Harlem Renaissance Imagine a movement of thousands of African Americans from the demeaning and undermining South to the more accepting and opportunity filled North. This was a migration made soon after being freed from slavery in the South in hopes of finding better job opportunities in the Northern parts of America. The African Americans had finally received their opportunity to equalize themselves with the white population of the United States and show the country what their lifestyle embodied. A major center for this movement was the urban district of Harlem in New York City, which is also how the movement was given the name of the Harlem Renaissance. An analysis of the background of the Harlem Renaissance exemplifies the progressiveness of racial equality in America during the 1920s.[a] With slavery being abolished in America, the African Americans were supposedly provided the freedom that their country was based on. This was not the case for the majority of the black people. The laws in the South were still racially unequal in favor of the white Americans, and hate crimes were ever growing in the Deep South. This led to an event known as the Great Migration, which was the movement of thousands of African Americans in to the urban North. [b]The African Americans were heading North in hopes of avoiding racial hate crimes and equal job opportunities. Unfortunately, the North was not as inviting as they had hoped it to be. With the flood of black people into the economy, labor wages dropped dramatically which did not sit well with the working class of the North. Although the law stated the African American population was to be equal with the white population that did not change how the white people felt about the blacks. Since African Americans were working for such low wages and housing opportunities were still very discriminatory, this led black people to live in run down urban slums; with a major one being[c] Harlem. One thing that the white people could not take from the African Americans was their first amendment right to their freedom of speech. Many black people began expressing themselves through