Negro Migration during the War
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Title: Negro Migration during the War
Author: Emmett J. Scott
Release date: July 24, 2009 [eBook #29501]
Language: English
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NEGRO MIGRATION DURING THE WAR
EMMETT J. SCOTT
FOREWORD
In the preparation of this study I have had the encouragement and
support of Dr. Robert R. Moton, Principal of the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute, Alabama, who generously placed at my disposal
the facilities of the Institute's Division of Records and Research,
directed by Mr. Monroe N. Work, the editor of the _Negro Year Book_.
Mr. Work has cooperated with me in the most thoroughgoing manner. I
have also had the support of the National League on Urban Conditions
and particularly of the Chicago branch of which Dr. Robert E. Park
is President and of which Mr. T. Arnold Hill is Secretary. Mr. Hill
placed at my disposal his first assistant, Mr. Charles S. Johnson,
graduate student of the University of Chicago, to whom I am greatly
indebted. I must also make acknowledgment of my indebtedness to Dr.
Carter G. Woodson, Director of the Association for the Study of Negro
Life and History, Incorporated, Washington, D.C., for placing at my
disposal the facilities of his organization.
The work of investigation was divided up by assigning Mr. Work to
Alabama, Georgia and Florida; Mr. Johnson to Mississippi and to
centers in Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, while the
eastern centers were assigned to Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, Trenton, New
Jersey, a former editor of the _New York Age_, and a publicist and
investigator of well known ability. It is upon the reports submitted
by these investigators that this study rests. I can not speak too
warmly of the enthusiastic and painstaking care with which these
men have labored to secure the essential facts with regard to the
migration of the negro people from the South.
Emmett J. Scott.
Washington, D.C.,
_June 5, 1919._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I Introduction 3
II Causes of the Migration 13
III Stimulation of the Movement 26
IV The Spread of the Movement 38
V The Call of the Self-Sufficient North 49
VI The Draining of the Black Belt 59
VII Efforts to Check the Movement 72
VIII Effects of the Movement on the South 86
IX The Situation in St. Louis 95
X Chicago and Its Environs 102
XI The Situation at Points in the Middle West 119
XII The Situation at Points in the East 134
XIII Remedies for Relief by National Organizations 143
XIV Public Opinion Regarding the Migration 152
Bibliography 175
Index 185
NEGRO MIGRATION DURING THE WAR
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Within the brief period of three years following the outbreak of the
great war in Europe, more than four hundred thousand negroes suddenly
moved north. In extent this movement is without parallel in American
history, for it swept on thousands of the blacks from remote regions
of the South, depopulated entire communities, drew upon the negro
inhabitants of practically every city of the South, and spread from
Florida to the western limits of Texas. In character it was not
without precedent. In fact, it bears such a significant resemblance to
the migration to Kansas in 1879 and the one to Arkansas and Texas
in 1888 and 1889 that this of 1916-1917 may be regarded as the same
movement with intervals of a number of years.
Strange as it might seem the migration of 1879 first attracted general
notice when the accusation was brought that it was a political scheme
to transplant thousands of negro voters from their disfranchisement
in the South to States where their votes might swell the Republican
majority. Just here may be found a striking analogy to one of the
current charges brought against the movement nearly forty years later.
The congressional inquiry which is responsible for the discovery of
the fundamental causes of the movement was occasioned by this charge
and succeeded in proving its baselessness.[1]
The real causes of the migration of 1879 were not far to seek.
The economic cause was the agricultural depression in the lower
Mississippi Valley. But by far the most potent factor in effecting
the movement was the treatment received by negroes at the hands of the
South. More specifically, as expressed by the leaders of the movement
and refugees themselves, they were a long series of oppression,
injustice and violence extending over a period of fifteen years; the
convict system by which the courts are permitted to inflict heavy
fines for trivial offenses and the sheriff to hire the convicts to
planters on the basis of peonage; denial of political rights; long
continued persecution for political reasons; a system of cheating by
landlords and storekeepers which rendered it impossible for tenants
to make a living, and the inadequacy of school facilities.[2] Sworn
public documents show that nearly 3,500 persons, most of whom were
negroes, were killed between 1866 and 1879, and their murderers were
never brought to trial or even arrested. Several massacres of
negroes occurred in the parishes of Louisiana. Henry Adams, traveling
throughout the State and taking note of crime committed against
negroes, said that 683 colored men were whipped, maimed or murdered
within eleven years.[3]
In the year 1879, therefore, thousands of negroes from Mississippi,
Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina moved to
Kansas. Henry Adams of Shreveport, Louisiana, an uneducated negro
but a man of extraordinary talent, organized that year a colonization
council. He had been a soldier in the United States Army until 1869
when he returned to his home in Louisiana and found the condition of
negroes intolerable. Together with a number of other negroes he first
formed a committee which in his own words was intended to "look into
affairs and see the true condition of our race, to see whether it was
possible we could stay under a people who held us in bondage or not."
This committee grew to the enormous size of five hundred members. One
hundred and fifty of these members were scattered throughout the South
to live and work among the negroes and report their observations.
These agents quickly reached the conclusion that the treatment the
negroes received was generally unbearable.[4] Some of the conditions
reported were that land rent was still high; that in the part of the
country where the committee was organized the people were still being
whipped, some of them by their former owners; that they were cheated
out of their crops and that in some parts of the country where they
voted they were being shot.
It was decided about 1877 that all hope and confidence that conditions
could be changed should be abandoned. Members of this committee felt
that they could no longer remain in the South, and decided to leave
even if they "had to run away and go into the woods." Membership in
the council was solicited with the result that by 1878 there were
ninety-eight thousand persons from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and
Texas belonging to the colonization council and ready to move.[5]
About the same time there was another conspicuous figure working in
Tennessee--Benjamin or "Pap" Singleton, who styled himself the father
of the exodus. He began the work of inducing negroes to move to the
State of Kansas about 1869, founded two colonies and carried a total
of 7,432 blacks from Tennessee. During this time he paid from his own
pocket over $600 for circulars which he distributed throughout the
southern States. "The advantages of living in a free State" were the
inducements offered.[6]
The movement spread as far east as North Carolina. There a similar
movement was started in 1872 when there were distributed a number of
circulars from Nebraska telling of the United States government and
railroad lands which could be cheaply obtained. This brief excitement
subsided, but was revived again by reports of thousands of negroes
leaving the other States of the South for Kansas. Several hundred of
these migrants from North Carolina were persuaded en route to change
their course and go to Indiana.[7]
Much excitement characterized the movement. One description of this
exodus says:
Homeless, penniless and in rags, these poor people were
thronging the wharves of St. Louis, crowding the steamers
on the Mississippi River, hailing the passing steamers and
imploring them for a passage to the land of freedom, where the
rights of citizens are respected and honest toil rewarded by
honest compensation. The newspapers were filled with accounts
of their destitution, and the very air was burdened with the
cry of distress from a class of American citizens flying from
persecution which they could no longer endure. Their piteous
tales of outrage, suffering and wrong touched the hearts of
the more fortunate members of their race in the North and
West, and aid societies, designed to afford temporary relief
and composed almost wholly of colored people, were organized
in Washington, St. Louis, Topeka and various other places.[8]
Men still living, who participated in this movement, tell of the long
straggling procession of migrants, stretching to the length at times
of from three to five miles, crossing States on foot. Churches were
opened all along the route to receive them. Songs were composed, some
of which still linger in the memory of survivors. The hardships under
which they made this journey are pathetic. Yet it is estimated that
nearly 25,000 negroes left their homes for Kansas.[9]
The exodus during the World War, like both of these, was fundamentally
economic, though its roots were entangled in the entire social system
of the South. It was hailed as the "Exodus to the Promised Land" and
characterized by the same frenzy and excitement. Unlike the Kansas
movement, it had no conspicuous leaders of the type of the renowned
"Pap" Singleton and Henry Adams. Apparently they were not needed. The
great horde of restless migrants swung loose from their acknowledged
leaders. The very pervasiveness of the impulse to move at the first
definite call of the North was sufficient to stir up and carry away
thousands before the excitement subsided.
Despite the apparent suddenness of this movement, all evidence
indicates that it is but the accentuation of a process which has
been going on for more than fifty years. So silently indeed has this
shifting of the negro population taken place that it has quite escaped
popular attention. Following the decennial revelation of the census
there is a momentary outburst of dismay and apprehension at the
manifest trend in the interstate migration of negroes. Inquiries into
the living standards of selected groups of negroes in large cities
antedating the migration of 1916-1917 have revealed from year to year
an increasing number of persons of southern birth whose length of
residence has been surprisingly short. The rapid increase in the negro
population of the cities of the North bears eloquent testimony to this
tendency. The total increase in the negro population between 1900 and
1910 was 11.2 per cent. In the past fifty years the northern movement
has transferred about 4 per cent of the entire negro population; and
the movement has taken place in spite of the negro's economic handicap
in the North. Within the same period Chicago increased her negro
population 46.3 per cent and Columbus, Ohio, 55.3 per cent. This
increase was wholly at the expense of the South, for the rural
communities of the North are very sparsely populated with negroes
and the increment accruing from surplus birth over deaths is almost
negligible.[10]
When any attempt is made to estimate the volume of this most recent
movement, however, there is introduced a confusing element, for it can
not definitely be separated from a process which has been in operation
since emancipation. Another difficulty in obtaining reliable
estimates is the distribution of the colored population over the rural
districts. It is next to impossible to estimate the numbers leaving
the South even on the basis of the numbers leaving the cities. The
cities are merely concentration points and they are continually
recruiting from the surrounding rural districts. It might be stated
that 2,000 negroes left a certain city. As a matter of fact, scarcely
half that number were residents of the city. The others had moved in
because it was easier to leave for the North from a large city, and
there was a greater likelihood of securing free transportation or
traveling with a party of friends. It is conservatively stated, for
example, that Birmingham, Alabama, lost 38,000 negroes. Yet within
a period of three months the negro population had assumed its usual
proportions again.[11] Prior to the present migration of negroes,
there was somewhat greater mobility on the part of the white than on
the part of the negro population. As for example, according to
the census of 1910 of 68,070,294 native whites, 10,366,735 or 15.2 per
cent were living in some other division than that in which they were
born. Of 9,746,043 native negroes reported by the census of 1930,
963,153 or 9.9 per cent were living outside the division of birth.[12]
Previous to the present migration, the south Atlantic and the east
south central divisions were the only ones which had suffered a direct
loss in population through the migration of negroes.[13]
The census of 1910 brought out the fact that there had been
considerable migration from the North to the South, as well as from
the South to the North, and from the East to the West. The number of
persons born in the North and living in the South (1,449,229) was not
very different from the number born in the South and living in the
North (1,527,107). The North, however, has contributed more than five
times as many to the population of the West as the South has. The
number of negroes born in the South and living in the North in 1910
was 415,533, or a little over two-thirds of the total number living in
the North. Of the 9,109,153 negroes born in the South, 440,534, or 4.8
per cent, were, in 1910, living outside the South.[14] The migration
southward it will be noted, has been in recent years largely into the
west south central division, while the migration northward has been
more evenly distributed by divisions, except that a comparatively
small number from the South have gone into the New England States.[15]
The greater mobility of whites than of negroes is shown by the fact
that in 1910, 15 per cent of the whites and 10 per cent of the negroes
lived outside of the States in which they were born. This greater
mobility of the whites as compared with the negroes was due in a large
measure to the lack of opportunities for large numbers of negroes
to find employment in the sections outside the South. The World War
changed these conditions and gave to the negroes of the United States
the same opportunities for occupations in practically every section of
the country, which had heretofore been enjoyed only by the whites. In
1900, 27,000 negroes born in the North lived in the South. In 1910,
41,000 negroes born in the North lived in the South. This indicated
that there was beginning to be a considerable movement of negroes from
the North to the South because of the greater opportunities in the
South to find employment in teaching, medicine and business. The
migration conditions brought about by the war have probably changed
this to some extent. Previous to the World War, the States having
the greatest gain from negro migration were Arkansas, 105,500,
Pennsylvania, 85,000, Oklahoma, 85,000, Florida, 84,000, New York,
58,450 and Illinois, 57,500.
The point brought out here indicates that because of economic
opportunities, Arkansas and Oklahoma, being contiguously situated in
one section of the South and Florida in another section of the South,
had received a greater migration of negroes than any State in the
North.
