132 “served to intensify”: Willis D. Weatherford and Charles S. Johnson, Race Relations: Adjustment of Whites and Negroes in the United States (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1934), p. 339.
133 some migrants: Scott, Negro Migration During the War, p. 77.
134 one man disguising himself: Interviews with Ruby Lee Welch Mays Smith, Chicago, January–October 1996.
135 one delegation: David L. Cohn, Where I Was Born and Raised (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), pp. 340–45. Managers at King and Anderson plantation went to Chicago to convince sharecroppers to come back in the 1940s; cited in Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land (New York: Knopf, 1991), pp. 47–48.
136 In the 1920s: Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), p. 104.
137 “Owing to the scarcity”: U.S. Department of Labor, Negro Migration in 1916–17, p. 96.
138 Men hopped freight trains: Grossman, Land of Hope, p. 40.
139 “One section gang”: Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, Anyplace but Here (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1945), p. 164.
140 the weeds grew up: Grossman, Land of Hope, p. 40.
BREAKING AWAY
141 I was leaving: Richard Wright, Black Boy (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 493.
142 Of the few who got: Hortense Powdermaker, After Freedom: A Cultural Study of the Deep South (New York: Viking Press, 1930), pp. 86–87.
143 “How a man treats”: Ibid., p. 86.
144 Like one planter: Based on a letter sent to me by Ruth McClendon of Waukegan, Illinois. She heard me speaking about the Great Migration on WBEZ-FM, the public radio station in Chicago. The letter, dated August 17, 1995, was three pages, handwritten on yellow legal paper. In it, she shared the story of her grandparents leaving Alabama for Illinois during World War I.
145 Pershing was working: Ozeil Fryer Woolcock, “Social Swirl,” Atlanta Daily World, March 8, 1953, p. 3, and March 15, 1953, p. 18. Both stories are useful in that they confirm the general timing of Robert Foster’s departure. They note that he went to see his wife and daughters in Atlanta in early to mid-March before his migration trip to California. On Friday, March 13, 1953, the latter story notes, he was feted with “a small impromptu party by his wife, Alice Clement Foster, who invited a few former college mates in for an evening of dancing and chatting. The residence was most colorful with the St. Patrick motif, assisting Mrs. Foster was her mother, Mrs. Rufus E. Clement.” The story said that Robert was to leave Atlanta that Tuesday, which would have been March 17. Robert would head back to Monroe one last time before his migration, as he would have to pass through Louisiana en route to California. There, he had at least two weeks to spend time with his own family and friends and to prepare for the long journey ahead. When he later recounted the time leading up to his departure, he went on at length about his final weeks in Monroe and the pre-Easter send-off given him by his close friends and family in his hometown, marking the beginning of his journey out of the South. He never mentioned the visit to Atlanta or the party given him by his in-laws, which suggests it did not figure into his definition of his migration journey or the moment of his emotional break from the South. It also reflected how he viewed the more formal, socially correct world of the Clements compared to the humbler circles of his origins, which seemed to have greater meaning to him.
146 I pick up my life: Langston Hughes, One-Way Ticket (New York: Knopf, 1949), p. 61.
147 “Migratory currents flow”: E. G. Ravenstein, “The Laws of Migration,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, no. 2 (June 1889): 284.
148 “They are like”: Ibid., p. 280.
149 Some participants: Joe William Trotter, Jr., Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915–1945 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985). Trotter recounts the especially convoluted migration of a man, identified as J.H., who was “born in Canton, Mississippi. At 16, he went to Memphis, Tennessee. From Memphis he went to Sapulpa, Oklahoma. From Sapulpa he went to the army and to France. After the war [World War I] he settled in Kansas City. From Kansas City [he migrated to] Chicago and then Milwaukee at the age of 40. He has lived in Milwaukee for six years.” The account was originally published by the Milwaukee Urban League in its 1942–1943 Annual Report.
150 “go no further”: Ravenstein, “Laws of Migration,” p. 250.
151 “The more enterprising”: Ibid., p. 279.
