Advances in the Battle against Racism.

During the Jazz Age the militant white racism of the preceding three decades finally began to lose its intensity. White supremacists of the 1890s had described African Americans as belonging to a diseased, degenerate race not likely to survive more than a generation. Sen. James K. Vardaman of Mississippi had predicted that the "nigra" would be extinct in North America by the 1920s. In fact, the black population of the United States increased steadily in the 1920s. Though lynchings of blacks remained widespread throughout the southern states, the number of such hangings declined during the decade. In 1921 fifty-nine African Americans were lynched, while eight years later the number had dropped to seven. During the same period African American legal advocates won some modest courtroom victories against segregation. The American...