Dr. William Oscar Scroggs of Louisiana calls attention to the tendency
of negroes to move within the South, although, as, he points out, this
tendency is not as great as it is for the whites. On this he says:
The negro shows a tendency, not only to move northward, but
also to move about very freely within the South. In fact, the
region registering the largest net gain of negroes in 1910
from this interstate movement was the west south central
division (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas) which
showed a gain from this source of 194,658. The middle Atlantic
division came second with a gain of 186,384, and the east
north central third with a gain of 119,649. On the other hand,
the south Atlantic States showed a loss of 392,827, and the
east south central States a loss of 200,876 from interstate
migration. While the negroes have shown this marked
inclination toward interstate movement, they nevertheless
exhibit this tendency in less degree than do the whites.[16]
The subjoined tables show the intersectional migration of the negro
population:
INTERSECTIONAL MIGRATION OF NEGROES
(As Reported by Census of 1910)
Number Born in Specified Divisions and Living In or Out of These Divisions
-------------------+---------------+---------------------+----------------
Number Living: Per Cent Living
+---------------------+ Without
Total Born in the Division
Division the Division Within Without in Which
Division Division Born
-------------------+---------------+----------+----------+----------------
United States 9,746,043 8,782,890 963,153 9.9
New England 37,799 30,815 6,984 18.5
Middle Atlantic 212,145 189,962 22,183 10.5
East North Central 173,226 145,187 28,039 16.2
West North Central 198,116 162,054 36,062 18.2
South Atlantic 4,487,313 4,039,173 448,140 10.0
East South Central 2,844,598 2,491,607 352,991 12.4
West South Central 1,777,242 1,713,888 63,354 3.6
Mountain 7,342 4,122 3,220 43.9
Pacific 8,262 6,082 2,180 26.4
-------------------+---------------+----------+----------+----------------
Number Living in Specified Divisions
-------------------+---------------+------------+-------------+--------------
Number Number Per Cent
Total Living Born in and Living in Living in
Division in the Living in the Division Division
Division the Division Born in Other Born in Other
Divisions Divisions
-------------------+---------------+------------+-------------+--------------
United States 9,746,043 8,782,890 963,153 9.9
New England 58,109 30,815 27,294 47.0
Middle Atlantic 398,529 189,962 208,567 52.3
East North Central 292,875 145,187 147,688 50.4
West North Central 238,613 162,054 76,559 32.1
South Atlantic 4,094,486 4,039,173 55,313 1.4
East South Central 2,643,722 2,491,607 152,115 5.8
West South Central 1,971,900 1,713,888 258,012 13.1
Mountain 20,571 4,122 16,449 80.0
Pacific 27,238 6,082 21,156 77.7
-------------------+---------------+------------+-------------+--------------
Migration North to South, South to North and East to West
-----------------+-----------+-------------------------------+-----------------
Born in: State of
----------+----------+---------+ Birth not
Total The North The South The West Reported
Race and Section Native or Born in
of Residence Population Possessions, etc.
-----------------+-----------+----------+----------+---------+-----------------
All Races
United States 78,456,380 46,179,002 29,010,255 2,906,162 360,961
The North 44,390,371 42,526,162 1,527,107 124,001 213,101
The South 28,649,319 1,449,229 27,079,282 38,230 82,578
The West 5,416,690 2,203,611 403,866 2,743,931 65,282
White
United States 68,386,412 45,488,942 19,814,860 2,766,492 316,118
The North 43,319,193 41,891,353 1,110,245 116,939 200,656
The South 19,821,249 1,407,262 18,326,236 34,523 53,228
The West 5,245,970 2,190,327 378,379 2,615,030 62,234
Negro
United States 9,787,424 621,286 9,109,153 15,604 41,381
The North 999,451 570,298 415,533 2,295 11,325
The South 8,738,858 39,077 8,668,619 2,412 28,750
The West 49,115 11,911 25,001 10,897 1,306
-----------------+-----------+----------+----------+---------+-----------------
Net Migration Eastward and Westward and Northward and Southward
-------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Population, 1910
+---------+------------------------------+-------+-----
Total White Negro All
+---------+---------+----------+ Other
Total Of Native Of Foreign
Parentage or Mixed
Section Parentage
-------------------+---------+---------+---------+----------+-------+-----
Born east and
living west of
the Mississippi
River 5,276,879 4,941,529 3,846,940 1,094,589 331,031 4,319
Born west and
living east of the
Mississippi River 684,773 616,939 417,541 199,398 63,671 4,163
---------+---------+---------+----------+-------+------
Net migration
westward across the
Mississippi River 4,592,106 4,324,590 3,429,399 895,191 267,360 156
Born North and
living South 1,449,229 1,407,262 1,156,122 251,140 39,077 2,890
Born South and
living North 1,527,107 1,110,245 944,572 165,673 415,533 1,329
---------+---------+---------+----------+-------+------
Net migration
southward 297,017 211,550 85,467 1,561
Net migration
northward 77,878 376,456
-------------------+---------+---------+---------+----------+-------+------
[Footnote 1: _Congressional Record_, 46th Cong., 2d sess., vol. X, p.
104.]
[Footnote 2: _Atlantic Monthly_, LXIV, p. 222; _Nation_, XXVIII, pp.
242, 386.]
[Footnote 3: Williams, _History of the Negro Race_, II, p. 375.]
[Footnote 4: _Atlantic Monthly_, LXIV, p. 222.]
[Footnote 5: Williams, _History of the Negro Race_, II, p. 375.]
[Footnote 6: W.L. Fleming, "Pap Singleton, the Moses of the Colored
Exodus," _American Journal of Sociology_, chapter XV, pp. 61-82.]
[Footnote 7: _Congressional Record_, Senate Reports, 693, part II,
46th Cong., 2d sess.]
[Footnote 8: _American Journal of Social Science_, XI, pp. 22-35.]
[Footnote 9: Ibid., p. 23.]
[Footnote 10: _The Censuses of the United States_.]
[Footnote 11: Ibid.]
[Footnote 12: Vol. I, census of 1910, Population, General Report and
Analysis, p. 693.]
[Footnote 13: Ibid., p. 694.]
[Footnote 14: Ibid., p. 698.]
[Footnote 15: Vol. 1, 1910 census, Population, General Report and
Analysis, p. 699.]
[Footnote 16: Scroggs, "Interstate Migration of Negro Population,"
_Journal of Political Economy_, December, 1917, p. 1040.]
CHAPTER II
CAUSES OF THE MIGRATION
It seems particularly desirable in any study of the causes of the
movement to get beneath the usual phraseology on the subject and
find, if possible, the basis of the dissatisfaction, and the social,
political and economic forces supporting it. It seems that most of
the causes alleged were present in every section of the South, but
frequently in a different order of importance. The testimony of the
migrants themselves or of the leading white and colored men of the
South was in general agreement. The chief points of disagreement were
as to which causes were fundamental. The frequency with which the same
causes were given by different groups is an evidence of their reality.
A most striking feature of the northern migration was its
individualism. This factor after all, however, was economic. The
motives prompting the thousands of negroes were not always the
same, not even in the case of close neighbors. As a means of making
intelligible these complicating factors it is necessary to watch
the process as it affected the several migrants. The economic motive
stands among the foremost reasons for the decision of the group to
leave the South. There are several ways of arriving at a conclusion
regarding the economic forces. These factors might, for example, be
determined by the amount of unemployment or the extent of poverty in a
community as registered by the prosperity. These facts are important,
but may or may not account wholly for individual action. Except in a
few localities of the South there was no actual misery and starvation.
Nor is it evident that those who left would have perished from want
had they remained. Discontent became more manifest as comparisons were
made between the existing state of things at home and a much better
state of things elsewhere. It is possible to note in the appeals of
the letters a suggestion of a desire simply to improve their living
standards so long as there was an opportunity. In the case of some
there is expressed a praiseworthy providence for their families; and
in others may be found an index to the poverty and hopelessness of
their home communities. In this type of migration the old order is
strangely reversed. Large numbers of negroes have frequently moved
around from State to State and even within the States of the South in
search of more remunerative employment. A movement to the West or even
about in the South could have proceeded from the same cause, as in the
case of the migration to Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Among the immediate economic causes of the migration were the labor
depression in the South in 1914 and 1915 and the large decrease in
foreign immigration resulting from the World War. Then came the cotton
boll weevil in the summers of 1915 and 1916, greatly damaging the
cotton crop over considerable area, largely in Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama, Georgia and Florida, and threatening greatly to unsettle
farming conditions in the year 1917.[17] There followed then the
cotton price demoralization and the low price of this product during
subsequent years. The unusual floods during the summer of 1915 over
large sections in practically the same States further aggravated the
situation. The negroes, moreover, were generally dissatisfied because
of the continued low wages which obtained in the South in spite of the
increasing cost of living. Finally, there was a decided decrease in
foreign immigration. The result was a great demand in the North for
the labor of the negro at wages such as he had never received.[18]
To understand further the situation in the South at the beginning of
the migration and just prior to it, attention should be directed to
the fact that the practice of mortgaging the cotton crop before it
is produced made sudden reversals--an inevitable result of such
misfortune as followed the boll weevil and the floods. Thousands
of landlords were forced to dismiss their tenants and close the
commissaries from which came the daily rations. Some planters in
Alabama and Mississippi advised their tenants to leave and even
assisted them. The banks and merchants refused to extend credit when
cotton was no longer to be had as a security. As a consequence, a
great number of tenants were left without productive work, money or
credit. A host of idle persons thrown suddenly on the labor market
could have no other effect than to create an excess in the cities to
which they flocked, make laborers easily replaceable, and consequently
reduce wages. A southern paper in commenting on this situation
declared "there is nothing for this excess population to do. These
people must live on the workers, making the workers poorer ... if
there is a tap that will draw off the idle population, that will be a
good thing for the cities at least."[19]
The circumstances of unemployment which contributed so largely to the
restless mood in some sections of the South was due primarily to a
lack of sufficient capital to support labor during the lean seasons.
This meant, of course, that the cotton pests and storms that played
havoc with whole sections rendered helpless all classes of the
population. The usual method of handling labor, especially on the
cotton plantations, was for the planter to maintain his hands from the
commissary during the fall and early winter in order that they might
be convenient for the starting and cultivation of a new crop. But with
their last year's crop lost, their credit gone and the prospects of a
new crop very shadowy, there was left no other course but to dismiss
the people whom they could not support.
For a long time southern farmers had been importuned to adopt a more
diversified method of farming to offset the effects of unexpected
misfortune in the cotton industry and to preserve the value of the
soil. Following the ravages of the boll weevil, the idea gained
wide application. The cotton acreage was cut down and other crops
substituted. The cultivation of cotton requires about five times
as many laborers as the cultivation of corn and the work is fairly
continuous for a few employes throughout the year. Additional
unemployment for negro tenant farmers was an expected result of this
diversification. The greatest immediate disadvantage to negro planters
and small farmers resulting from the failure of the cotton crops was
the lack of money and credit to sustain them while the corn and velvet
beans were being grown. It was for like reasons impracticable to
attempt to raise stock, for there was no means of making a beginning,
as a certain amount of capital was prerequisite.
Despite the fact that food prices began to rise with the war, wages
advanced very slowly. In 1915, wages of farm laborers in the
South averaged around 75 cents a day. In the towns the principal
opportunities for employment were in the oil mills, lumber mills,
cotton compresses, railroad shops and domestic service. In the mills
and shops the average of wages ranged from $1 to $1.50 a day. The
wages of such skilled laborers as carpenters and bricklayers ranged
from $2 to $3.50 a day. In domestic service women received from $1.50
to $3 per week and board. Men in domestic service received on an
average of $5 a week.[20]
In spite of these conditions in the South it might appear strange that
not until fifty years after the privilege was granted negroes to
go where they pleased did they begin to make a sudden rush for the
northern States. Stranger still does it seem that, despite the fairly
general agreement among southern negroes that the North affords
greater personal liberty, is less prejudiced to individuals because of
the color of their skins, grants to negroes something nearer to open
handed justice, participation in the government, wider privileges
and freer associations, there should be in 1910 scarcely more than
one-tenth of the negro population where these reputed advantages are.
The North has been looked upon as the "Promised Land," the "Ark of
Safety," the "House of Refuge" for all these years. A common reason
recently advanced by the majority of southern negroes for the
abandonment of their homes was the desire to escape from the
oppressive social system of their section. Why have they not escaped
before? The answer lies in the very hard fact that, though the North
afforded larger privileges, it would not support negroes. It was the
operation of an inexorable economic law, confused with a multitude of
social factors, that pushed them back to the soil of the South despite
their manifest desire to leave it.
None of the causes was more effective than that of the opportunity
to earn a better living. Wages offered in the North were double and
treble those received in the South. Women who received $2.50 a week
in domestic service could earn from $2.10 to $2.50 a day and men
receiving $1.10 and $1.25 a day could earn from $2.50 to $3.75 a day
in the various industries in the North.[21] An intensive study of the
migration to Pittsburgh, made by Mr. Abraham Epstein, gives an idea of
the difference in wages paid in the North and the South. His findings
may be quoted: "The great mass of workers get higher wages here than
in the places from which they come. Fifty-six per cent received less
than two dollars a day in the South, while only five per cent received
such wages in Pittsburgh." Sixty-two per cent received between $2 and
$3 per day in Pittsburgh as compared with 25 per cent in the South,
and 28 per cent received between $3 and $3.60 in this city as compared
with four per cent in the South.
The inability to educate their children properly because of the
inadequacy of school facilities was another cause which has been
universally given for leaving the South.[22] The basis for this
frequently voiced complaint is well set forth in the study of _Negro
Education_ by Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones.[23]
The inadequacy of the elementary school system for colored
children is indicated both by the comparisons of public
appropriations already given and by the fact that the
attendance in both public and private schools is only 58.1 per
cent of the children six to fourteen years of age. The average
length of the public school term is less than five months in
practically all of the southern States. Most of the school
buildings, especially those in the rural districts, are in
wretched condition. There is little supervision and little
effort to improve the schools or adapt their efforts to the
needs of the community. The reports of the State Departments
of Georgia and Alabama indicate that 70 per cent of the
colored teachers have third grade or temporary certificates,
representing a preparation less than that usually given in
the first eight elementary grades. Investigations made by
supervisors of colored schools in other States indicate that
the percentage of poorly prepared colored teachers is almost
as high in the other southern States.
