This curriculum unit investigates the great migration of blacks from the rural South to northern industrial cities. This population movement is important for two reasons: first, it is the largest mass movement in America’s history, and, second, it resulted in a dramatic environmental change for black and white Americans. Included in this study are a consideration of post-Civil War and post-reconstruction conditions in the South, a discussion of the reasons for the migration, a description of the transformation in the life of the migrants when they moved from rural to urban areas, a brief history of the rise of Harlem and an evaluation of the results of the migration. This unit has been developed for seventh grade students. The focal point is geography and subject matter adaptable to a regional study of the United States.
For a short time after the Civil War there was some racial tolerance in the South. W.E.B. DuBois in
Black Reconstruction
discusses this period. He denies that blacks were simply given their freedom and documented the claim that they earned and deserved liberty because of their own struggles as Union soldiers. It is estimated that 200,000 blacks served in the Union Army. DuBois called reconstruction a high point in American democracy. According to DuBois, carpetbaggers were depicted as peace corps workers; the Ninth Crusade was made up of northern schoolteachers who went South to instruct freedmen on how to exercise the rights of citizenship, as well as to write, read,and figure.
During this time Negroes held elective offices and were quickly learning to govern by governing. DuBois defended the character and ability of these Negro leaders. However, the election of 1876 and the resulting compromise changed this situation. The Compromise of 1877 had its roots in the growth of industrialism in the New South and the domination of politics by industrial rather than agrarian concerns. This compromise demonstrated the unwillingness on the part of the North and the South to enforce reconstruction and brought the death of the ideals and lessons of the Civil War. Southern state legislatures passed laws to disenfranchise Negroes who had been voting in large numbers. In 1896 there were over 130,000 Negro voters in Louisiana but by 1900, barely 5,000. Ordinances such as the Poll Tax, Grandfather, Good Character and Understanding Clauses were instruments employed to halt Negroes from exercising their rights. These laws were rigged to disqualify Negroes who might risk trying to mark a ballot. Also, the Ku Klux Klan was used to terrorize Negroes, and Klansmen murdered and tortured Negroes to prevent them from voting. They justified lynching because they believed that the black race was inherently inferior to the Caucasian race. By 1910 the Negro was effectively disenfranchised in eight southern states. Thus, at the turn of the century, the Negro’s position in the South reached its lowest point since the days of the Black Codes. T. Thomas Fortune, a black intellectual of the time, . . .“Since history showed industrial condition to be regulated directly and indirectly by the political condition of the people, disenfranchisement caused the economic plight of the Negro.” Intolerable racial conditions mounted partly because of the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896 which legalized rigid segregation.
Negroes became discontented and economic conditions in the South made life more difficult for them. From the 1870’s to the 20th century the South’s economy became unstable. The Depression of 1873 greatly affected the southern farmers. As cotton prices dipped from about 15 cents a pound in the 1870’s to 7 cents a pound in the 80’s, a wave of migration occurred. Some Negroes opted to migrate to Kansas because of railroads, the press, and politicians who had publicized the possibility of instant wealth. This movement became known as the Kansas Exodus. After investigation by a Senate Sub-Committee in 1884, it was concluded that the principal impetus for the migration came from the lower classes and was from one agricultural region to another. Charles S. Johnson concluded in his survey of Negro migration between 1865-1920, “How much is the migration a flight from Persecution”:
Reasons are one thing, motives another...Persecution plays its part—a considerable one. But when the whole of migration is considered, this part seems to be limited. It is indeed more likely that Negroes, like all others with a spark of ambition and self interest, have been deserting soil which cannot yield returns in proportion to their population increase.
1915 was the onset of the great migration of Negroes to Northern cities. At this time the South was suffering from floods and the boll weevil. Both injured the faltering southern economy. Increased mechanization of farms because of the Industrial Revolution displaced many Negroes. The employment picture was bleak because there were no jobs on farms and many unemployed Negroes made their way to cities. Poor whites who had also been displaced from the land got the traditional Negro jobs of elevator operators, busboys, domestics, butlers,and sanitation workers. The South offered little or no economic advancement for Negroes so they sought better conditions elsewhere.
