Harlem Stomp!
Page 2
BROWNSVILLE, TX
Race riot flares up when a group of black soldiers from the segregated 25th Regiment responds to racial insults. Whites go unpunished and President T. Roosevelt dishonorably discharges the entire battalion.
1906
ATLANTA, GA
The worst Southern race riot of the decade begins on Saturday, September 24. In the previous weeks the local press had published sensational stories about rapes and murders supposedly committed by blacks, urging the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. On Saturday Atlanta is full of country people who join the mobs in beating and killing countless African Americans and torching their property. The African American president of the Gammon Theological Society is pistol-whipped by a police officer when he asks for help. Seventy people are injured and twelve are killed. The following day W. E. B. Du Bois is on his way to lodge a complaint with the Atlanta Constitution newspaper about a lynching. As he passes a butcher shop, he sees the knees of a lynching victim in the window on display with the butchered meat. He never makes it to the newspaper. Instead, he goes home and weeps.
1908
HOUSTON, TX
Six blacks lynched after being suspected of plotting a murder.
SPRINGFIELD, IL
On August 14 and 15, a riot becomes so violent that the governor calls in 4,200 militiamen. The riot had started when the wife of a streetcar conductor falsely claimed that she had been raped by a black man. The mob destroys black businesses and homes, lynches an 84-year-old man, and strings up an innocent barber after burning his shop. No one is ever punished for these crimes. Later, the conductor’s wife admits that she had been assaulted by a white man.
GREENSBURG, IN
The entire black population is driven from town after a white mob is stopped from lynching a black man convicted of assault.
The response among the Talented Tenth to the letter was enthusiastic. The time for rhetoric had passed, and the time for action was finally here. From July 11 to July 13, 1905, twenty-nine radical black intellectuals from fourteen states met in Fort Erie, Canada, near Niagara Falls. Those present included William Monroe Trotter, editor of the Guardian, J. Max Barber, editor of Voice of the Negro, and John Hope, president of Atlanta Baptist College. The goal of this group was to fight for African American rights, primarily through the courts, with occasional meetings and an annual convention.
Essentially, they were asking for nothing that had not already been demanded by earlier civil rights organizations. The difference was that this was the first time that members of the Talented Tenth had organized formally as a group. From 1905 to 1909 the group demanded the abolition of all forms of racial discrimination. In addition, the organization called for school integration, voting rights, and the election of blacks to political offices. In the courts, they fought Jim Crow laws, which were established to limit blacks’ civil and political rights, and worked to register blacks to vote. They held public meetings in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York City, Minneapolis, and Cleveland. Their second convention was held at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, in 1906 and paid tribute to the martyred John Brown, who tried in 1859 to ignite a violent slave revolt. By these actions the Niagara Movement, as it came to be known, won the support of large numbers of blacks from all over the country.
Letter to an African-American schoolgirl In 1905 a teacher wrote to Du Bois asking him to write a letter of encouragement to a student of hers who had become demoralized by white oppression. He obliged.
I wonder if you will let a stranger say a word to you about yourself? I have heard that you are a young woman of some ability but that you are neglecting your schoolwork because you have become hopeless of trying to do anything in the world. I am very sorry for this. How any human whose wonderful fortune it is to live in the 20th Century should under ordinarily fair advantages despair of life is almost unbelievable. And if in addition to this that person is, as I am, of Negro lineage with all the hopes and yearnings of hundreds of millions of human souls dependent in some degree on her striving, then her bitterness amounts to a crime.
There are in the U.S. today tens of thousands of colored girls who would be happy beyond measure to have the chance of educating themselves that you are neglecting. . . . Every time a colored person neglects an opportunity, it makes it more difficult for others of the race to get such an opportunity.
Yours truly,
W. E. B. Du Bois
The importance of the Niagara Movement lay in the fact that it existed at all in the face of Booker T. Washington’s opposition and white indifference. Although its more ambitious goals of political and social freedom were not achieved, the movement did give the black community hope that equality was possible. In addition, the movement solidified the Talented Tenth’s rejection of Booker T. Washington’s stance and provided a platform for African Americans to voice publicly their opposition to racism. Eventually, if blacks continued to protest, loudly and often, whites would have to listen, even if whites found Washington’s less-threatening ways much more appealing.
BIRACIAL STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM FORMS
“The Spirit of John Brown Exhibited in Convention at Harpers Ferry. Delegates of the Niagara Movement Make Pilgrimages at Historic Old Building, His Fort, Where they Hold Excercises, and Sing “John Brown’s Body” — Demand Equal Rights and Suffrage the Keynote of Speeches and of the Address to the Country Adopted by the Convention.”
THIS HEADLINE LED the article written by Mary White Ovington, a white Socialist humanitarian, for the New York Evening Post in which she covered the Niagara Movement’s Harper’s Ferry convention. It was at this convention that Ovington became convinced of its mission’s importance. By 1909, however, it was clear to her and other white liberals, as well as the members of the Niagara Movement, that an organization made up solely of blacks could not achieve its goals in such a racist society. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the riot in Springfield, Illinois. Not only were blacks and white liberals horrified by the riot itself, but they were also disgusted by the fact that such crimes had spread to the North — and to the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, no less.