The supervisor of white elementary rural schools in one of the
States recently wrote concerning negro schools: "I never
visit one of these (negro) schools without feeling that we are
wasting a large part of this money and are neglecting a great
opportunity. The negro schoolhouses are miserable beyond all
description. They are usually without comfort, equipment,
proper lighting or sanitation. Nearly all of the negroes of
school age in the district are crowded into these miserable
structures during the short term which the school runs. Most
of the teachers are absolutely untrained and have been given
certificates by the county board, not because they have passed
the examination, but because it is necessary to have some kind
of negro teacher. Among the negro rural schools which I have
visited, I have found only one in which the highest class knew
the multiplication table."
The treatment which the negroes received at the hands of the courts
and the guardians of the peace constituted another cause of the
migration. Negroes largely distrust the courts and have to depend on
the influence of their aristocratic white friends. When a white man
assaults a negro he is not punished. When a white man kills a negro he
is usually freed without extended legal proceedings, but the rule as
laid down by the southern judge is usually that when a negro kills a
white man, whether or not in self-defense, the negro must die. Negro
witnesses count for nothing except when testifying against members of
their own race. The testimony of a white man is conclusive in every
instance. In no State of the South can a negro woman get a verdict for
seduction, nor in most cases enter a suit against a white man; nor,
where a white man is concerned, is the law of consent made to apply to
a negro girl.
It will be said, however, that such drastic action is not general
in the South; but throughout the Black Belt the negroes suffer from
arrests and impositions for petty offenses which make their lives
sometimes miserable. The large number of negroes owning automobiles is
a source of many conflicts. Many collisions, possibly avoidable, have
resulted in wresting from the negroes concerned excessive damages
which go to increase the returns of the courts. For example, the
chauffeur of one of the most influential negroes in Mississippi
collided with a white man's car. Although there was sufficient
evidence to exonerate the chauffeur concerned, the owner of the
vehicle was forced to pay damages and sell his car.[24]
In the Birmingham district of Alabama a striking discrimination is
made in the arrests for failure to pay the street tax. Mr. Henry L.
Badham, President of the Bessemer Coal, Iron and Land Company, said in
commenting on the causes of the migration:
I do not blame the negroes for going away from Birmingham. The
treatment that these unfortunate negroes are receiving from
the police is enough to make them desire to depart. The
newspapers have printed articles about the departure of the
laborers from Birmingham. On one page there is a story to the
effect that something should be done to prevent the exodus of
the negroes to other cities. And then on the same page there
appears a little paragraph stating that negroes were arrested
for failure to pay $2.50 street tax. The injustice of
arresting these negroes for the inability to have $2.50 ready
to turn over into the coffers of the city is obvious. While
they have been taken into custody, despite their protests that
they merely have not a sufficient amount of money with which
to meet the demand, you do not see that white men are arrested
for the failure to pay the tax. There is no gainsaying the
fact that there are thousands of men walking the streets who
have not paid a similar sum into the treasury of the city. The
negroes ought to get a square deal. When he is without funds,
you can not blame him for that. The city police ought to be
more reliable, or at least show no favoritism.[25]
The fee system in the courts of the South is one of the most effective
causes of the migration. The employers of labor fought this system for
eight years and finally got it abolished in Jefferson county,
Alabama. Under this system the sheriff received a fee for feeding all
prisoners. The greater the number of prisoners, the greater would be
the income for the sheriff's office. As a result, it became customary
in Jefferson county, Alabama, to arrest negroes in large numbers.
Deputy sheriffs would go out to mining camps where there were large
numbers of laborers and bring back fifty or more negroes at a time.
This condition became unbearable both to the employer and to the
employe. Calling attention to the evil of this fee system, Dr. W.H.
Oates, State Prison Inspector, said in his annual report for 1914:[26]
The vile, pernicious, pervading fee system beggars description
and my vocabulary is inadequate to describe its deleterious
and baneful effects. It increases in the management of our
jails greed for the almighty dollar. Prisoners are arrested
because of the dollar and, shame to say, are frequently kept
in captivity for months in steel cages for no other reason
than the almighty dollar.
During the fiscal year ending September 30, 1917, Jefferson county had
6,000 prisoners as follows:
In jail at the beginning of the year 328
Incarcerated during the year:
White men 1,289
Negro men 3,636
White women 118
Negro women 969
-----
Total 6,340
The fee bill, according to the sheriff's annual report of this
department was $37,688.90. As the law provided that for each prisoner
the sheriff shall receive 30 cents a day for feeding, and as a matter
of fact the sheriff fed them for 10 cents a day, it is clear that he
made a net profit of $25,125.94 during one fiscal year or at the same
rate for his term of four years, $100,503.76.[27]
Another frequent complaint was directed against the accommodations
for travel. It generally happens that the cars are crowded because the
amount of space allotted is insufficient, and negroes as a class are
denied accommodation in sleeping and dining cars. Usually there is but
one toilet for both sexes and the waiting rooms at stations are cut
off, unclean and insanitary. Then there are numerous petty offenses,
which in themselves appear trifling, but which are spoken of as being
on the whole considerably annoying. White men are permitted to come
into the negroes' part of the coach and entertain the conductor,
newsboy and flagman, all of whom usually make their headquarters
there. The drunkards, the insane and other undesirables are forced
into this comparment among negro women who have to listen to oaths
and vulgar utterances. In stopping at some points, the trains halt the
negro car in muddy and abominably disagreeable places; the rudeness
and incivility of the public servants are ever apparent, and at the
stations the negroes must wait at a separate window until every white
passenger has purchased a ticket before he is waited on, although he
may be delayed long enough to miss the train.
Both whites and negroes in mentioning the reasons for the movement
generally give lynching as one of the most important causes and state
that the fear of the mob has greatly accelerated the exodus. Negroes
in Florida gave as their reason for going north the horrible lynchings
in Tennessee. The white press in Georgia maintained that lynchings
were driving the negroes in large numbers from that State. A
careful study of the movement, however, shows that bad treatment by
representatives of the law caused almost as many negroes to leave the
South as lynchings, for, whereas lynchings were more or less sporadic,
persecutions and mistreatment by representatives of the law were
trials which all negroes had continually to bear and from which they
were anxious to escape.[28]
Many of these causes then have their origin on the one hand in the
attitude which the South assumes toward the negro as expressed in law
and public opinion, and on the other hand in the feeling of the negro
toward the South because of the treatment given him. A negro educator
of Mississippi sought to explain the situation, saying:
Many white men of high intellectual ability and keen
discernment have mistaken the negroes' silence for
contentment, his facial expression for satisfaction at
prevailing conditions, and his songs and jovial air for
happiness.[29] But this is not always so. These are his
methods of bearing trouble and keeping his soul sweet under
seeming wrongs. In the absence of a spokesman or means of
communication with the whites over imagined grievances, he has
brightened his countenance, smiled and sung to ease his mind.
In the midst of it all he is unable to harmonize with the
practices of daily life the teachings of the Bible which the
white Christian placed in his hands. He finds it difficult to
harmonize the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man,
and his faith is put to the test in the _Providence_ which
enslaved his ancestors, corrupted his blood and placed upon
him stigmas more damaging than to be a leper or convict by
making his color a badge of infamy and his preordained social
position at the bottom of human society. So firmly has his
status been fixed by this _Providence_ that neither moral
worth, fidelity to trust, love of home, loyalty to country, or
faith in God can raise him to human recognition.
When he remembers that he has been the beast of burden of
southern civilization and the foundation of its luxuriant
ease, when he rehearses to his children that he was the
South's sole dependence when his master was away repelling
hostile armies, and how he worked by day and guarded his
unprotected mistress and her children at night, or accompanied
his master to the swamps of Virginia and the Carolinas and
bound up his wounds or brought his maimed or dead body home on
his shoulders, these children can not understand the attitude
of the South toward them. They do not understand why they
have not been educated to efficiency and employed to the best
interest of the South. They do not understand why they have
not been given better living conditions, a more equitable
division of funds appropriated for the education of the youth,
nor provisions made for their higher or professional training,
or why so much prejudice is engendered in the practice
of these professions among their own people. They do not
understand why they have been made to toil at starvation wages
and to pay heavy fines and suffer long prison sentences for
stealing food and clothing. They do not understand why no
estimate is placed upon negro virtue and the full rights of
citizenship are denied to negroes of education, character and
worth. If some mysterious _Providence_ has ordained that
they support themselves and employers by farming, they do not
understand why they are deprived of agricultural schools.
They do not see why mere prejudice would prevent them from
obtaining a square deal when contending for the possessions
of life, liberty and property. They do not understand why they
are not protected from petty peace officers in search of
fees and from mobs while in the hands of officers of the law.
Finally, they do not understand why there is so little genuine
sympathy and brotherhood between them and the only people they
know--the people whose language and customs they use, under
whose laws they live, whose Bible they read, whose God they
serve. These thoughts possessed the negroes' mind when, twelve
months ago, the boll weevil and rains destroyed the crops in
the South and the European war was calling foreigners from
field and factory in the North.[30]
One should bear in mind that the two generations of negroes living in
the South are affected differently by the measures of control of the
whites, and in many cases respond differently to treatment received.
The older generation of whites and blacks avoided much friction by
a sort of mutual understanding. The children of colored and white
parents come less frequently into friendly contact and find it
difficult to live together on the terms accepted by their fathers.
Negro parents appreciate this situation but, although admitting that
they can tolerate the position to which they are assigned, they do not
welcome such an arrangement for their children. For this reason
they are not reluctant to send their sons away from home. Should
the children remain there, they live in a state of anxiety for their
safety. They would not have them grow up as they, encompassed by
restraints, and the young men themselves appear to entertain toward
the prevailing system a more aggressive hostility.
A woman of color in Greenville, Mississippi, for example, had a son
in a northern State and was afraid to invite him home to pay a visit
because, as she stated, "for him to accept the same abuses to which
we, his parents, are accustomed, would make him much less than the man
we would have him be." Another negro, a physician, the "Nestor" of
his profession, having practiced in his State over thirty-five years,
said:
Sir, I can't expect my son to accept the treatment under which
I have been brought up. My length of residence here and
the number of friends whom I know of the older and more
aristocratic type of whites will protect me but as for him,
there is no friendship. Now, as for me, there is no reason why
I should leave. I am making as much money as I could anywhere
else and all of the white people respect me. But I am just one
out of a thousand. The younger men have neither my contact nor
influence.
A lawyer of remarkable talent formerly of Mississippi, now living
with his children in Chicago, who had felt keenly this humiliation and
recognized it as one of the motives behind his change of residence,
thus stated the situation:
One peculiar phase of the white southern prejudice is that
no matter how well liked or popular a colored man be in any
community, his son does not share that popularity unless he
enters a field of endeavor distinctly lower in the scale than
that occupied by his parent. My experience goes both ways on
this subject. My stepfather was a dearly beloved colored man
of the old school, but when he sent me off to Oberlin College
I returned to find that the community in which I had been
beloved as a boy in attendance at the rude country school
looked at me askance. It took twenty years to overcome the
handicap of attempting to occupy a higher sphere than that
to which the community thought it right to assign me. My
experiences were repeated by my son. He was a well liked boy
by the best people in a city of about twenty-five thousand,
because he was my son and was polite and agreeable. When he
went to a nearby Mississippi college and worked in his summer
vacations in a local industrial plant, they still thought well
of him, but when it was learned that he was being graduated
at Oberlin College, and his picture appeared in a college year
book, among others, my intimate white friends wanted to know
the necessity for so much education and, with a shrug of
the shoulder, they let all mention of him drop, as if he had
offended the most sacred laws of the community. This spirit
appeared so marked that I did not have him come back to visit
his mother and me during the summer vacation. I have seen the
same spirit in many instances. No man can explain why it is,
but it is so.[31]
[Footnote 17: _New York Times_, September 5, 9, 28, 1916.]
[Footnote 18: Ibid., October 18, 28; November 5, 7, 12, 15; December
4, 9, 1916.]
[Footnote 19: Work, _Report on Negro Migration from Alabama_.]
[Footnote 20: Work and Johnson, _Report on the Migration during the
World War_.]
[Footnote 21: Attractive advertisements appeared in negro newspapers
with wide circulation in the South. These are from the _Chicago
Defender_.
"Wanted--10 molders. Must be experienced. $4.50 to $5.50 per day.
Write B.F.R. _Defender_ Office."
"Wanted--25 girls for dishwashing. Salary $7 a week and board. John
R. Thompson, Restaurant, 314 South State Street. Call between 7 and 8
a.m. Ask for Mr. Brown."
"Wanted--25 young men as bus boys and porters. Salary $8 per week
and board. John R. Thompson, Restaurant, 314 South State Street. Call
between 7 and 8 a.m. Ask for Mr. Brown."
"Molders wanted. Good pay, good working conditions. Firms supply
cottages for married men. Apply T.L. Jefferson, 3439 State Street.
"Ten families and 50 men wanted at once for permanent work in the
Connecticut tobacco fields. Good wages. Inquire National League on
Urban Conditions among Negroes, 2303 Seventh Avenue, New York City,
New York."
"Molders wanted. A large manufacturing concern, ninety miles from
Chicago, is in need of experienced molders. Wages from $3 to $5.50.
Extra for overtime. Transportation from Chicago only. Apply Chicago
League on Urban Conditions among Negroes. T. Arnold Hill, Executive
Secretary, 3719 State Street, Chicago."
