• The social and cultural influence of former slaves in cities of the North (e.g., their leadership of African American communities, how they advanced the rights and interests of African Americans).
• The background and experiences of immigrants of the late Nineteenth century.
• How racial and ethnic events influenced America during the Progressive Era.
• Influences on urban life in America during the 1920s.
• The struggle for racial and gender equality and for the extension of civil liberties.
• The economic boom and social transformation of post-World War II United States.

• Narrative, African Immigration
• The narrative The Northern Migration may be used in conjunction with or substituted for African Immigration

1. Direct students to read African Immigration, focusing on the section, "A Question of Identity" .
2. Provide the guide questions below for students to consider as they read the narrative:

   1. What differences are there in the views of racism of many African immigrants in contrast with many African Americans?
   2. What elements of American culture estrange many African immigrants?
   3. Why do many African immigrants associate only with other African immigrants?

3. Discuss, as a class, recent immigrants' perception of America as "a culture they often perceive as promoting individualism, materialism, racial polarization, and violence." What elements of popular culture (television, films, and music) support this contention? How does it conflict with a group that values family, community, education, thrift, and African identity? How does it create friction between African immigrants and African Americans?

1. Explain to students that they will be researching a number of topics related to the history of migration and immigration of people of African heritage. The format for their presentation will be a "town hall" meeting similar to those they see on television on various topics. Tell students that you will serve as the moderator of the town hall meeting.
2. Provide a sign-up sheet so students in pairs or small groups may select a topic on which to conduct research. Students should find out about the background of the history of their topic and why it caused disagreements among people of African origin (whether migrants or immigrants). Tell students that, during the town hall meeting, topic presenters will take turns presenting their topics as "experts" and functioning as members of the "town hall audience" by asking questions or raising comparisons or contrasting information. Each presentation team, when performing as the "experts," will discuss the main elements of the history they have researched and the disagreements that arose over this migration issue; they also will field questions from the remainder of the class, which will be the "audience."
3. Students can sign up for topics that include the following:

   1. Free persons of color fearing to be identified with fugitive slaves.
   2. Northern black elitists decrying the lack of education and rural background of southern migrants involved in the Great Migration.
   3. Political leaders differing over the Exoduster movement and urging accommodation within the South.
   4. Political leaders differing over the "Back-to-Africa" movement and urging accommodation with the United States.
   5. Haitian immigrants and African émigrés resisting popular media values of American and African-American cultures.
   6. African Americans judging each other along lingering color-caste and religious affiliation divisions.

4. Caution students that the town hall requires everyone to participate, but they also should participate in good faith and not resort to name-calling or rudeness.
5. After the town hall meeting, ask students either to discuss in class or to write a paragraph assessing the overall impact of divisive immigration-migration issues on the African-American sense of identity.

You may evaluate the town hall presentations on a 20-point scale (which may be multiplied by 5 to convert to 100-point scale or to letter grades) using the following rubric:

• The Schomburg Center has numerous images of African Americans in urban settings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Visit the online exhibit, Harlem 1900-1940: An African-American Community, accessible at: http://www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Harlem/index.html. The exhibition includes a timeline, teacher materials, and a resource list.
  
  The online exhibit The African Presence in the Americas: 1492-1992 includes a segment on migration at: http://www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Schomburg/text/migration.html.
• The Library of Congress' American Memory Collection features over seven million online digital documents. It is a rich resource for a wide variety of documents about the African-American experience, including the online exhibit African-American Odyssey. American Memory's homepage is: http://memory.loc.gov/ and African-American Odyssey is at: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/.