The Springfield riot led to a September 3, 1908, article in New York’s Independent titled “Race War in the South,” by William English Walling, a wealthy Southerner and Socialist. In the article, Walling called for a “powerful body of citizens” to assist blacks in their efforts to achieve “absolute and social equality.” After reading the article, Mary Ovington wrote Walling in support of his views. This letter led to a meeting in January of 1909, with Walling and Dr. Henry Moskowitz, a white New York social worker. Together they decided to issue a call for a meeting on “the Negro question.” Oswald Garrison Villard, president of the New York Evening Post Company, was asked to pen the message, which was issued on Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, 1909. Prominent black and white activists were asked to sign the document. Fifty-three people put their name to it. In part the announcement read, “We call upon all believers in democracy to join in a national conference and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.”
Mary Ovington
“We call upon all believers in democracy to join in a national conference and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.”
LIFT EVERY VOICE
Black national anthem composed by James Weldon Johnson and his brother, J. Rosamund Johnson, first performed on Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, 1900.
Between May 31 and June 1 the National Negro Conference met in New York City. Most of the members of the Niagara Movement attended, except for Boston Guardian editor William Monroe Trotter, who mistrusted the intentions of white “do-gooders.” At the meeting, the attendees voted to incorporate as the National Committee for the Advancement of the Negro Race. In the ensuing months this new organization conducted mass meetings across the country, culminating a year later with another convention in New York. At this conference the group changed its name to the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) and became incorporated as a permanent organization. Like the Niagara Movement, this group was committed to equal civil, political, and education rights; the end of segregation; the right to work; and the protection from violence and intimidation. They criticized the enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which guarantee Federal protection of civil rights and the right to vote. (Today, the NAACP continues its advocacy for the extension of civil rights into every corner of American society, and it plays an essential role in promoting social and political change.)
The seeds of racial progress were planted in this decade, the first decade of the twentieth century. Without the selfless courage of men and women like W. E. B. Du Bois, William Monroe Trotter, Robert S. Abbot, Mary White Ovington, and many others, African Americans would have remained marginalized and unacknowledged as major contributors to American life and culture.
The Migrations Series #1, Jacob Lawrence, 1940-1941.
MOVING OUT, FIGHTING BACK
THE GREAT MIGRATION, ORGANIZING FOR FREEDOM, AND WORLD WAR I, 1911 –1920
I pick up my life
And take it away
On a one-way ticket—
Gone up North,
Gone out West,
Gone!
—LANGSTON HUGHES
GONE UP NORTH!
“GENTLEMEN, HAVING ACCEPTED the position of Director of Publicity and Research in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, I hereby place in your hands my resignation,” wrote W. E. B. Du Bois on July 5, 1910, when he resigned his professorship at Atlanta University. With this action, Du Bois packed his bags and moved his family to New York City. His migration North not only helped define the NAACP’s mission, but it also provided an early indication of what was to come in the decade that has been described as the years of the Great Migration.
At the beginning of the decade the NAACP wavered between two possible missions. The first was that it would be an organization run and financed by whites. As such, it would be dedicated to uplifting the civil rights of African Americans. The second option emphasized the interracial quality of the organization. In this vision, people from both sides of the race line would work together to ensure that every citizen, including the nation’s historic minority, claimed equal rights. As Director of Publicity and Research, Du Bois quickly became the voice of the NAACP. What he said was what the organization stood for. When he set up his office in the Evening Post building in lower Manhattan rather than Harlem, Du Bois made it clear to everyone that the NAACP’s mission was one of interracial cooperation and an activist agenda.
Du Bois brought out the first issue of the NAACP’s monthly magazine, the Crisis, on November 1, 1910. In future issues Du Bois intended to highlight the dangers of racial prejudice and support the rights of all people, regardless of race. The Crisis’s first editorial spelled this out:
An NAACP recruitment poster.
[The NAACP] stand[s] for rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize their ideals.
Only 1,000 copies of the first issue of the Crisis were printed. Nevertheless, Du Bois was energized, finally having a forum that appeared regularly to publish his beliefs. He did not waste any time in creating a strong and forceful voice against oppression. By the March issue, the Crisis had become the voice that boldly identified the most pressing civil rights issues — most prominently segregation. “This discriminatory practice arose in three forms: attempts at residential segregation through property-holders’ covenants; efforts toward that end through mob violence; and legislation to force Negroes to live in restricted areas.”
By 1918, the Crisis would be publishing more than 100,000 copies of each issue and would become one of the most influential black publications in the nation.