"Laborers wanted for foundry, warehouse and yard work. Excellent
opportunity to learn trades, paying good money. Start $2.50--$2.75 per
day. Extra for overtime. Transportation advanced from Chicago only.
Apply Chicago League on Urban Conditions among Negroes, 3719 South
State Street. Chicago."
"Experienced machinists, foundrymen, pattern makers wanted, for
permanent work in Massachusetts. Apply National League on Urban
Conditions among Negroes, 2303 7th Ave., New York City."
"3,000 laborers to work on railroad. Factory hires all race help. More
positions open than men for them."
"Men wanted at once. Good steady employment for colored. Thirty and
39-1/2 cents per hour. Weekly payments. Good warm sanitary quarters
free. Best commissary privileges. Towns of Newark and Jersey City.
Fifteen minutes by car line offer cheap and suitable homes for
men with families. For out of town parties of ten or more cheap
transportation will be arranged. Only reliable men who stay on their
job are wanted. Apply or write Butterworth Judson Corporation, Box
273, Newark, New Jersey, or Daniel T. Brantley, 315 West 119th Street,
New York City."
"$3.60 per day can be made in a steel foundry in Minnesota, by strong,
healthy, steady men. Open only to men living in Chicago. Apply in
person. Chicago League on Urban Conditions among Negroes, 3719 South
State Street, Chicago, Illinois."]
[Footnote 22: An investigator in Mississippi reports the following:
The school population is 60 per cent colored. There are seven white
and two colored schools. The average salaries paid to white assistant
teachers is $75 per month. The average salaries paid to colored
assistant teachers is $32.50 per month. The average number of pupils
taught by white is 30 and the average number taught by colored is 100.
In the county there are no agricultural high schools or in fact
high schools of any kind. The whites in the same county have an
agricultural high school of "magnificent proportions" and "excellent
facilities," a literary high school and about ten consolidated
schools.
Negroes complain that the authorities are building white schools in
communities where the negro population is five times as great. When
they first sought to establish these consolidated schools, there was
a provision that every one must pay taxes to support them. Negroes who
were required to pay large taxes refused because they were denied the
benefits of the schools. A law was passed with the provision that the
majority of qualified electors in a county supervisor's district might
secure one of these schools on petition to the Board of Supervisors
and with the understanding that they would pay taxes. But negroes are
not qualified electors and consequently have no schools.
In Liberty Grove the white school goes to the twelfth grade, with
courses also in music. Automobiles bring the children to school and
carry them back. The negro school in the same community has only one
teacher getting $25 per month and teaching over 200 children. There
are two large negro denominational schools, Jackson College and
Campbell College which serve to supplement the public schools provided
by the city.]
[Footnote 23: Jones, _Negro Education_, vol. II, pp. 14, 15, Bulletin,
1916, No. 30 of the United States Bureau of Education.]
[Footnote 24: Work and Johnson, _Report on the Migration during the
World War_.]
[Footnote 25: _Montgomery Advertiser._]
[Footnote 26: Annual Report of the Prison Inspector of Alabama, 1914.]
[Footnote 27: Report of the Sheriff of Jefferson County, Alabama,
1917.]
[Footnote 28: Work and Johnson, _Report on the Migration during the
World War_.]
[Footnote 29: Mr. Charles S. Johnson reports the following from
Mississippi: "The police of most of the cities are rough and
indiscriminate in their treatment of negroes. At the depot during the
summer, on several occasions, negro porters were severely beaten by
policemen for trivial reasons. This, it was said, started a stream of
young men that cleaned the town of porters.
"Fee constables made their living from arresting negroes,
indiscriminately, on trivial charges. A white man, to whom a prominent
negro physician had gone for advice on a case concerning his arrest
on a charge of having no lights on his automobile, said, 'If I were a
negro, I would rather appear before a Russian court than come before a
court here for trial.'"]
[Footnote 30: Work and Johnson, _Report on the Migration during the
World War_.]
[Footnote 31: Work and Johnson, _Report on the Migration during the
World War_.]
CHAPTER III
STIMULATION OF THE MOVEMENT
It is not surprising that the exodus grew so contagious when viewed in
the light of the numerous factors which played a part in influencing
its extension. Considering the temper of the South and its attitude
toward any attempt to reduce its labor supply, it is readily apparent
that leaders who openly encouraged the exodus would be in personal
danger. There were, of course, some few who did venture to voice
their belief in it, but they were in most cases speedily silenced. A
Methodist minister was sent to jail because he was said to have been
enticing laborers to go north and work for a New York firm, which
would give employment to fifty of his people. The tactics adopted
by influential persons who favored the movement, therefore, were of
necessity covert and very much guarded.
One of the chief stimuli was discussion. The very fact that negroes
were leaving in large numbers was a disturbing factor. The talk in the
barber shops and grocery stores where men were wont to assemble soon
began to take the form of reasons for leaving. There it was the custom
to review all the instances of mistreatment and injustice which fell
to the lot of the negro in the South. It was here also that letters
from the North were read and fresh news on the exodus was first given
out. In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, it was stated that for a while there
was no subject of discussion but the migration. "The packing houses
in Chicago for a while seemed to be everything," said one negro. "You
could not rest in your bed at night for Chicago." Chicago came to be
so common a word that they began to call it "Chi." Men went down to
talk with the Chicago porters on the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad
which ran through the town. They asked questions about the weather in
Chicago. The report was that it was the same as in Hattiesburg.[32]
In every circle the advisability of leaving was debated. In the
churches the pastors, seeing their flocks leaving, at first attempted
to dissuade them. The people refused to come to church. In the church
meetings there were verbal clashes on the matter of the attitude
toward the migration. Some few had been careful enough to go north
and investigate for themselves and friends. A man learned of the North
through a friend whose relatives wrote him from that section. He,
thereupon, decided to pay a visit of two weeks, going in August. The
attitude of the North overwhelmed him. At Fulton, Kentucky, while he
was on the train a white man was sitting in front of him. He wanted to
ask him a question but hesitated fearing that he would be rebuffed.
He finally addressed the stranger, who answered him courteously and
kindly, calling his attention to other points of interest in the
North. At Gary, Indiana, he met a gentleman who said he had been
mayor of Gary for seven years. He described the Gary school system and
promised him an education for his children. He was assured employment
at $4 a day for eight hours' work.[33]
A still more powerful, though insidious factor, was the work of
public speakers who hid their intentions behind their unique method of
presentation. In a lecture on the question of migration a speaker, who
is a widely known character, made these remarks:
So many of my folks are leaving that I thought I'd go up and
see whether or not they had made a mistake. I found thousands
of old friends up there making more money than they'd ever
made in their lives. I said to one woman in Chicago, "Well,
Sister ----, I see you're here." "Yes, Brother ----, I'm here,
thank the Lord." "Do you find it any colder up here than it
was in Mississippi?" "Did I understand you correctly to say
cold? Honey, I mean it's cold. It is _some_ cold." "But you
expect to return, don't you?" "Don't play with me, chile. What
am I going to return for? I should say not. Up here you see
when I come out on the street I walk on nice smooth pavements.
Down home I got to walk home through the mud. Up here at
nights it don't matter much about coming home from church.
Down home on my street there ain't a single lamp post. And
say, honey, I got a bath tub!"[34]
He related the instance of his visit to an automobile plant where he
was met at the door by a "stalwart, handsome, six-footer as black as
midnight." He asked his companion the name of this "potentate." He was
told that this man was an experienced machinist. Every car that passed
out of that plant must have his O.K. He added further that his salary
was something like $100 a week and that the incident showed the
unlimited chance for expansion in the North. When he began to
enumerate some of the positions which "men of the race" were holding,
the audience became enthusiastic beyond control. One man in the
audience, who had been to Detroit, could restrain himself no longer
and stood up to inform the audience that there were also colored
street car conductors and motormen and that he had seen them with his
own eyes. The speaker paid no attention to this interruption and the
audience appeared not to notice it, but began to exchange reports
among themselves. The speaker added that he had found negroes in the
North, well dressed and looking like men--for the first time in
their lives--men who were simply "bums" at home. In excusing the
indisposition of some negroes toward work, he said, "How in the
world can you expect a man to work faithfully all day long for fifty
cents?"[35]
Among the important stimuli were the rumors in circulation. When a
community is wrought up, it is less difficult to believe remarkable
tales. To persons beyond the influence of this excitement it is
somewhat difficult to conceive how the rumor that the Germans were on
their way through Texas to take the southern States could have been
believed. And yet it is reported that this extravagant fiction was
taken seriously in some quarters. On the outskirts of Meridian,
Mississippi, a band of gypsies was encamped. The rumor gained
circulation that the Indians were coming back to retake their
land lost years ago. It was further rumored that the United States
Government was beginning a scheme to transport all negroes from
the South to break up the Black Belt. Passed from mouth to mouth,
unrestrainedly these reports became verities.
It was further asserted on the word and honor "of one in position
to know" that the Chicago packing houses needed and would get fifty
thousand negroes before the end of the year. One explanation of the
belief that the South was overrun with labor agents was the fact
that every strange face came to be recognized as a man from the North
looking for laborers. If he denied it, they simply thought he was
concealing his identity from the police, and if he said nothing,
his silence was regarded as sufficient affirmation. Hundreds of
disappointments are to be traced to the rumor that a train would leave
on a certain date. Hundreds would come to the station prepared to
leave and, when no agent appeared, purchased their own tickets.
The questions of wages and privileges were grossly featured. Some men,
on being questioned, supposed that it was possible for every common
laborer to receive from $4 to $10 a day, and that $50 a week was not
an unusual wage. The strength of this belief has been remarked by
several social agencies in the North which attempted to supply the
immigrants with work. The actual wages paid, though much in excess of
those they had been receiving, were often disappointing. Similarly
in the matter of privilege and "rights" it was later revealed that
unbounded liberty was not to be found in the North. The singular cases
of misconduct, against which the more sober minded preached, possibly
had their root in the beautiful and one-sided pictures of the North
which came to the South.
The _Chicago Defender_, a weekly negro newspaper, with its pronounced
radical utterances, its criticism of the South, its policy of
retaliation, etc., contributed greatly to the exodus.[36] Its
influence can be imagined when, after reading the southern white
papers with only occasional references to the negroes which might be
called commendable and numerous articles which were for the most part
distasteful, negroes could read the things they wanted to hear most,
expressed in a manner in which they would not dare express them. It
voiced the unexpressed thoughts of many and made accusations for which
they themselves would have been severely handled. Freud's theory of
the suppressed wish finds a happy illustration in this rage over the
_Chicago Defender_. Expressed in terms of figures, the circulation of
the paper at the beginning of the movement was something like 50,000.
In 1918 it had grown to 125,000. It had a large circulation in
Mississippi and the supply was usually bought up on the first day of
its arrival. Copies were passed around until worn out. One prominent
negro asserted that "negroes grab the _Defender_ like a hungry
mule grabs fodder." In Gulfport, Mississippi, a man was regarded
"intelligent" if he read the _Defender_. It was said that in Laurel,
Mississippi, old men who did not know how to read would buy it because
it was regarded as precious.
It was this paper that named the exodus "The Great Northern
Drive," and set the date May 15th, announced the arrivals and took
responsibility for inducing "the poor brethren" from the South. It was
accused of ruining Hattiesburg, Mississippi, by promoting this rush to
the North. The sale of this paper was, therefore, forbidden in several
towns in the South. A correspondent said: "White people are paying
more attention to the race in order to keep them in the South, but
the _Chicago Defender_ has emblazoned upon their minds 'Bound for the
Promised Land.'"
In answer to the warnings of the South against the rigors of the
northern winters, the _Defender_ said:
To die from the bite of frost is far more glorious than at the
hands of a mob. I beg you, my brother, to leave the benighted
land. You are a free man. Show the world that you will not let
false leaders lead you. Your neck has been in the yoke. Will
you continue to keep it there because some "white folks'
nigger" wants you to? Leave for all quarters of the globe. Get
out of the South. Your being there in the numbers in which you
are gives the southern politician too strong a hold on your
progress.... So much has been said through the white papers in
the South about the members of the race freezing to death in
the North. They freeze to death down South when they don't
take care of themselves. There is no reason for any human
being staying in the Southland on this bugaboo handed out by
the white press.[37]
If you can freeze to death in the North and be free, why
freeze to death in the South and be a slave, where your
mother, sister and daughter are raped and burned at the stake;
where your father, brother and sons are treated with contempt
and hung to a pole, riddled with bullets at the least mention
that he does not like the way he is treated. Come North
then, all you folks, both good and bad. If you don't behave
yourselves up here, the jails will certainly make you wish you
had. For the hard-working man there is plenty of work--if you
really want it. The _Defender_ says come.[38]
The idea that the South is a bad place, unfit for the habitation of
colored folk, was duly emphasized. Conditions most distasteful to
negroes were exaggerated and given first prominence. In this the
_Defender_ had a clear field, for the local colored newspapers dared
not make such unrestrained utterances.[39] In fact, reading the
_Chicago Defender_ provided a very good substitute for the knowledge
which comes through travel. It had the advantage of bringing the North
to them. Without fear of exaggeration it is safe to say its policy was
successful in inciting thousands of restless negroes to venture north,
where they were assured of its protection and the championship
of their cause. There are in Chicago migrants who attribute their
presence in the North to its encouraging pictures of relief from
conditions at home with which they became more and more dissatisfied,
as they read.
