It really depends on where you are living. In 1900 not all reconstruction era freedoms had been fully rolled back in all parts of the South (NC for instance) while other parts were brutal, lynch-happy dystopias where black men could be arrested on trumped up charges and leased out to corporations where they could be worked to death in dangerous situations. That sort of thing was still going on in the 1940s South and there is no real indication that there had been any improvement for Black folk in the past 40 years.

But in the North, things were getting better in the aftermath of the great migration where black people built their own black metropolises in the big cities, took advantage of industrial jobs, and pushed back on racist laws. So....I'd say you'd have to ask about a certain place for me to give a more definitive answer