Because of rapid mechanization of factories and the first World War a huge demand for labor developed in northern urban industrial areas. In order to increase factory output to meet orders, northern industrial bosses dispatched labor agents to the South to recruit Negroes. These agents promised Negroes employment and supplied them with free railroad transportation. Despondent blacks seized the opportunity for a new life and began to leave in large numbers. The white ruling class of the South resented this loss of the cheap labor supply. Ordinances were passed to halt the exodus. An example of such a law was the ordinance in Macon, Georgia requiring labor recruiters to pay $25,000 for a license. In December, 1916, one thousand Negroes gathered at the Macon, Georgia, railroad station expecting to leave; instead they were dispersed by the police. Other southern communities stopped trains and prohibited the sale of railroad tickets to blacks; still, large numbers of people fled.
There were two basic flows of people out of the South. One direction was from the Mississippi River to Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Gary, Indiana. These migrants were originally from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. The eastern flow moved northward along the Atlantic coast and followed railroad lines. These people settled in cities such as New York and Philadelphia and were predominantly from Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina,and Florida.
The migrants included some preachers and politicians, but the majority were half-educated or illiterate rural residents too restless and proud to live according to the terms set in the South. Emigration from the eleven states of the old Confederacy skyrocketed from 207,000 in 1900-1910 to 478,000 from 1910-1920. Nearly 800,000 left during the ’20’s and almost 400,000 during the Depression of the 1930’s. Once lines of contact were established between families and friends in these northern cities movement became easier.
Most of the Negroes who moved North crowded into the twelve largest cities. Migration to the large city has always been a painful experience, both to the newly arrived as well as to the established city dwellers. Once the Negro became visible in northern cities, Jim Crow laws were passed barring Negroes from restaurants, theaters, hotels,and stores; the Y.M.C.A. erected Negro branches. In Washington, D.C., the resolution to the race problem was to deny its existence.
Migrants soon discovered that their past rural residence had not prepared them for urban life. Unlike the European immigrant, the Negro was handicapped; he or she was colored. W.E.B. DuBois in
The Philadelphia Negro
, published in 1899, discussed this problem. DuBois observed that an increasing proportion of Negroes were city born and raised but too many occupied the same relative position in society as did their parents and grandparents, because of color prejudice.
Most Negroes found themselves surrounded by prejudice, discrimination and segregation and were forced to reside in the run-down areas of the city. Drake and Cayton in
Black Metropolis
have described the evolution of the Negro community in Chicago
as a growing population that gradually developed a business and professional class and its own community institutions. In the 1880’s Negroes had ethnic dualism regarding themselves as part of a larger community and maintaining connection with those in power. After 1900 Negroes lost their sense of interrelatedness between black and white Chicago and put an emphasis on self-reliance and development of power within the Negro community.
W.E.B. DuBois in the “Social Evolution of the Black South,” (
American Negro Monographs
, I (1911)) writes that the city plays a constructive role in race relations, in spite of segregation. He advanced the thesis that, given the American race system, it was in the city that advancement would occur and that it would take place because of collective solidarity. This statement is provocative when applied to Harlem.
Harlem has been the intellectual and cultural center of American Negroes; it has been called a world in itself, a symbol of liberty. The Harlem Renaissance emerged in this area in 1921 with the musical
Shuffle Along
. At this time blacks became a component in urban living; they held industrial jobs and developed financial resources; some joined the middle class. Because of these reasons race-conscious artists were encouraged to develop works in art, music and literature. The black middle class became interested in aesthetics and promoted and attended Negro productions. These people also created an interest in African motifs and were responsible for the development of interest in black African backgrounds. The Depression erased the advancements made during the renaissance. Historically the renaissance ended with the Harlem Riot of 1935, but the death in literature was announced when Richard Wright published
Uncle Tom’s Children
in 1938. One critic has said the Harlem riot of 1935 was a symbolic act marking the death of the myth of a gay Harlem. Of course, Negroes would have developed more economically, culturally and politically had there not been an American race system. The achievements made however, were rooted in the value of self-reliance and group solidarity.
Harlem is a section of Manhattan, New York, and is a community within another geographic community. By World War I Harlem had become predominantly Negro. The greatest influx of blacks occurred between 1920-1930. By 1930 there were more Negroes in New York than in Birmingham, Alabama, Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri. The chart below documents the migration to Harlem and refers to the backgrounds of migrants.