The setting of a definite date was another stimulus. The great
northern drive was scheduled to begin May 15, 1917. This date, or the
week following, singularly corresponds with the date of the heaviest
rush to the North, the periods of greatest temporary congestion and
the awakening of the North to the presence of their guests. Letters
to the _Chicago Defender_ and to the social agencies in the North
informed them that they were preparing to come in the great drive. One
of many such letters received is presented.
April 24, 1917.
Mr. R.S. Abbott,
Editor, the _Chicago Defender_,
Sir:
I have been reading the _Defender_ for one year or more, and
last February I read about the great northern drive to take
place May 15, on Thursday, and now I can hear so many people
speaking of an excursion to the North on the 15th of May for
$3. My husband is in the North already working, and he wants
us to come up in May, so I want to know if it is true about
the excursion. I am getting ready and, oh, so many others
also, and we want to know is that true so we can be in the
drive. So please answer at once. We are getting ready.
Yours,
This was perhaps the most popular date, but there were others, of
which August 15 was one. Usually the dates set were for Wednesday and
Saturday nights, following pay days.
Personal appeals in the form of letters have a recognized weight in
influencing action. The United States mail was about the most active
and efficient labor agent. The manner in which the first negroes left
made great opportunities for letter writing. It is to be remembered
that the departure of one person was regarded always in the light of
an experiment. The understanding existed between a man and his friends
that he would honestly inform them of conditions in the North.
Letters were passed around and read before large groups. A woman from
Hattiesburg is accredited with having sent back a letter which enticed
away over 200 persons. A tailor who had settled in a town of white
people in the West wrote a letter which was read in a church. It
explained the advantages of the free schools open to all, and the
privilege to ride and to go where one pleases. The reading of the
letter brought forth long and loud applause. A man who had left home,
writes back to his friend yet undecided:
Mike, old boy, I was promoted on the first of the month. I was
made first assistant to the head carpenter. When he is out of
place I take everything in charge and was raised to $95 per
month. You know I know my stuff. What's the news generally
around H'burg? I should have been here twenty years ago. I
just begin to feel like a man. It's a great deal of pleasure
in knowing that you have got some privileges. My children are
going to the same school with the whites and I don't have
to humble to no one. I have registered. Will vote the next
election and there isn't any 'yes, sir, and no, sir.' It's all
yes and no, and no, Sam, and Bill.
The man has long since been joined by his friend.
The pastor of a Hattiesburg church received a letter from one of his
members with the extravagant assertion that the people whose funerals
he had preached were in Chicago (meaning Heaven) because they were
good Christians. To give assurance on the question of weather migrants
in the North would mention the fact that they were writing with
their coats off. A fact which strengthened the belief in the almost
incredible wages offered in the North was the money sent back to the
families in the South. A man whose wife had preceded him wrote that
she was making $3.50 a day in charge of a bluing works in Chicago, and
actually sent home $15 every two weeks. Another man wrote that he was
in Gary working at his trade making sometimes as much as $7 a day. He
sent home $30 every two weeks. Fully one-half, or perhaps even more
of those who left, did so at the solicitation of friends through
correspondence.[40]
Despite the restraints on loose talk in encouragement of the exodus,
there were other means of keeping the subject alive. One method, of
course, was the circulation of literature from the North. One of the
most novel schemes was that of a negro dentist in a southern town who
had printed on the reverse side of his business cards quotations from
rather positive assertions by northerners on the migration.[41] The
northern press early welcomed the much needed negro laborers to the
North and leaders of thought in that section began to upbraid the
South for its antagonistic attitude towards the welfare of the
negroes, who at last had learned to seek a more congenial home.
A stronger influence than this, though not quite so frequent, was the
returned migrant who was a living example of the prosperity of the
North. It was a frequent complaint that these men were as effective as
labor agents in urging negro laborers to go north. There are reported
numerous instances of men who came to visit their families and
returned with thirty to forty men. It has been suspected, and with
a strong suggestion of truth, that many of these were supplied with
funds for the trip by the northern firms which employed them. A woman
whose daughter had gone north had been talking of her daughter's
success. The reports were so opposite to the record of the girl at
home that they were not taken seriously. Soon, however, the daughter
came home with apparently unlimited money and beautiful clothes, and
carried her mother back with her. This was sufficient. It was remarked
afterwards: "If she can make $2.50 a day as lazy as she was, I know I
can make $4."[42]
The labor agents were a very important factor in stimulating the
movement. The number at work in the South appears to have been greatly
exaggerated. Agents were more active in large cities where their
presence was not so conspicuous. It was difficult to discover because
of the very guarded manner in which they worked. One, for example,
would walk briskly down the street through a group of negroes and,
without turning his head, would say in a low tone, "Anybody want to go
to Chicago, see me." That was sufficient. Many persons were found
to remark frequently on the strange silence which negroes _en masse_
managed to maintain concerning the movement of the agents. A white man
remarked that it was the first time there had ever happened anything
about which he could not get full information from some negro. Agents
were reported, at one time or another, in every section from which the
migrants went. When the vigilance of the authorities restricted their
activities they began working through the mails. Many sections were
flooded with letters from the North to persons whose names had been
obtained from migrants in the North or through a quiet canvass of the
community by unobstructed solicitors.[43]
Poems on the migration were also strong stimuli. In some instances
arrests of persons circulating them were made. A bit of poetry which
received widespread popularity was one called "Bound for the Promised
Land." It was said that this piece of poetry was responsible for much
trouble. The _Chicago Defender_ reported on June 1, 1917, that five
young men were arraigned before Judge John E. Schwartz of Savannah,
Georgia, for reading poetry. The police contended that they were
inciting riot in the city and over Georgia. Two of the men were sent
for thirty days to Brown Farm, a place not fit for human beings. Tom
Amaca was arrested for having "Bound for the Promised Land," a poem
which had been recently published in the _Defender_. J.N. Chisholm
and A.P. Walker were arrested there because they were said to be
the instigators.[44] Another very popular poem widely circulated was
entitled "Farewell! We're Good and Gone." It was said that this
poem influenced thousands to go. Other poems on the migration were
"Northward Bound," "The Land of Hope" and "Negro Migration" and "The
Reason Why."
[Footnote 32: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 33: Ibid.]
[Footnote 34: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 35: Ibid.]
[Footnote 36: Some of the material prepared by the _Defender_ for
consumption in the South was as follows:
"Turn a deaf ear to everybody. You see they are not lifting their laws
to help you, are they? Have they stopped their Jim Crow cars? Can you
buy a Pullman sleeper where you wish? Will they give you a square deal
in court yet? When a girl is sent to prison she becomes the mistress
of the guards and others in authority, and women prisoners are put on
the streets to work--something they don't do to a white woman. And our
leaders will tell you the South is the best place for you. Turn a deaf
ear to the scoundrel, and let him stay. Above all, see to it that that
jumping-jack preacher is left in the South, for he means you no good
here in the North.... Once upon a time we permitted other people to
think for us--today we are thinking and acting for ourselves, with the
result that our 'friends' are getting alarmed at our progress. We'd
like to oblige these unselfish (?) souls and remain slaves in the
South; but to other sections of the country we have said, as the song
goes, 'I hear you calling me,' and have boarded the train, singing,
'Good-bye, Dixie Land.'"]
[Footnote 37: The following clippings are taken from these white
papers:
"Aged Negro Frozen to Death--Albany, Ga., February 8.
"Yesterday the dead body of Peter Crowder, an old negro, was found in
an out-of-the-way place where he had been frozen to death during the
recent cold snap."--_Macon Telegraph_.
"Dies from Exposure--Spartanburg, S.C., February 6.
"Marshall Jackson, a negro man, who lived on the farm of J.T. Harris
near Campobello, Sunday night froze to death."--_South Carolina
State_.
"Negro Frozen to Death in Fireless Gretna Hut.
"Coldest weather in the last four years claimed a victim Friday night,
when Archie Williams, a negro, was frozen to death in his bed in a
little hut in the outskirts of Gretna."--_New Orleans Item_, February
4.
"Negro Woman Frozen to Death Monday.
"Harriet Tolbert, an aged negro woman, was frozen to death in her
home at 18 Garibaldi Street early Monday morning during the severe
cold."--_Atlanta Constitution_, February 6.]
[Footnote 38: Articles such as the following kept alive the spirit of
the exodus:
"Tampa, Florida, January 19. J.T. King, supposed to be a race leader,
is using his wits to get on the good side of the white people by
calling a meeting to urge our people not to migrate north. King
has been termed a 'good nigger' by his pernicious activity on the
emigration question. Reports have been received here that all who have
gone north are at work and pleased with the splendid conditions in
the North. It is known here that in the North there is a scarcity of
labor; mills and factories are open to them. People are not paying
any attention to King and are packing and ready to travel north to the
'promised land.'"
"Jackson, Miss., March 23. J.H. Thomas, Birmingham, Alabama,
Brownsville Colony, has been here several weeks and is very much
pleased with the North. He is working at the Pullman Shops, making
twice as much as he did at home. Mr. Thomas says the 'exodus' will be
greater later on in the year, that he did not find four feet of snow
or would freeze to death. He lives at 346 East Thirty-fifth St."
"Huntsville, Alabama, January 19. Fifteen families, all members of
the race, left here today for Pittsburgh, Pa., where they will take
positions as butlers and maids, getting sixty to seventy-five dollars
a month against fifteen and twenty paid here. Most of them claim that
they have letters from their friends who went early and made good
saying that there was plenty of work, and this field of labor is
short owing to the vast amount of men having gone to Europe and not
returned."
"Shreveport, La., April 13. The Business Men's League held a meeting
here and the white daily papers reported that it was for the purpose
of discouraging people from going north. The meeting had no such
object. On the other hand, members of the race claim that on May 15th
they will be found leaving with the great northern drive."
"The northern invasion has already started, much earlier than
predicted. Many members of the race refused to wait until spring. They
have started despite the snow and cold. Last week thirty-one came here
from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and said they intended to stay. They
were well clothed, having heavy overcoats and rubber overshoes."
"Memphis, Tenn., June 1. Your correspondent took a walk to Central
station Saturday night just to see what was going on, and to his
surprise and delight, he saw gathered there between 1,500 and 2,000
race men and women. Number 4, due to leave for Chicago at 8:00
o'clock, was held up twenty minutes so that those people who hadn't
purchased tickets might be taken aboard. It was necessary to add two
additional eighty-foot steel coaches to the Chicago train in order to
accommodate the race people, and at the lowest calculation there were
more than 1,200 taken aboard."
"St. Louis, Mo., May 11. The _Defender_ propaganda to leave sections
of the South where they find conditions intolerable is receiving
a hearty response. A communication was received by a _Defender_
representative last week from Houston, Texas, asking for information
relative to conditions in this city and the writer stated a number
of persons were planning to leave Houston for this city later on. The
information was promptly and cheerfully given."
"Tallulah, La., January 19. This time it's a professor. Heretofore
it has been the preachers who have been paid by the white men of the
South to tell our people that the North is no place for them. A bigger
lie never was uttered. But now it is a professor. He is licking
the white man's hand to hold a little $35 job as a backwoods school
teacher. He got his name in the papers (white) as 'good nigger.' Just
because this 'would-be professor' has been making speeches, asking
that our people remain here and be treated like dogs, they are
starting a crusade north, and by Easter there will not be one left to
tell the tale."]
[Footnote 39: "Forest City, Ark., February 16. David B. Smith (white)
is on trial for life for the brutal murder of a member of the race,
W.H. Winford, who refused to be whipped like others. This white man
had the habit of making his 'slave' submit to this sort of punishment
and when Winford refused to stand for it, he was whipped to death with
a 'black snake' whip. The trial of Smith is attracting very little
attention. As a matter of fact, the white people here think nothing
of it as the dead man is a 'nigger.' This very act, coupled with other
recent outrages that have been heaped upon our people, are causing
thousands to leave, not waiting for the great spring movement in
May."]
[Footnote 40: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 41: "There is no class of people and no ethical question
that will not feel the effects of the war. The negroes of this
country who go to France to fight, or who replace workingmen who go as
soldiers will demand, and justly so, full American rights. The United
States can not stand before the world as the champion of freedom and
democracy and continue to burn men alive and lynch them without fair
trial. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
calls upon this country to 'clear her conscience before she can
fight for the world's good,' by abolishing lynching and ceasing
all oppression of negroes. This is a national problem and more
particularly one of the South. In Europe there are practically no race
distinctions. A negro can mix with white folk as an equal, just as a
Spaniard, for example, does here; even intermarriage is not regarded
as miscegenation. The race problem here is a different matter,
however, as even the more intelligent negroes themselves will
acknowledge. The negro should be assured all the protection and
rights that go with American citizenship, but in this is not involved
intermarriage or social equality."--_Leslie's Illustrated Weekly_,
October 13, 1917.
"The foreign laborer has been called home to bear arms for his
country. The daily death toll and waste and the recently enacted
immigration law make it certain that he will not soon return in great
numbers. As a result a large market exists for the negro laborer
in localities in which he would have been considered an impudent
trespasser had he attempted to enter a few years ago. The history of
the world from the days of Moses to the present shows that where
one race has been subjugated, oppressed or proscribed by another
and exists in large numbers, permanent relief has come in one or two
ways--amalgamation or migration. The thought of amalgamation is not to
be entertained. If conditions in the South for the colored man are
to be permanently improved, many of those who now live there should
migrate and scatter throughout the North, East and West. I believe the
present opportunity providential."--Hon. John C. Ashbury, Philadelphia
Bar.
