Leaving the South Behind
Proceeding chronologically, this unit will start with The Great Migration, a period between 1910 and 1930 when a large number of African-Americans left agrarian jobs in the southern United States to pursue industrial work in the northern U.S., particularly in the mid-west.
This migration was driven by a desire commonly referred to as "bettering my condition" – in other words, seeking a better life not driven by just economic opportunity but also social equality.
African-Americans sought to head north to escape uneven economic situations, perpetuated by practices such as sharecropping and Jim Crow laws. Additionally, the north had a reputation as being free of prejudice, which undoubtedly was appealing to the victims of institutionalized discrimination.
African-Americans in the US referred to this combination of institutionalized and unofficial discrimination as the "Dixie Limit," a barrier that prevented African-Americans from gaining true economic independence and thus true equality.
Modern-day students will probably also be acquainted with such a concept, though probably not by that name. Students will be encouraged to brainstorm and articulate examples of formal and informal barriers that limit upward achievement for race, class, and gender.
Students will examine a number of primary sources that discuss factors driving the Great Migration, including:
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- William Jones' (District Superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Alabama) list of what keep a prospective migrant in the South
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- Black poet James Weldon Johnson's poem "O Southland!"
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- Blues singer Bessie Smith's "Chicago-Bound Blues" (Smith herself left the south behind to move to Chicago)
It would be beneficial for students to compare the lyrics of songs about leaving the South (like "Chicago-Bound Blues" or "Detroit-Bound Blues") to letters written by people who had left the south looking for work. What sentiments do they have in common? What is different about what they express?
Students will also learn place of music in the South's daily work routine, including work songs as described in Levine's "Black Culture and Consciousness," as dictating the rhythm of manual labor "a series of spurts rather than by a steady daily grind." For example, workers laying railroad ties maintained a steady rhythm in their workflow by maintaining a steady rhythm sing the work song "Raise the Iron": Down the railroad, urn-huh Well, raise the iron, urn-huh Raise the iron, um-huh."
The song "Po Lazarus" on the soundtrack to the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou?" provides an excellent example (as to many other recordings of work songs) in that the sound of tools being used provides a clearly audible steady beat.
Jazz musician Big Bill Broonzy explained the process: when he was employed as a laborer laying railroad ties in Mississippi between 1912 and 1915, a line worker who needed to take a break would signal the leader, who would "sing it to the boss." On the boss's approval, the leader would sing, "Everybody lay their bar down, it's one to go." When the worker returned, the leader would sing "All men to their places like horses in their traces" and thus resume their work.
Blues musician Muddy Waters recounted that a man would sing even to a mule if he were working alone.
Land of Hope: Chicago
Students will then examine the reality of African-American migrants to Chicago, focusing on primary sources:
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-- Langston Hughes, in his autobiography: "South State Street was in its glory then, a teeming Negro street with crowded theaters, restaurants, and cabarets. And excitement from noon to noon. Midnight was like day. The street was full of workers and gamblers, prostitutes and pimps, church folks and sinners."
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-- First-hand letters from recent migrants to Chicago, in particular:
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- One recent arrival's recount of being able to address a white police officer directly
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- Another recent arrival's description of being able to sit next to a white man in a train without remark
Although some letters expressed misfortune and regret, the balance of positive comments on the whole indicate that moving north was a positive experience for most African-American southerners.
Students will be challenged to speculate as to whether the articles are written with the goal of being honest or from a desire to impress (or placate) friends and family who remained behind in the south. Students will write a letter "back home" from the viewpoint of a recent migrant to Chicago, expressing:
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- Why they left
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- A description of the city when they arrived
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- Their current situation
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- Whether or not they would advise others to come up and why
Music in Chicago
Since this is, after all, a music class, students will spend time learning how the African-American migration to the north affected the ways in which African-Americans made music.
Jazz musicians had their own support network for new arrivals, including a cluster of recording companies in the 1920's. Episode 2 of Ken Burns' PBS documentary on jazz provides more information on the Great Migration.
Chicago also provided a place for socializing across racial lines: the black and tan clubs. Black and tan clubs provided places where whites and blacks could drink together and dance to music. These clubs are noteworthy because even though Chicago (and other northern cities like New York) the combination of alcohol, "exotic" jazz music, dancing, and interracial mingling gave black and tan clubs a somewhat notorious reputation.
The clubs also illustrate Chicago's complicated history with segregation. Although the city was much less segregated than cities in the South, the increasing African-American population and the return of war veterans (whose absences had created many of the jobs African-American migrants filled) led to racial tension and segregation in housing and some public areas. One such incident on a segregated beach led to the five-day long 1919 Chicago Riots.
Chicago blues
Southern migrants brought with them their music, a form of the blues now referred to as "delta blues" or "Mississippi blues" (many migrants brought their music in the literal sense – Chicago blues musicians Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Jimmy Reed all moved to Chicago from the Mississippi region). Alan Lomax did much work to document and catalog the different regional varieties of southern blues, and students will examine his work (the character of Alan Lomax also briefly makes an appearance in the movie Cadillac Records, which tells a dramatized version of Chess Records, a record label owned by Polish immigrants that did much to popularize and commercialize blues and other African-American music).
Once in Chicago, blues musicians ran through instruments through amplifiers and PA systems to be audible over raucous rent parties. This music was popularized and commercialized by record labels and sold to audiences—and took off in the UK, where it was consumed by teenagers who would later create rock and roll.
