Music is a reflection of the community from which it came. African American womenhave been reflecting the social, economic, and political experiences of the African Americancommunity through thier music past and present. Each era of change in the African Americancommunity has brought about a African American female revoluntionary. Examples of this canbe seen through the blues and jazz singers of the Harlem Renaissance, soul singers of the civilrights movement, and the Ryhem and Blues, Hip Hop vocalist of the present day.In the early 1900s, America was a place of racial division and inequality. The early1900s was a time when African American men and women, although by law were free, were noteven considered to be human beings in the eyes of European Americans. African Americans inthe south were engaged in agricultural occupations. Most African Americans of the southworked under a system called sharecropping, where landowners provided land for workes,whose responsibility it was to raise crops and at harvest time, the workers were to give a share oftheir profits to the landowner. Under the sharecropping system, African Americans workerswere often mistreated by European Americans, which kept them in a state of poverty. TheSourthern states began to pass Jim Crow laws that segregated African Americans from schools,neighborhoods, jobs, and public facillities.Many African Americans sought to escape the racism of the south by moving to moreindustrialized cities in the North. With the movement of African Americans to the North camethe Harlem Renaissance, an African American movement in New York in which AfricanAmericans began to more freely express themselves and their ideas through art, literature, andmusic. However, in the north African Americans had not fully escaped racism. In the north,African Americans often were not able to find good jobs and good pay. African Americans wereforced to become domestics or factory workers with littl...