"This is the psychological moment to say to the American white
government from every pulpit and platform and through every newspaper,
'Yes, we are loyal and patriotic. Boston Common, Bunker Hill,
Gettysburg, Fort Pillow, Appomattox, San Juan Hill and Carrizal will
testify to our loyalty. While we love our flag and country, we do not
believe in fighting for the protection of commerce on the high seas
until the powers that be give us at least some verbal assurance that
the property and lives of the members of our race are going to be
protected on land from Maine to Mississippi.' Let us have the courage
to say to the white American people, 'Give us the same rights which
you enjoy, and then we will fight by your side with all of our might
for every international right on land and sea.' If this kind of talk
is not loyalty, then I am disloyal; if this is not patriotism, then
I am unpatriotic; if this is treason, then I am a traitor. It is not
that I love Cæsar less, but these black Romans more, who have been
true to the flag for two hundred and fifty years. It is infinitely
more disgraceful and outrageous to hang and burn colored men, boys and
women without a trial in the times of peace than it is for Germans
in times of war to blow up ships loaded with mules and
molasses."--Reverend A. Clayton Powell, New York, N.Y.]
[Footnote 42: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 43: Work and Johnson, _Report on the Migration during the
World War_.]
[Footnote 44: Ibid.]
CHAPTER IV
THE SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT
In the first communities visited by representatives of northern
capital, their offers created unprecedented commotion. Drivers and
teamsters left their wagons standing in the street. Workers, returning
home, scrambled aboard the trains for the North without notifying
their employers or their families. The crowds that blackened the pool
rooms and "hangouts" faded away as the trains continued to leave.
Wild rumors about the North crept into circulation and received
unquestioning credence. Songs about Pennsylvania, the spontaneous
expression of anxiety and joy over the sudden revelation of a new
world, floated about on the lips of the children. Homes were thrown on
the market and sold at ruinously low prices.
It was observed that the beginnings in each new community exhibited
the same characteristics. This is due in part to a pretty universal
state of unrest among negroes throughout the South. Although the first
State entered by representatives of northern capital was Florida,
their efforts were not confined to that commonwealth. And again,
although the Pennsylvania and Erie Railroads were the first to import
negroes in large numbers, they were not alone in the field very
long. The steel mills of the East and the railroads of the West
soon followed--each selecting States from which egress was easy and
convenient. The authorities of the cities of Florida, when they
began to engage themselves in the suppression of recruiting agents,
succeeded in scattering them to other fields where their mere
presence, preceded as it was by the news of their mission in the
South, was sufficient to attract, first, all of the landless labor,
then to loosen the steady workman wedded to the soil, and finally
to carry away the best of the working classes. Quite naturally
southeastern Georgia was the second district to feel the drain of the
exodus. These workers were carried into Pennsylvania, New York and New
Jersey for the maintenance work of the roads. North Carolina was next
entered; then finally Virginia which had been sending many negroes
into New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey for a number of years.[45]
Numerous illustrations show the popular state of mind at the
beginning, when every one was feverish. Men would loudly decry the
folly of breaking up their homes, the result of years of unrelenting
toil, and venturing into the unknown North, and within less than
twenty-four hours, would leave themselves. A good citizen would talk
with another about the apparent insanity of those negroes who had
"contracted the northern fever." They would condemn their acts with
their strongest words. Hardly before another day could pass, one of
the two would disappear, having imitated the recklessness of the very
people he had so recently condemned.
One man in telling of how they acted, asserts "You could see a man
today and he would be calling the people who were leaving all kinds of
names; he could even beat you when it came to calling them fools for
going north. The next day when you met him he wouldn't talk so loud
and the next day he wouldn't let you see him. That would be the last
of him, because, unless you went to the depot, you wouldn't see him
again. Whenever I saw them shying off from me, I always knew what they
had up their sleeves." It was "just naturally fashionable" to
leave for the North. A man would make up his mind to go and proceed
forthwith to persuade his friends. If they refused, they no longer had
any interests in common. In talking with a man who had persistently
refused to leave, he declared that he had lost practically every
friend he had, simply because he did not agree with them on "the
northern question." For the pastors of churches it was a most trying
ordeal. They must watch their congregations melt away and could say
nothing. If they spoke in favor of the movement, they were in danger
of a clash with the authorities. If they discouraged it, they were
accused of being bought up to hold negroes in bondage. If a pastor
attempted to persuade negroes to stay, his congregation and his
collection would be cut down and in some cases his resignation
demanded. In some of the smaller communities the pastors settled this
difficulty by following their flock, as was the case of three who left
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, following their congregations. Two lumber
companies in Mississippi employed a negro to lecture for the purpose
of discouraging the exodus. He was handsomely paid, but he was
unheeded. Even now he is held in contempt by his former friends.
The devout and religious saw God in the movement. It was inspired,
they said, else why could so many thousand negroes all be obsessed at
once with the same impulse. There were set afloat rumors that a great
calamity was about to befall the Southland. In Georgia and Alabama,
hundreds believed that God had cursed the land when he sent droughts
and floods and destructive pests to visit them. The number of negroes
needed in the North was counted in millions; the wages offered were
fabulous and the letters that came from the vanguard painted pictures
of a land of plenty. From some communities a small group would leave,
promising to inform those behind of the actual state of affairs. For
a week or more there would follow a tense period of "watchful waiting"
and never ending anxiety, when finally there would arrive a card
bearing the terse report "Everything pritty," or "Home ain't nothing
like this." On this assurance, a reckless disposition of household
effects would follow.[46]
The towns quite naturally were the first to feel the effect. There,
the pass rider--the labor agent--could move about more freely. People
lived in closer contact and news circulated more rapidly; the papers
came in regularly and the negroes themselves could see those leaving.
On market days when the country folk reached town they got their first
impulse from the commotion. Young country boys failed to return to
quiet isolation, and sturdy sensible farmers whose whole lives had
been spent on the farm, could not resist the temptation. As they
returned they informed their neighbors, saying: "They are leaving town
by the thousands," or "Man, colored folks are leaving in droves for
the North." There are cases of men who left their fields half
plowed and journeyed to the city and thence to the North. In other
communities, the beginning would be a timid dribble to the larger
cities or directly to the North.[47]
The state of mind of the community under the influence of the first
effects of the "fever" is illustrated in authenticated accounts of
persons who witnessed the exodus from different cities:
The most interesting thing is how these people left. They were
selling out everything they had or in a manner giving it away;
selling their homes, mules, horses, cows, and everything about
them but their trunks. All around in the country, people who
were so old they could not very well get about were leaving.
Some left with six to eight very small children and babies
half clothed, no shoes on their feet, hungry, not anything to
eat and not even a cent over their train fare. Some would go
to the station and wait there three or four days for an agent
who was carrying them on passes. Others of this city would
go in clubs of fifty and a hundred at a time in order to get
reduced rates. They usually left on Wednesday and Saturday
nights. One Wednesday night I went to the station to see
a friend of mine who was leaving. I could not get in the
station, there were so many people turning like bees in a
hive. Officers would go up and down the tracks trying to keep
the people back. One old lady and man had gotten on the train.
They were patting their feet and singing and a man standing
nearby asked, "Uncle, where are you going?" The old man
replied, "Well, son, I'm gwine to the promised land."[48]
"When the laboring man got paid off," said a Jackson, Mississippi,
man, "he bought himself a suit of overalls and a paper valise and
disappeared." Even the young married women refused to wait any longer
than the time required to save railroad fare. It's strange that when
a negro got a notion to leave and he could not sell or give away,
he simply locked up his house and left the key with his neighbor.
Families with $1,000 worth of furniture have been known to sell it for
$150. A negro in Jackson was buying a $1,000 house, on which he had
paid $700. When the "fever" struck the town, he sold it for $100 and
left.
There was related this instance of a number of negro laborers:
On a plantation in south Georgia, where fifteen or more
families were farming as tenants, there had been a great deal
of confusion and suffering among the people because of the
lack of sufficient food and clothing. There were the Joneses,
a family of nine, the Harrisons, a family of ten, and the
Battles, a family of six. No family on the place had an
allowance of more than $25 per month for food and clothing.
When this allowance gave out, nothing could be gotten until
the next month and the tenants dared not leave their farms to
work elsewhere. The owner of this plantation lived in town ten
miles away and only visited the farm about once a week. Much
to his surprise, on one of his weekly visits, he found all the
homes and farms deserted except one. On that were two old men,
Uncle Ben and Uncle Joe, who had been left behind because
they were unable to secure passes. Uncle Ben and Uncle
Joe sorrowfully told the landlord all that had happened,
emphasizing the fact that they were the only ones who had
remained loyal to him. Then they told him their needs. The
landlord, thinking that the old negroes were so faithful,
rewarded them with a good sum of money and left with the
assurance that they would see to the crops being worked. No
sooner had the landlord left than these old men with grips
packed and with the money they had received, boarded the train
to join their companions in the North.[49]
As an example of the irresistible force which characterized the
movement, one old negro made the remark: "I sorter wanted to go
myself. I didn't know just where I wanted to go. I just wanted to git
away with the rest of them." A woman in speaking of the torture of
solitude which she experienced after the first wave passed over her
town, said: "You could go out on the street and count on your fingers
all the colored people you saw during the entire day. Now and then a
disconsolate looking Italian storekeeper would come out in the street,
look up and down and walk back. It was a sad looking place, and so
quiet it gave you the shivers."[50]
In the heat of the excitement families left carrying members
dangerously ill. There is reported one interesting case of a family
with one of its members sick with pneumonia. As soon as the woman
was able to sit up, she was carried away. At St. Louis it was found
necessary to stop because of her condition. Finding that she could
not recover, they proceeded to Chicago, where she died. Several of the
migrants have seen fit to make heroes of themselves by declining to
return to the South even on the advice of a physician. Thus, a certain
minister is said to have refused to be sent home when his physician
had told him there was a possible chance for recovery in his home
in the South. He said that he preferred to die and be buried in the
North.
By the summer of 1916, the exodus from Florida had grown to such
ungovernable bounds that the more stable classes of negroes became
unsettled. A body, representing the influential colored citizens of
the State, wrote the editor of the _New York Age_:[51]
Jacksonville, Fla., August 10, 1916.
To the Editor of the _Age_:
To be brief, I beg to state that the (----) of this city, in
a regular meeting, voted last Monday that I write your paper
asking advice on the subject of migration which is large and
really alarming to the people of this State, for thousands
of people (colored) are leaving this State, going to
Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and New Jersey, where it is
stated they are wanted as laborers in various pursuits. In
your mind and to your knowledge, do you think it is the
best thing for them to do, and are they bettering condition
financially, morally and religiously; even in manhood,
citizenship, etc. Our ---- has been asked by the white and
colored people here to speak in an advisory way, but we
decided to remain silent until we can hear from reliable
sources in the North and East, and you have been designated
as one of the best. So to speak, our city is in a turmoil--in
suspense. You have doubtless heard of the great exodus of
negroes to the North, and we presume you have given it some
thought, and even investigated it. Please give the benefit of
your findings and reasons for your conclusion.
Thanking you in advance for a prompt and full reply to the
corresponding secretary, Yours truly,
Corresponding Secretary.
Caught up in the wave of enthusiasm that swept over the South, these
migrants could not resist the impulse to leave. The economic loss
resulting from their reckless departure expressed in terms of
dollars and cents is another story, and probably can never be even
approximately estimated. What seems of most interest here is that they
were in the frame of mind for leaving. They left as though they were
fleeing some curse; they were willing to make almost any sacrifice to
obtain a railroad ticket and they left with the intention of staying.
What has been described, of course, can not be construed to apply to
every one who left. There were those of the business and professional
classes who were promoted by other motives than those which impelled
the masses of migrants. There were, for example, migrants who in the
South had held positions of relatively high standing by virtue of the
fact that there do exist two institutional standards, the white and
the black. Measured by the requirements of the latter, they stood high
in the respect of the community, but when removed to the North they
suffered in the rank of their occupation. A college president or even
a school teacher had little opportunity in their respective fields
in the North. They had, therefore, migrated because deserted by their
neighbors they were left with a prospect of a diminishing social
importance.
Professional men followed their practice. In Chicago there are
at least six lawyers from Mississippi, with practically the same
clientele. At the height of the exodus, one of these came to Chicago
and secured admission to the bar in order that he might be in a
position to move quickly if his practice were too severely cut down.
Several physicians of the State have remarked that they would now be
in the East or the North if reciprocity with the State of Mississippi
were possible.[52] Business men have been reported to have moved North
for the sole purpose of collecting debts. Others are cooler and more
calculating in preparing to leave. One pharmacist, for instance, plans
to move within the next five years. It is true that some of those who
came in the movement would have come even if no one else had decided
to migrate. The influence of the general state of mind, however, on
the great majority is of most concern in determining the forces behind
the exodus.
Possibly the numbers to leave the South would have been considerably
smaller had there not been existent so universal a readiness to
respond to a call in almost any direction. The causes of this state of
mind are stated elsewhere. What is important here is the behavior of
the persons leaving which exerted such a compelling influence on their
neighbors. The actions are illustrative not only of the contagion
of the movement, but of the fundamental emotions of the negroes who
formed the exodus. Thus it was, for example, that the movement was
called the "exodus" from its suggestive resemblance to the flight of
the Israelites from Egypt, _The Promised Land_, _Crossing over Jordan_
(the Ohio River), and _Beulah Land_. At times demonstrations took on
a rather spectacular aspect, as when a party of 147 from Hattiesburg,
Mississippi, while crossing the Ohio River, held solemn ceremonies.