PART III: EXODUS
1 There is no mistaking: The Cleveland Advocate, April 28, 1917.
2 We look up at: Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices (New York: Viking Press, 1941), p. 92.
THE APPOINTED TIME OF THEIR COMING
3 A toddler named Huey Newton: Dennis Hevesi, “Huey Newton Symbolized the Rising Black Anger of a Generation,” The New York Times, August 23, 1989, p. 37.
4 Another boy from Monroe: Bill Russell, Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man (New York: Fireside, 1979), pp. 24–27.
5 It carried so many: Hollis R. Lynch, The Black Urban Condition: A Documentary History, 1866–1971 (New York: Crowell, 1973), pp. 425–32. The black population of Chicago rose from 30,150 in 1900 to 44,103 in 1910, the last census before the Migration statistically began, and rose to 1,102,620 in 1970. In Detroit, the black population rose from 4,111 in 1900 to 5,741 in 1910 and 660,428 in 1970.
6 the Illinois Central: John F. Stover, History of the Illinois Central Railroad (New York: Macmillan, 1975), p. 15 on its founding, p. 89 on Lincoln’s role.
7 Later, it was the first stop: Ray Stannard Baker, Following the Color Line (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1908), p. 113.
8 “How a colored man”: Robert Russa Moton, What the Negro Thinks (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1929), p. 82. See also Bertram Wilbur Doyle, The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South: A Study in Social Control (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1937), p. 156. Doyle was a professor of sociology at Fisk University.
9 a family from Beaumont: Interview with Pat Botshekan in Los Angeles, March 18, 1996.
CROSSING OVER
10 Do you remember: Charles H. Nichols, ed., Arna Bontemps–Langston Hughes Letters, 1925–1967 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980), p. 24.
11 In South Carolina: Graham Russell Hodges, Studies in African History and Culture (New York: Garland, 2000), p. 155.
12 Some of my people: Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), pp. 97–98.
13 The earliest departures: Emmett J. Scott, Negro Migration During the War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1920), p. 13.
14 Instead of the weakening stream: E. G. Ravenstein, “The Laws of Migration,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 52, no. 2 (1889), p. 278. “The most striking feature of the northern migration was its individualism,” Emmett J. Scott wrote in 1920, as if the Migration were over.
15 “A large error”: Florette Henri, Black Migration: Movement North, 1900–1920 (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor/Doubleday, 1975), p. 72.
16 Robert Fields: Interview with Robert Fields in Chicago, 1995.
17 Eddie Earvin: Interview with Eddie Earvin in Chicago, May 1995, after having been given his name at a reunion at DuSable High School.
PART IV: THE KINDER MISTRESS
1 The lazy, laughing South: Langston Hughes, “The South,” The Crisis, June 1922.
CHICAGO
2 Timidly, we get: Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices (New York: Viking Press, 1941), pp. 99–100.
NEW YORK
3 A blue haze: Arna Bontemps, “The Two Harlems,” American Scholar, Spring 1945, p. 167.
LOS ANGELES
4 Maybe we can start again: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Viking Press, 1939; updated edition New York: Penguin Books, 1997), p. 89.
5 They went to court: “Covenant Suit Arguments on August 22,” Los Angeles Sentinel, July 31, 1947
, p. 3, gives an overview of the case as it is about to go before the court.
6 a small contingent: Lawrence Brooks de Graaf, “Recognition, Racism and Reflections on the Writing of Western Black History,” Pacific Historical Review 44, no. 1 (February 1975): 23.
7 strongly discouraged: Lawrence Brooks de Graaf, “Negro Migration to Los Angeles, 1930–1950,” dissertation submitted to the University of California, Los Angeles, May 1962, p. 14.
8 By 1900: Ibid., p. 16.
9 “Even the seeming”: Octavia B. Vivian, The Story of the Negro in Los Angeles County (Washington, D.C.: Federal Writers’ Project, Works Progress Administration, 1936), p. 31.
10 “In certain plants”: Ibid., p. 33.
