boundaries of the American democracy demanded their rights, and declared their human values in subtle and dramatic ways. The war explicitly impacted the black race, male and female, civilian, and soldier. The migration, military service, political protest, and racial violence made the WWI year one of the most dynamic periods in the African-American culture.
The Great Migration was a mass movement of black southerners from the South to the Northern side of America. Between 1916-1970, more than 6 million black Americans migrated from the southern rural to the cities of the North (Lecture module 7). The South was plagued with unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregation laws that made life unbearable. The majority of the Black Americans labored in sharecropping systems, lived under perpetual debts and lived in extreme poverty (Lecture module 2 & sharecropping system reading). Conditions worsened for the black Americans in 1915-1916 after a heavy infestation of boll weevil that destroyed cotton crops throughout the South.
The Jim Crow segregation law, which drew legitimacy from the Plessey vs Fergusson rule of 1896, forced the black people to use separate facilities and inferior facilities from their white counterparts (lecture module 7). The Jim Crow justice system in the South denied black Americans equal protection under the law. The system even allowed for the vigilante mob justice as a way of condemning the black population. All these challenges in the South pushed the southerners to migrate to the North to secure the booming jobs in the industries that sprouted after the WWI (Great migration letters, module 7)
Migration to the South was not, however, a safe haven for the southerners. The blacks experienced residential segregation, job discrimination, and substandard living conditions and, in most cases, suffered hostility from the white residents. Additionally, the working conditions in the Northern industries were often dangerous, and competition for work became paramount.
But the exposure in the North gave the Southerners a platform to fight for their rights. During the Great Migration, African Americans started having an influence in the public sphere. The great migration became a central theme in the Harlem renaissance artistic movement that made a huge impact in the northern culture (Lecture module 8). The migration to the North also led to a rise of black political activism who found a new place in public life after being disenfranchised in the South. The black people actively confronted the racial prejudice as well as the social-economic and political challenges to form a black urban culture that exerted enormous influence for the generations that followed (textbook chapter 20 pg. 608-610)
WWI and WWII are regarded as the most important instruments of technology change in the 20th century. The illustration of this process can be observed in the rapid evolution of the airplane, the use of tanks, and atomic bombs, which were developed as a response to the military stimulus of the 20th century. Apart from the military influence, the two wars also encouraged innovations both in the state and private industries. The wars sped up the transformation from mere “little science” to “big science” with an emphasis on large scale research and developments, which led to the emergence of novel and efficient machines and equipment.
The change in the technological enterprise’s scale as a result of WWI and WWII had far-fetching consequences in American culture. Technology changed the quality of the industrial and social organization. Technology made production more efficient, which enabled industries to increase productivity. The comparatively small workshops in the 19th century were converted into large engineering establishments with mass production and assembly line techniques. The technology was also used in agriculture to produce chemicals and micro-organisms, which helped to improve the quality and quantity of food in the 20th century. Modern technology also made a significant contribution to the transportation and the communication industries, all of which made significant changes to the American culture.
Technology had both positive and negative impact on American culture. Technology facilitated the faster movement of people and improved the means of communication in America. Additionally, the increased food production changed the living conditions of the Americans, which, as a result, increased the American population. Negatively, technology increased warfare as a result of increased production of sophisticated weaponry. Second, technology-enabled mechanization in the industries, which led to created unemployment as human labor was no longer needed.
Conclusion
The 20th century remains to be the most important in America. The century was plagued with war, but most importantly, these wars contributed immensely to modernizing the American culture. There are a lot of unfortunate events in the 20th century that people don’t want to reckon, such as the sins of war and the plight of the black American people that led to the Great Migration. But still, the Americans today can look back and reflect on the changes that the WWI, the great migration, and technology have made to the American culture. The greatest shift in the post WWI era has to be the change of the black people and women plight. The black people and women before WWI were to be seen not heard. But after the war, the situation changed significantly with the black people and women acquiring recognition in the public sphere and, in turn, acquiring civil rights and freedoms.