; Whereas, during World War I, when slowing immigration from Europe created a labor shortage in the North, companies began recruiting African Americans to fill the assembly lines and work the steel mills, railroads, and factories; Whereas African Americans who migrated to the North still faced racial discrimination in the form of redlining, racially based housing ordinances, higher rent based on race, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, and rising instances of race riots; Whereas African Americans created their own cities and neighborhoods free of discrimination where their culture expanded, for example in Harlem in New York City that housed over 200,000 African Americans during the 1920s; Whereas at the end of the Civil War, many of Durham’s African Americans left the plantations as free persons, creating their own communities and opportunities, and formed the Hayti neighborhood, which developed into a thriving business and residential district, and around the same time, efforts were made to provide educational opportunities for Blacks, including the founding of what is now North Carolina Central University (NCCU); Whereas Greenwood, Oklahoma, part of Tulsa, became home to thriving Black businesses also known as Black Wall Street until the Tulsa race riot of 1921, in which a White mob burned down Greenwood, the site of the worst race riot in United States history; Whereas in Freedmen’s Town, Texas, thousands of freed slaves purchased land and built their homes along the Buffalo Bayou at the end of the Civil War, and over six decades the town thrived, with churches, schools, stores, theaters, and jazz spots lining the cobblestone roadways until the Great Depression caused many to lose their homes and some longtime residents moved to other Houston neighborhoods; Whereas, in 1984, Freedmen’s Town, Texas, was designated a historic district