THE THINGS THEY LEFT BEHIND
11 There were no Chinaberry: Clifton Taulbert, The Last Train North (Tulsa, Okla.: Council Oaks Books, 1992), pp. 43–44.
12 had toiled: It is not known precisely why there was a two-and-a-half-year delay in getting word to the slaves in Texas. One theory was that a messenger bearing the news of freedom was murdered on his way to Texas. Another was that slave masters deliberately withheld the news to keep their unpaid labor for as long as they could. Another was that there simply weren’t enough Union troops in Texas to enforce the Proclamation, which was dated January 1, 1863. The announcement read by the Union troops in the form of General Order no. 3 was as follows: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer” (available at www.juneteenth.com). Also see “An Obscure Texas Celebration Makes Its Way Across the U.S.,” The New York Times, June 18, 2004.
13 “If I were half:” Abraham Epstein, The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh (New York: Arno Press, 1969 reissue of 1918 original), p. 27.
14 Epstein found: Ibid., p. 24.
TRANSPLANTED IN ALIEN SOIL
15 Should I have come: Richard Wright, Black Boy (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 306–7.
16 A map: Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, Anyplace but Here (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1945), p. 164.
17 Beloit, Wisconsin: Morton Rubin, “Migration Patterns from a Rural Northeastern Mississippi Community,” Social Forces 39, no. 1, Oct. 1, 1960–May 1961, pp. 59–66. See also Paul Geib, “From Mississippi to Milwaukee: A Case Study of the Southern Black Migration to Milwaukee, 1940–1970, The Joural of Negro History 83, no. 4 (Autumn 1998): 229–48.
18 Gary: The Jackson Family of singers, including Michael and Janet, probably the most famous natives of Gary, Indiana, had roots in the South like most other black people born in Gary in the past century. The singing group’s father, Joseph, was born in Fountain Hill, Arkansas, in 1929 and went to Chicago, just west of Gary, when he was eighteen. The group’s mother, the former Katherine Scruse, was born in Barbour County, Alabama, and brought to East Chicago, Indiana, by her parents when she was four. Joseph and Katherine met in the Chicago area and married in November 1949. Their nine surviving children were born in Gary.
19 But, as in the rest: Joe William Trotter, Jr., Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915–1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 42.
20 “They are superior”: Ibid., p. 55.
21 “only did the dirty work”: Ibid., p. 47. 245 even those jobs: Ibid., p. 152.
22 “never did”: Ibid., p. 167.
23 The first blacks in Harlem: James Riker, Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals (New York: New Harlem Publishing, 1904), p. 189; cited in Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890–1930 (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 83.
24 The trouble began: Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); cited in Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1826–1863 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
25 By 1930: Osofsky, Harlem, p. 130 on population, p. 139 on sleeping in shifts, p. 129 for Adam Clayton Powell quote.
26 “a growing menace”: Harlem Magazine, February 1914, p. 21; cited in Osofsky, Harlem, p. 107.
27 Panicked property owners: Osofsky, Harlem, pp. 105–7.
28 White leaders tried: The New York Age, August 29 and November 14, 1912; January 9, 1913.
29 White leaders warned: Osofsky, Harlem, p. 108.
30 “rent to colored”: Ibid., p. 110.
31 NOTICE: New York Urban League, “Twenty-four Hundred Negro Families in Harlem: An Interpretation of the Living Conditions of Small Wage Earners,” typescript, Schomburg Collection, 1927, p. 7; cited in Osofsky, Harlem, p. 110.
32 “The basic collapse”: Osofsky, Harlem, p. 109.
33 “servants of the rich”: Jervis Anderson, This Was Harlem, 1900–1950 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Noonday Press, 1981), pp. 321–22.
34 It had a marble: Ibid., pp. 308–9.
35 Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company: John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman, African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), pp. 58–65. William Nickerson, one of the founders of Golden State Mutual Life Insurance, left Houston, Texas, for Los Angeles in 1921 and attributed his migration to the fact that “things were happening in the state, one of which was the riot [Longview, Texas, in 1919 and perhaps Tulsa in 1921]. So becoming disgusted,” he said, “I decided to take my wife and eight children and move to California.” Four years later, he would become one of the founders of the largest black-owned insurance company in the state.