Born in
|
Virginia
|
44,471
|
New Jersey
|
5,275
|
Tennessee
|
1,651
|
|
South Carolina
|
33,765
|
Washington, D.C.
|
3,358
|
Texas
|
1,282
|
|
North Carolina
|
26,120
|
Alabama
|
3,205
|
Kentucky
|
1,216
|
|
Georgia
|
19,546
|
Massachusetts
|
2,329
|
Mississippi
|
969
|
|
Florida
|
8,249
|
Louisiana
|
2,182
|
Foreign Born
|
54,754
|
|
Maryland
|
6,656
|
Ohio
|
1,721
|
This heterogeneous Negro population resulted in a community with a diversification of ideas, values, and beliefs. Migration into Harlem by Negroes coincided with the movement of whites to New York’s other boroughs. Between 1920Ð1930, 118,792 whites left Harlem and 87,417 Negroes entered. By 1930 72% of Manhattan’s Negro population resided in Harlem.
Harlem also became a haven for immigrants from twelve Caribbean islands. Immigration from the Caribbean was easy because no quota system was applied by the Bureau of Immigration. By 1930, 25% of Harlem’s population consisted of Caribbean immigrants. The islanders also resented America’s race system but their presence resulted frequently in intraracial antagonism. Caribbean immigrants unified into groups whose aim was to alleviate racial tensions. Three of the groups were The West Indian Reform Association, The West Indian Committee on America and the Foreign Born Citizen’s Alliance. The aim of these groups was never fully realized because intraracial antagonism was never overcome.
The Harlem area deteriorated during the Depression, which, as we have seen caused the demise of the renaissance. At this time average earnings for Negroes in Harlem were lower than for whites in New York; inferior wages resulted in an inability to adequately supply life’s necessities. An Urban League survey conducted at the onset of the Depression showed that realty values in Harlem were appreciating while depreciating elsewhere. This resulted in Harlem residents’ paying more for rent than did residents in other Manhattan boroughs. 33% of a Harlemite’s paid earnings was used for rent while elsewhere whites paid 20%.
Housing in Harlem had been erected for people with different cultures and family structures; 75% of the dwellings were built pre-1900. The average apartment had five to seven rooms and was intended for large families. Black migrants were younger and in need of smaller residences. In order to survive, during the 30’s, one in four blacks commercialized the large apartments. Many times rooms were sublet to strangers who were immoral and undesirable. Sometimes rent parties were held so that occupants of these large dwellings might not be evicted.
Life in Harlem was difficult. Because of segregation some Negroes formed their own businesses to serve black patrons. These businesses emphasized racial solidarity to solve black problems and encouraged a society in which Negroes could live untouched by discrimination, thereby undertaking an elevation process without white assistance or interference. These businesses had a difficult time surviving because of the social and economic conditions in Harlem which occurred during the Depression. Harlem never again recovered the glory of the renaissance and emerged as and remained a slum. A slum is defined as a poor, densely populated area of a city. Yet, even in decadence, the Negro urban resident had become resourceful and proud, had made cultural and political achievements, and had denounced American racism. The following quotation by a nineteen-year-old male Harlem resident summarized the purpose of this unit.
I would like to see the day when my people have dignity and pride in themselves as black people. And when this comes about, when they realize that we are capable of all things and can do anything under the sun that a man can do, then all these things will come about—equality, great people, presidents—everything.
Migrants demanded their rights, became aware of their ancestry and identified with Africa; at the same time they regarded blacks as a part of America.
Today, 97% of the blacks in America reside in urban areas. However, a new trend has developed in some northern cities; some blacks are returning to the South. Although this is not true of all northeastern states, in Connecticut blacks are moving out faster than they are entering. A total of 10,300 more blacks moved out of Connecticut than into the state between the 1970 census and mid-1975, according to new figures on the racial composition of the population recently released by the Census Bureau. Connecticut’s net out-migration—5.7% of the state’s total black population—was the highest proportion of blacks moving out of any of the fifty states. Connecticut did not have a total loss of black population in 1970-75, however, because there were 17,000 more births than deaths among black residents who remained. The black population of Connecticut grew by 6,700—the difference between 17,000 excess births over deaths and the net outward migration figure of 10,300. In Connecticut’s case, blacks left because of the high cost of living and unemployment. Also, some Connecticut industries have relocated in southern areas. One example is the Seam Co., originally a New Haven factory, which moved to Atlanta, Georgia, because of lower production costs in the South.