These migrants knelt down and prayed; the men stopped their watches
and, amid tears of joy, sang the familiar songs of deliverance, "I
done come out of the Land of Egypt with the good news." The songs
following in order were "Beulah Land" and "Dwelling in Beulah Land."
One woman of the party declared that she could detect an actual
difference in the atmosphere beyond the Ohio River, explaining that it
was much lighter and that she could get her breath more easily.[53]
The general direction of the spread of the movement was from east to
west. While efforts were being made to check the exodus from Florida,
the good citizens of Texas were first beginning to note a stir of
unrest in their sections. On the other hand, the march of the boll
weevil, that stripped the cotton fields of the South, was from west to
east. Where there was wide unemployment, depression and poverty as a
result of the great floods in Alabama, the cutting down of the cane
area in Louisiana, the boll weevil in Mississippi, there were to be
found thousands who needed no other inducement save the prospect of
a good job. Indeed, it is alleged by some negroes that the myriads of
labor agents who were said to be operating in the South were creatures
of the imagination of an affrighted Southland; that but few were
actually offering positions in the North; but their success was due to
the overpowering desire on the part of the negroes to go.[54]
In September of 1916 a Georgia correspondent of the _Atlanta
Constitution_ wrote:
For the past two or three weeks I have been receiving two
or more letters daily from people in all sections of Georgia
asking my advice as to the advisability of the colored people
leaving the State in large numbers, as they have been leaving
for the past six months. I think it is a mistake for our
people to sell and practically give their earnings of years
just on a hearsay that they will be given larger salaries and
great advantages in some other part of the country.
It will be remembered that the State of South Carolina was not
immediately affected. It was not until the discussions bearing on the
negro's insecurity and economic state, which accompanied the exodus
in justification of it, had begun to be emphasized as the cause of the
movement that a great exodus took place in the State. The principal
occasion here was the unfortunate lynching of Anthony Crawford. A
negro newspaper with a correspondent in Abbeville said:
The lynching of Anthony Crawford has caused men and women of
this State to get up and bodily leave it. The lynching of Mr.
Crawford was unwarranted and uncalled for and his treatment
was such a disgrace that respectable people are leaving daily.
When they begin to leave in the next few weeks like they have
planned, this section will go almost into hysterics as some
sections of Georgia and Alabama are doing because they are
leaving for the North to better their industrial condition.
Crawford is said to have been worth $100,000 in property. His
wife and five sons have been ordered to leave. Word comes that
neighbors are beginning to leave and the number the first of
the week reached 1,000. The cry now is--"Go north, where there
is some humanity, some justice and fairness." White people
have accelerated the movement for the race to move north.
This, however, accounts principally for the spread of the movement as
accomplished by northern capital which, hitting the South in spots,
made it possible for a wider dissemination of knowledge concerning the
North, and actually placed in the North persons with numerous personal
connections at home. The husbands and fathers who preceded their
families could and did command that they follow, and they in turn
influenced their neighbors. It appears that those who came on free
transportation were largely men who had no permanent interests or
who could afford to venture into strange fields. This indiscriminate
method of many of the transporting agencies undoubtedly made it
possible for a great number of indigent and thriftless negroes simply
to change the scene of their inaction. Yet it is unquestionably true
that quite a large proportion of those who went North in this fashion
were men honestly seeking remunerative employment, or persons who left
through sheer desperation. In the second stage of the movement the
club organizations, special parties and chartered cars did most
perhaps to depopulate little communities and drain the towns and
cities.
This is easily to be accounted for. The free trains, carrying mainly
men, were uncertain. They were operated for brief periods in towns,
but were in such ill favor with the police that passengers were not
safe. The clubs or special parties were worked up by a leader, who was
often a woman of influence. She sought her friends and a convenient
date was appointed Arrangements could also be made with friends in the
North to receive them. The effectiveness of this method is seen in
the fact that neighbor was soliciting neighbor and friend persuading
friend. Women in some of the northern cities, joining these clubs,
assert that no persuasion was needed; that if a family found that it
could not leave with the first groups, it felt desolate and willing to
resort to any extremes and sacrifices to get the necessary fare. One
woman in a little town in Mississippi, from which over half of the
negro population had dribbled away, said: "If I stay here any longer,
I'll go wild. Every time I go home I have to pass house after house of
all my friends who are in the North and prospering. I've been trying
to hold on here and keep my little property. There ain't enough people
here I now know to give me a decent burial."
[Footnote 45: Work, _Report on the Migration from Florida_.]
[Footnote 46: Work and Johnson, _Report on the Migration during the
World War_.]
[Footnote 47: _The Chicago Defender_, 1916, 1917.]
[Footnote 48: "Whether he knew what he was going for or not," says
one, "he did not take time to consider. The slogan was 'going north.'
Some never questioned the whys or wherefores but went; led as if, by
some mysterious unseen hand which was compelling them on, they just
couldn't stay. One old negro when asked why he was leaving, replied:
'I don't know why or where I'm going, but I'm on my way.' The northern
fever was just simply contagious; they couldn't help themselves. So
far as I know, and I think I am about right, this fever started in
and around the vicinity of Bessemer, Alabama. One little village,
especially, there was owned by a white man from my home who had gone
there the year before carrying some negroes with him. The negroes
started leaving this village so fast that he wouldn't allow any more
tickets to be sold in this village, but the negroes only scoffed at
this. They left the plantations at night and went to other villages
for tickets. The fever had now begun and, like all other contagious
diseases, it soon spread. I arrived home on May 4 and found my native
town all in a bustle. Now, what was it all about? The next club for
the North was leaving on May 18. The second-hand furniture store
and junk shop were practically overflowing. People were selling out
valuable furniture such as whole bedroom sets for only $2. One family
that I knew myself sold a beautiful expensive home for only $100. In
fact people almost gave away their houses and furnishings. Finally,
the night for the club to leave came and the crowds at the train were
so large that the policemen had to just force them back in order to
allow the people to get on and off. After the train was filled with as
many people as it could hold, the old engine gave one or two puffs and
pulled out, bound for the promised land."
"A very close neighbor of ours," says one, "left for the North. He had
a very small family. He left because his youngest son, who had been
north a few months, came home with a considerable amount of money
which he had saved while on his trip. The father made haste and sold
all he had. His son got him a pass. He said it was far better for him
to be in the North where he could stand up like a man and demand his
rights; so he is there. His daughter Mary remained at home for some
time after the family had gone. She finally wrote her father to send
her a pass, which he did. She had a small boy that was given her. She
was not able to take him and care for him as she would like. Her next
door neighbor, a very fine woman who had no children, wanted a child
so Mary gave it to her. To secure better wages and more freedom his
oldest son went to East St. Louis and remained there until June. Then
he left for Chicago. This family sold their chickens and rented their
cattle to some of the people in that community."--Work and Johnson,
_Report on the Migration during the World War_.]
[Footnote 49: Work and Johnson, _Report on the Migration during the
World War_.]
[Footnote 50: Ibid.]
[Footnote 51: _The New York Age_, August 16, 1916.]
[Footnote 52: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 53: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 54: Work, _Report on the Migration from Alabama_.]
CHAPTER V
THE CALL OF THE SELF-SUFFICIENT NORTH
A surviving custom of servitude has consigned the mass of negroes
to the lower pursuits of labor. Even at this it would be possible to
live, for there would be work. In the North, however, such employment
has been monopolized by foreign immigrants clearing Ellis Island at
the rate of more than a million a year. The usurpation here brought
no clash, for the number of negroes in the North scarcely equalled a
year's immigration. From the ranks of unskilled labor, accordingly,
they were effectively debarred, being used occasionally, and to their
own detriment, as strike breakers and forced to receive smaller wages
and to make more enemies. From the field of skilled labor they have
been similarly debarred by the labor unions.
The labor unions have felt that they had a good case against the negro
workman. The complaints most commonly made are that he could be too
easily used as a strike breaker and that he lacked interest in
the trade union movement. As a matter of fact, both are true. An
explanation of this attitude at the same time brings out another
barrier opposed by the North to the free access of negroes to trades.
Considerable wavering has characterized the attitude of the trade
unions toward negro labor. The complexity of their organization
makes it difficult to place any responsibility directly for their
shortcomings. The fact remains, however, that despite the declaration
of the constitution of the federated body that no distinction shall
be made on account of sex, color or creed, negroes have been
systematically debarred from membership in a great number of labor
bodies. Even where there has been no express prohibition in the
constitution of local organizations the _disposition_ to exclude
them has been just as effective. Refused membership, they have easily
become strike breakers. The indifference on the part of negroes to the
labor movement, however, may well be attributed also to ignorance of
its benefits. In a number of cases separate organizations have been
granted them.
With the foreign immigration silently crowding him back into the
South, the labor unions, the prejudices of his white fellow workman
and the paucity of his number making him ineffective as a competitor,
driving him from the door of the factory and workshop, the negro
workman, whatever his qualifications, was prior to 1914 forced to
enter the field of domestic service in the North and farming in the
South. The conditions of livelihood in both sections kept him rigidly
restricted to this limited economic sphere. In 1910 the total number
of negroes ten years of age and over gainfully occupied in the United
States was 5,192,535 or 71 per cent of the total number of negroes ten
years of age and over. Of this number 2,848,258 or 55.2 per cent were
farmers and 1,122,182 or 21.4 per cent were domestic servants. Out
of nearly five hundred occupations listed in the census of 1910
three-fourths of the negro working population were limited to two. In
the manufacturing and mechanical pursuits throughout the entire United
States there were employed scarcely a half million or 12.1 per cent of
the working population.
Statistics of labor conditions in certain northern cities support this
conclusion. In New York City in 1910, of the negroes ten years of
age and over gainfully occupied there were 33,110 males and 26,352
females. Of the males there were engaged in domestic and personal
service 16,724 or 47.6 per cent of the total number of males. Of the
26,352 females there were in domestic service 24,647 or 93.5 per cent
of the total number. In the occupations which require any degree of
skill and utilise the training of acquired trades, the percentage
was exceedingly low. For example, in the manufacturing and mechanical
pursuits where there were the benefits of labor organizations and
higher pay, there were but 4,504 negro males, or 13.6 per cent of the
total number gainfully employed. The per cent of colored women in this
line was considerably less. Taken together with the 1,993 dressmakers
working outside of factories it was but 8.3 per cent of the total
number of females. This line of work, however, as all who are familiar
with the manner in which it is done will recognize, is but another
form of domestic service. Exclusive of this number the per cent drops
to a figure a trifle over one per cent.
Chicago, as another typical northern city, shows practically the same
limitations on negro labor. In 1910 there were gainfully employed in
this city 27,317 negroes. Of this total 61.8 per cent were engaged
in domestic service. The negro women, of course, contributed a larger
share to this proportion, theirs being 83.8 per cent of the females
ten years of age and over gainfully employed. In the manufacturing and
mechanical pursuits there were engaged 3,466 males and 1,038 females,
or 18.7 and 1.1 per cent respectively.[55]
Detroit, viewed in the light of its tremendous increase, shows some
of the widest differences. In 1910 there were 3,310 negroes of working
age profitably employed. Of this number there were but 410 males
and 74 females engaged in the manufacturing and mechanical pursuits.
Forty-six of the total female working population were engaged in
domestic service. Limited to a few occupations, the negroes naturally
encountered there intense competition with the usual result of low
wages and numerous other abuses. Whenever they entered new fields,
as for instance those designated by the census as trade and
transportation, they were generally compelled to accept wages below
the standard to obtain such employment.
There appears to have been a slow but steady progress throughout the
North toward the accession of negroes to new lines of occupation. This
change was forced, unquestionably, by the necessity for seeking new
fields even at an economic loss. From the lines of work in which
negroes for a long time have held unquestioned prestige, the
competition of other nationalities has removed them. It is difficult
now to find a barber shop operated by a negro in the business district
of any northern city. The most dangerous competitor of the negro in
northern industry has been the immigrant, who, unconscious of his
subtle inhibition on the negro's industrial development, crowded him
out of employment in the North and fairly well succeeded in holding
him in the South. After fifty years of European immigration the
foreign born increased from two million to over thirteen million and
only five per cent of them have settled in the South. Indeed, the
yearly increase in foreign immigration equalled the entire negro
population of the North.
The competition in the North has, therefore, been in consequence
bitter and unrelenting. Swedes and Germans have replaced negroes in
some cities as janitors. Austrians, Frenchmen and Germans have
ousted them from the hotels, and Greeks have almost monopolized the
bootblacking business. The decline in the domestic service quota of
the working negro population, when there has been a decline, seems to
have been forced. The figures of the United States census strengthen
the belief that the World War has accomplished one of two things: It
has either hastened the process of opening up larger fields or it
has prevented a serious economic situation which doubtless would
have followed the complete supplanting of negroes by foreigners in
practically all lines.
Before the war the immigration of foreigners from Europe was
proceeding at the enormous rate of over a million a year. This influx
was so completely checked by the war that the margin of arrivals
over departures for the first three years following the beginning
of hostilities was the smallest in fifty years. The following is a
statement taken from reports of the Bureau of Foreign Immigration.
