The great migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North in the first half of the 20th century was a seminal social event in U.S. history, helping lay the foundation for the modern civil rights movement. It was characterized by a massive exodus of African Americans from the Southern United States, with a start date that is difficult to pinpoint. Most scholars say it began around the start of World War I, in the 1910s, but a larger migration began during World War II, lasting from the Vietnam era until the 1970s, during which African Americans left in unprecedented numbers. Nearly five million people left between 1941 and the late 1970s, thus shaping their lives and those of their descendants. As with any migration of this kind, the movement of people has changed a lot. People who had previously lived in agricultural centers were now at the center of the American economy, and those without political rights and influence were quickly gaining both. As Southern African Americans moved to Northern cities, they transformed postwar black cities into centers of innovation in music, literature, and art to create an influential new black urban culture best exemplified in the Harlem Renaissance. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The relocation of African Americans has radically reshaped America's major cities, where they have gone from being a small minority to representing more than 40 percent of some Northern cities known as “black metropolises,” cities within cities. The experience of the Great Migration and these new cities gave birth to the artistic movement called the New Negro Movement, later known as the Harlem Renaissance. Harlem in New York City was one of the most prominent examples of these metropolises, a once entirely white neighborhood that saw radical demographic change. James Weldon Johnson called it the “flowering of Negro literature,” and it was indeed so; the Great Migration united authors and writers from racially stratified communities in cities where black culture was increasingly popular. Comedies like Ridgely Torrence's rejected the stereotypes of blackface and minstrel shows, instead showing that African Americans are just as human as whites. Poets like Claude McKay and Langston Hughes all joined together to shape the Harlem Renaissance; had it not been for the Great Migration, it is entirely possible that the black population would have remained diminished and spread across the country where such unified communities could not have taken root. Fundamental cultural changes were not limited to specific fields; writers, actors, musicians, artists have all had a major impact. Langston Hughes wrote like a jazz poet, ignoring the influences of white writers to create something with a rhythm and meter never seen before. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, was vibrant and surprising in its rejection of the racial improvement agenda, which advocated improving the image of African Americans in society but stigmatized and diluted black female sexuality. As Langston Hughes stated, however, defeating racial prejudice was secondary to “the expression of our individual dark-skinned selves.” Singers like Ethel Waters, one of the most famous black performers, became not only accepted, but immensely popular among white audiences, a phenomenon previously unimaginable. While the.