36 “I didn’t think”: Jim Pinson, “City School Board Seat Won by Negro,” The Atlanta Constitution, May 15, 1953, p. 1.
37 “For the first time”: “Negro Is Victor in Atlanta Vote; Defeats White School Board Member, 22,259 to 13,936—Mayor Renominated,” The New York Times, May 15, 1953; “Atlanta Negro Is Elected to Board of Education,” New York Herald Tribune, May 15, 1953, p. 1.
DIVISIONS
38 I walked to the elevator: Richard Wright, Black Boy (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 303.
39 “With few exceptions”: Sadie Tanner Mossell, “The Standard of Living Among One Hundred Negro Migrant Families in Philadelphia,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 98 (November 1921): 216.
40 “The inarticulate and resigned masses”: E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in Chicago, 1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), pp. 80, 84.
41 “a tangle of pathology”: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington, D.C.: Office of Policy Planning and Research, United States Department of Labor, 1965), p. 23.
42 “the differential in payments”: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Crisis in Welfare,” The Public Interest, Winter 1968, pp. 3–29.
43 “It is the higher”: Karl E. Taeuber and Alma F. Taeuber, “The Changing Character of Negro Migration,” The American Journal of Sociology 70, no. 4 (January 1965): 429–41.
44 “As the distance”: Everett S. Lee, “A Theory of Migration,” Demography 3, no. 1 (1966): 57.
45 “Migrants who overcome”: Ibid., pp. 55–56.
46 “The move to northern”: J. Trent Alexander, “The Great Migration in Comparative Perspective: Interpreting the Urban Origins of Southern Black Migrants to Depression-Era Pittsburgh,” Social Science History, Fall 1998, pp. 358–60. Alexander’s analysis of census data found that, in 1940, only thirty-seven percent of black migrants to northern cities were from rural areas. Two-thirds were from towns with populations of 2,500 or more (p. 365).
47 “Most Negro migrants”: Taeuber and Taeuber, “The Changing Character of Negro Migration,” pp. 430–32.
48 “averaged nearly two more years”: Stewart E. Tol
nay, “Educational Selection in the Migration of Southern Blacks, 1880–1990,” Social Forces, December 1998, pp. 492–97.
49 A 1965 study: Frank T. Cherry, “Southern In-Migrant Negroes in North Lawndale, Chicago, 1949–1959: A Study of Internal Migration and Adjustment,” unpublished dissertation, University of Chicago, Department of Sociology, September 1965, p. 71.
50 “There is no support”: Ibid., p. 98.
51 “were not of lower”: Taeuber and Taeuber, “The Changing Character of Negro Migration,” pp. 429–41.
52 the 1965 census study: Ibid., p. 439.
53 “resemble in educational levels”: Ibid., pp. 436–39.
54 “Black men who have been”: Larry H. Long and Lynne R. Heltman, “Migration and Income Differences Between Black and White Men in the North,” The American Journal of Sociology 80, no. 6 (May 1975): 1396–97.
55 “more successfully avoided poverty”: Larry H. Long and Kristin A. Hansen, “Selectivity of Black Return Migration to the South,” Rural Sociology 42, no. 3 (Fall 1977): 318. Based on a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta, March 30–April 2, 1977.
56 “not willing to risk”: Wen Lang Li and Sheron L. Randolph, “Return Migration and Status Attainment Among Southern Blacks,” Rural Sociology 47, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 395.
57 It made them “especially goal oriented”: Larry H. Long and Lynne R. Heltman, “Migration and Income Differences between Black and White Men in the North,” The American Journal of Sociology 90, no. 6 (May 1975): 1406.
58 In San Francisco, for instance: Charles S. Johnson, Herman H. Long, and Grace Jones, The Negro Worker in San Francisco (San Francisco: YWCA, the Race Relations Program of the American Missionary Association, and the Julius Rosenwald Fund, May 1944), pp. 15–23.
The Warmth of Other Suns Page 67
