One of the main points we talked about this class was The Great Migration, and how the changing social and racial structure of America changed and affected music in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Because of the influx of African Americans who had formerly lived in the country to major cities like Chicago, the style of music heard in those places changed. Unfortunately the Great Migration was a not a happy one, but was born out of a need for African American families to flee the south for their safety, and to escape monstrous injustices. Jim Crow laws disenfranchised and discriminated against African American people, starting mostly in the 1880’s and 90’s, and escalating quickly into violent lynchings and torture. One of the things that I found especially sick about the whole process is that postcards of the lynching were sold afterwards, and people who attended would send them to their family members like it was just a fun day out with the family. It honestly horrified me. And the fact that it only stopped when the NAACP started reprinting the postcards in their magazines and the audience changed from a white audience to an outraged African American audience is also extremely troubling. Anyway, the Great Migration lead to a nostalgia for the familiar country life in cities, and so country and folk artists came into demand. Sold as “Southern” records to both white and black people living in the cities, they were a way for artists to integrate behind the scenes without being in the public eye. I thought this was interesting, that black and white artists could collaborate on a record, but the same artist couldn’t perform together in public.