MOVING FEVER
WHEN THE NAACP established its main office in the North, no one was surprised. The organization could not have survived in the South, where whites used all means — legal and illegal — to suppress independent black voices. The NAACP was not alone, however, in realizing that the North offered blacks wider freedoms than the South. Thousands upon thousands of African Americans took to trains, broken-down trucks, old jalopies with bald tires, and whatever else would take them North.
1920 Crisis political cartoon — “The Reason”
Following the NAACP’s lead, the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, another interracial organization, was formed in 1910 by the merger of three New York–based organizations: the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, the National League for the Protection of Colored Women, and the Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Conditions Among Negroes in New York.
The National Urban League, as it was renamed in 1920, sought to improve the working and living conditions of urban blacks as well as to broaden employment opportunities. The League trained social workers and fought to change housing, health, sanitation, recreation, and employment conditions. The organization was spurred into existence by the abuses that Southern blacks, particularly young black women, encountered by unscrupulous whites who essentially enslaved these newcomers.
The NAACP’s first legal victory was won in 1915 when the Supreme Court declared that “grandfather clauses” in the Oklahoma and Maryland State Constitutions violated the Fifteenth Amendment and were, therefore, null and void. “Grandfather clauses” restricted voting to those who were descendants of persons who had voted prior to 1866. Of course, no blacks voted before 1866.
The attempts of the National Urban League, the NAACP, and other organizations to improve life and work conditions of blacks in Northern cities did not go unnoticed in the South. In fact, there was a steady stream of letters and newspaper articles arriving all over the South from Northerners testifying to the possibility of a better life. However, no one idealized life in the North as perfect. The more common view was one of a clear-eyed assessment of the degrees of bad, a feeling that W. E. B. Du Bois summarized:
“The North is no paradise, but the South is at best a system of caste and insult and, at worst, a hell.”
Fed up with the racism and oppression they experienced daily, blacks all over the South were tantalized by the stories they heard about Northern blacks riding street cars and attending theaters and amusement parks without Jim Crow segregation. One black man who had migrated to Philadelphia wrote home:
I don’t have to “master” every little boy comes along. . . . Since being in the state of Pa I can ride in the electric street and steam cars where I get a seat.
A carpenter who moved to Chicago wrote home to Mississippi:
I was promoted on the first of the month. I should have been here 20 years ago. I just began to feel like a man. My children are going to the same school with whites and I don’t have to umble to no one. I have registered, will vote the next election and there isn’t any ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’ — its all yea and no and Sam and Bill.
A NEW KIND OF SLAVERY
A common practice among employment agencies hiring domestic workers was to make them sign a contract that made it nearly impossible to leave a job, no matter how awful the working conditions. To break the contract meant losing everything the worker owned. The following is a contract from a domestic help agency in Richmond, Virginia.
In consideration of my expenses being paid from Richmond to Philadelphia and a situation provided for me, I agree to give two years services after arrival as a maid to party or persons paying my expenses. And I further agree that all my personal effects may be subject to their order until I have fulfilled that contract, forfeiting all claims to said personal effects after sixty days after this date should I fail to comply with agreement.
Family arriving from the South.
“Every time a lynching takes place in a community down South, you can depend on it that colored people will arrive in Chicago within t
wo weeks.”
— Chicago’s Urban League President T. Arnold Hall
1916 WORK SONG
Boll-weevil in de cotton
Cut worm in de cotton,
Devil in de white man,
Wah’s goin’ on.
The promise of a better life was not the only driving force behind the migration north. In 1915 and 1916, two natural disasters provided deadly blows to the Southern agricultural economy. First, there was a drought, which was followed by rains and floods. Next, a record boll weevil infestation decimated the crops, leaving black laborers and sharecroppers without a harvest two years in a row. These disasters, combined with the racial climate of the South, made it almost impossible for blacks to survive. News from the North, however, was glowing.
One other development was key to inciting the Great Migration — the sharp decrease in European immigrants as a result of World War I. When the war began in 1914, immigrants arriving from Europe numbered 1,218,480. By the next year, the numbers dropped to 326,700, and by 1918, only 110,618 immigrants entered the United States from Europe. This plunge in a large white, unskilled labor force made northern industry desperate for workers. The desperation was doubled when America entered the war in 1917 and four million Americans were conscripted for military service.
WANTED:
Men for laborers and semi-skilled occupation.
Address or apply to employment department.
Westinghouse Electric
&
Manufacturing Co.
From late 1915 onward, recruiting agents for northern industry traveled to the South for laborers. They would offer free railroad tickets or advance the tickets against future wages. Sometimes, trains would just back into small towns and steam away with nearly the entire black population. The jobs being offered up north paid considerably more than those in the South. In the North, the average wage for black workers was between $3.00 and $3.60 per day; steelworkers earned up to $4.50 a day. In the South, black steelworkers in Birmingham, Alabama, made just $2.50 for a back-breaking nine-hour day, and only four percent of all Southern black workers broke the $3.00-a-day ceiling. By 1920, at least 300,000 — possibly many more — African-American farmers, unskilled laborers, and domestics had left the South.