Growth in Black populations in the North and West occurs as a result of the Great Migration. The Ku Klux Klan reached its peak in membership and political influence in the South and the Midwest during the 1920s. Amid the racist political climate and worsening socioeconomic conditions in many areas, some Black leaders hoped that achievement in the arts would help revolutionize race relations while enhancing Blacks’ understanding of themselves as a people. Influential African American thinkers, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, advocated Pan-Africanism, the idea that people of African descent have common interests and should be unified. Literacy rates dramatically increased during the era. National organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, emerged that were dedicated to African American civil rights. The vibrancy of Black cultural life in Harlem attracted a significant number of intellectuals and artists to the district, which served as a symbolic capital of the renaissance.
