Harlem slums as a result of th
Harlem slums as a result of thIn comparison with the European urban heritage, which stretches back roughly 5500 years, the American transformation from village to city was achieved in an amazingly short space of time. From the eighteenth century on, Americans experienced the painful yet rewarding metamorphosis of an agrarian nation becoming an urban industrial giant that left few of her political, economic, and social institutions untouched, be they the farm, the factory, or the family. In 1790, for example, only a little over 4 percent of the American population lived in cities; today 70 percent of Americans live in urban areas. Richard Hofstadter summed it up well: "The United States was born in the country and has moved to the city (Handlin 3)."
The rough, harsh and crowded lives of the Harlem slums and discrimination against Negroes are just a few of the many results of the urbanization of America. Negroes moved to the city, away from their farm lives, to work in factories as America industrialized. With all the Negroes and other immigrants coming to Industrialized parts of America Negro communities, such as Harlem, were formed. With the slums came discrimination for the Negro migrants. The white people, who had occupied industrial cities first, saw Negroes as lesser beings. They believed that it was okay for them to be treated unfairly due to the color of their skin. This was the belief that parents of white children wanted them to have. It was documented that children who intermingled with Negroes at some public schools saw them to be okay and decent, but the parents of these children discouraged this kind of thinking and told their children that they had had the wrong attitude towards Negroes. As a result of blacks in some public schools, many white children were sent to private schools. This was just the beginning of discrimination towards black people during the Urbanization of America.
The following quotation suggests the whites superiority over the inferior Negroes:
I have no prejudice against the colored people. I have always had colored servants and nurse girls for my children and I like them. I have never known them to be dishonest. My husband employs seven colored men and his experience has been the same as mine. I don't care to live next door to a colored family or across the street and if they do come to this side of Raymond, I certainly will move out.
The Negroes were further discriminated due to the fact that the white people said that the value of their property would decrease if they had Negro neighbors. Neighbors in a white community would stand together in the sense that they all agreed that they would not sell their homes to a Negro for their own selfish sakes. This is another reason why Harlem slums grew and yet another example of discrimination towards...
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