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John Carlos took inspiration from the borough that he lived in. It was a poor primarily black neighborhood in New York City. Seeing how different Manhattan life was to his own having to steal food from trains, being segregated from going to the swimming pool to swim since originally he wanted to be an olympic swimmer, he really started to get into civil rights not only for Blacks but for everyone because not only the whites were racist, all over the world Racism had been happening to all races.
The neighborhood of Harlem, New York City, New York was founded in the late 1800's it was an economic hub for white families primarily the white upper and middle classes, Harlem thrived with a booming business and residential district up until the great black migration in 1863 where blacks would migrate up from the Jim Crow south to the opportunistic north where they could get factory jobs and actually be paid instead of being forced to work in awful conditions. As the black population moved in, rich white families moved out and eventually it was the highest concentration of a black population in the United States. The Great depression only worsened Harlem's already shrinking economy, countless decades of residential development without the demand ultimately led the city of New York to make it a black neighborhood and at that point it boomed once again, due to the fact that it was unseen for a neighborhood of this quality to be turned to the blacks. In the 1940's a new culture started to develop with the black community of black power and equal rights which sparked the black population of other cities like Birmingham, Alabama Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan and many others to rise against the oppressive government and to promote black rights. This ultimately led to more racism |