IMMIGRATION SINCE 1913
Year Number
1913 1,197,892
1914 1,218,480
1915 326,700
1916 298,826
1917 295,403
The decrease of over 900,000 immigrants, on whom the industries of the
North depended, caused a grave situation. It must be remembered also
that of the 295,403 arrivals in 1917, there were included 32,346
English, 24,405 French and 13,350 Scotch who furnish but a small quota
of the laboring classes. There were also 16,438 Mexicans who came
over the border, and who, for the most part, live and work in the
Southwest. The type of immigration which kept prime the labor market
of the North and Northwest came in through Ellis Island. Of these, Mr.
Frederick C. Howe, Commissioner of Immigration, said that "only enough
have come to balance those who have left." He adds further that "As
a result, there has been a great shortage of labor in many of our
industrial sections that may last as long as the war."
With the establishment of new industries to meet the needs of the war,
the erection of munitions plants for the manufacture of war materials
and the enlargement of already existing industries to meet the
abnormally large demand for materials here and in Europe, there came
a shifting in the existing labor supply in the North. There was a rush
to the higher paid positions in the munitions plants. This, together
with the advancement of the white men to higher positions nearly
depleted the ranks of common labor. The companies employing foreign
labor for railroad construction work and in the steel mills of
Pennsylvania, the tobacco fields of Connecticut, the packing houses,
foundries and automobile plants of the Northwest, found it imperative
to seek for labor in home fields. The Department of Labor, in the
effort to relieve this shortage, through its employment service,
at first assisted the migration northward. It later withdrew its
assistance when its attention was called to the growing magnitude of
the movement and its possible effect on the South.
Deserted by the Department of Labor, certain northern employers
undertook to translate their desires into action in 1915, when the
anxieties of the New England tobacco planters were felt in the New
York labor market. These planters at first rushed to New York and
promiscuously gathered up 200 girls of the worst type, who straightway
proceeded to demoralize Hartford. The blunder was speedily detected
and the employers came back to New York, seeking some agency which
might assist them in the solution of their problem. Importuned for
help, the National League on Urban Conditions among Negroes supplied
these planters with respectable southern blacks who met this unusual
demand for labor in Connecticut. Later, moreover, it appeared that on
the threshold of an unusually promising year the Poles, Lithuanians
and Czechs, formerly employed in the fields, were dwindling in number
and there was not at hand the usual supply from which their workers
were recruited. A large number of these foreigners had been called
back to their fatherland to engage in the World War.
In January of 1916, therefore, the tobacco growers of Connecticut met
in conference to give this question serious consideration. Mr. Floyd,
the Manager of the Continental Tobacco Corporation, offered a solution
for this difficult problem through the further importation of negro
labor. The response to this suggestion was not immediate, because New
England had never had large experience with negro labor. An intense
interest in the experiment, however, was aroused through a number of
men with connections in the South. It was decided that the National
League on Urban Conditions among Negroes, with headquarters in New
York City, should further assist in securing laborers. Because of the
seasonal character of the work, an effort was made to get students
from the southern schools by advancing transportation. The _New York
News_, a negro weekly, says of this conference:
Thus was born, right in the heart of Yankee Land, the first
significant move to supplant foreign labor with native labor,
a step which has resulted in one of the biggest upheavals in
the North incident to the European war, which has already been
a boon to the colored American, improving his economic status
and putting thousands of dollars into his pockets.[56]
The employers of the North felt justified in bringing about a more
equitable distribution of the available labor supply in America.
Discussing the labor situation before a conference in New York, Mr.
E.J. Traily, Jr., of the Erie Railroad said:
The Erie Railroad has employed a large number of the negro
migrants and we are still in need of more because of the
abnormal state of labor conditions in this part of the
country. It is altogether unfair that the southern States
should enforce laws prohibiting the moving of labor from their
borders, when there are railroads all over this country that
would pay good wages to these laborers. I know of one railroad
company last year, which never had a colored man in the
service, that was offering large wages and scouring every
place for colored help. At the same time the South had and
still has a surplus of colored labor and would not permit it
to be moved. These conditions actually exist, and I know it.
I am interested in this thing not alone from the personal side
of it, but due to the fact of my association with the Erie
Railroad. I believe that the best thing that this body can
do, in my judgment, is to pass resolutions demanding that the
United States Emigration Bureau carry out the act passed by
Congress empowering the Labor Department to place unoccupied
men of other parts of the country where labor is needed.[57]
Early in the summer of 1916, the Pennsylvania and Erie Railroads
promiscuously picked up trainloads of negroes from Jacksonville, St.
Augustine and Pensacola, Florida. They were at first grouped in camps.
The promise of a long free ride to the North met with instant favor,
and wild excitement ensued as the news circulated. Carloads of negroes
began to pour into Pennsylvania. When they had once touched northern
soil and discovered that still higher wages were being offered by
other concerns, many deserted the companies responsible for their
presence in the North. Some drifted to the steel works of the same
State; others left for points nearby. Letters written home brought
news of still more enticing fields, and succeeded in stimulating
the movement. Of the 12,000 negroes brought into Pennsylvania by the
Pennsylvania Railroad, less than 2,000 remained with the company.[58]
It will no doubt be interesting to know exactly where these
negroes settled in the North. For the purpose of understanding this
distribution the North may well be divided according to the two main
lines followed by the migrants in leaving the South. The South and
middle Atlantic States sent the majority of their migrants directly up
the Atlantic coast while the south central States fed the Northwest.
There is, of course, no hard line of separation for these two streams.
Laborers were sought in fields most accessible to the centers
of industry, but individual choice as displayed in the extent of
voluntary migration carried them everywhere.
The New England States, which were probably the first to attract
this labor, were Connecticut and Massachusetts. The tobacco fields
of Connecticut with Hartford as a center received the first negro
laborers as mentioned above. Before a year had passed there were over
3,000 southern negroes in the city of Hartford. Massachusetts had
its new war plants which served as an attraction. Holyoke received
considerable advertisement through the National League on Urban
Conditions among Negroes, and as a result secured a number directly
from the South. Boston, which has always stood as a symbol of hope for
those who sought relief from southern conditions, has not, however,
at any time afforded any great variety of occupations for the peasant
class of negroes. The receptions staged by the negro leaders of that
city were stimulated apparently more by the sentimental causes of
the movement than any other consideration. Although there existed in
Boston the type of industries which required great numbers of men,
barriers prevented negroes in large numbers from entering them and as
a result there was no great influx of migrants from the South.
The places mentioned above are, of course, only those which received
large numbers. Scattered all over this section of the country were
thousands of individuals who, seeking more profitable employment,
broke loose from the crowd congregating at favorite points. New York
State with New York City as its center has received a considerable
number. New York City, however, has been principally a rerouting
point. In fact, many of those who subsequently went to New England
first went to New York City. The State of New York recruited its labor
here. There came to New York probably no less than 75,000 negroes,
a large portion of whom stopped in New York City, although Albany,
Poughkeepsie, Buffalo and smaller cities received their share.
New Jersey, because of the great number of its industrial plants, was
rapidly filled. Newark alone augmented its colored population within
a little over a year by one hundred per cent. The attractions in this
State were the munitions plants, brick yards and wire factories. The
principal cities here that might be mentioned are Newark, Trenton
and Jersey City, although the migration to the last two cities hardly
compares in volume to that of Newark. Delaware, bordering New Jersey,
received a few.[59] Washington, the Capital City and the gateway to
the North, already containing the largest negro population of any city
in the country was in the path of the migration and had its increase
of population accelerated by the war. A considerable number of
southern negroes found work there, principally in domestic service.
Pennsylvania, the first northern State to begin _wholesale_
importation of labor from the South, is the seat of the country's
largest steel plants and is the terminal of three of the country's
greatest railroad systems. Pittsburgh received perhaps the largest
number; Philadelphia and Harrisburg followed in order. The numerous
little industrial centers dotting the State fed from the supply
furnished by the railroads.[60]
The migration to the Northwest was more extensive. Ohio, the State
of vital historical association for negroes, was generously visited.
Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron and Youngstown were popular
centers. The coal mines, factories and iron works were most in need
of men, and obtained them without any great difficulty. Indiana, still
probably remembered as the delicate spot in the inquiry following
a similar migration thirty-nine years ago, with its very highly
developed industries caught the flood proceeding up the Mississippi
valley. Indianapolis was a popular point although not a satisfactory
one for the migrants, who pretty generally left it for better fields.
Gary and Indiana Harbor, more properly satellite cities of Chicago,
developed an almost entirely new negro population.
Missouri, a border State, has one city with a considerably augmented
negro population. The size of the new population of St. Louis can be
accounted for by the fact that geographically it is the first city of
the North. East St. Louis, recently made notorious by the reception
which it accorded its newcomers, is surrounded by a number of
satellite towns, all of which made bids for labor from the South and
received it. Not a few negro laborers went to Kansas City from which
many were rerouted to other points. Nebraska received a large number
of migrants as a direct result of self-advertisement. Omaha was the
city which invited them and received the bulk of immigration to that
State.
Illinois, the one State known throughout the South because of Chicago,
received probably the heaviest quota of any. Located as it is in
the center of industry for the Middle West and known to negroes as
a "fair" State, it received through Chicago as many at least as the
entire State of Pennsylvania. Chicago is the center of a cluster of
industrial towns. It has served as a point of distribution through
its numerous employment agencies for the territory northwest and
northeast. Michigan has one large city, Detroit, which has recently
increased its population one hundred per cent because of its number
of highly developed industries which have supplied employment for its
rapidly increasing population.[61]
The eastern cities which made efforts through various means to augment
their labor supply were Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Newark, New York
City and Hartford. It is manifestly impossible to get reliable figures
on the volume of increase in the negro population of any of these
cities. All that is available is in the form of estimates which can
not be too confidently relied upon. Estimates based on the average
number of arrivals from the South per day, the increase in the school
population and the opinions of social agencies which have engaged
themselves in adjusting the newcomers to their new homes appear to
agree in the main.
[Footnote 55: These facts appear in the _United States Census
Reports_.]
[Footnote 56: _The New York News_.]
[Footnote 57: _New York Age_, January 30, 1917; _Christian Recorder_,
Philadelphia, February 2, 1917.]
[Footnote 58: Ibid.]
[Footnote 59: Fortune, _Report on Negro Migration to the East_.]
[Footnote 60: Ibid.]
[Footnote 61: These estimates are based upon the reports of
investigators sent to make a study of the condition of the migrants.]
CHAPTER VI
THE DRAINING OF THE BLACK BELT
In order better to understand the migration movement, a special study
of it was made for five adjoining States, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi and Louisiana, from which came more than half of all
migrants. The negro population of these five States was 4,115,299,
which was almost half of the negro population of the South. In the
particular sections of these States where the migration was the
heaviest, the one crop system, cotton, was general. As a result of
the cotton price demoralization resulting from the war, the labor
depression, the ravages of the cotton boll weevil, and in some regions
unusual floods, as already stated, there was in this section of the
South an exceptionally large amount of surplus labor. The several
trunk line railroads directly connecting this section with the
northern industrial centers made the transportation of this labor an
easy matter.
In 1915, the labor depression in Georgia was critical and work at
remunerative wages was scarce. In Atlanta strong pressure was brought
to bear to have the negroes employed in cleaning the streets replaced
by whites who were out of work. It was reported that the organized
charities of Macon, in dealing with the question of the unemployed,
urged whites employing negroes to discharge the blacks and hire
whites. Mr. Bridges Smith, the mayor of the city, bitterly opposed
this suggestion. When the 1915 cotton crop began to ripen it was
proposed to compel the unemployed negroes in the towns to go to the
fields and pick cotton. Commenting editorially on this, the _Atlanta
Constitution_ said:
The problem of the unemployed in Albany, Georgia, is being
dealt with practically. All negroes who have not regular
employment are offered it in the cotton fields, the immense
crop requiring more labor than the plantations ordinarily
have. If the unemployed refuse the opportunity, the order
"move on" and out of the community is given by the chief of
police, and the order must be obeyed. Though the government is
taking up very systematically the problem of the unemployed,
its solving will be slow, and the government aid for a long
time will have to be supplementary to work in this direction,
initiated in communities, municipalities and States, where the
problem of the unemployed is usually complex.[62]
In the course of time, when the negroes did leave, they departed in
such large numbers that their going caused alarm. Because they left
at night the number of negroes going north from the immediate vicinity
was not generally realized. One night nearly fifty of Tifton boarded
northbound passenger trains, which already carried, it is said, some
three hundred negroes. Labor agents had been very active in that
section all fall, but so cleverly had they done their work that
officers had not been able to get a line on them. For several weeks,
the daily exodus, it is said, had ranged from ten to twenty-five.[63]
Columbus was an assembling point for migrants going from east Alabama
and west Georgia. Railroad tickets would be bought from local stations
to Columbus, and there the tickets or transportation for the North,
mainly to Chicago, would be secured. Americus was in many respects
similarly affected, having had many of its important industries
thereby paralyzed. Albany, a railroad center, became another
assembling point for migrants from another area. Although difficulties
would be experienced in leaving the smaller places directly for the
North, it was easy to purchase a ticket to Albany and later depart
from that town. The result was that Albany was the point of departure
for several thousand negroes, of whom a very large percentage did
not come from the towns or Dougherty county in which Albany is
situated.[64]
A negro minister, well acquainted with the situation in southwest
Georgia, was of the opinion that the greatest number had gone from
Thomas and Mitchell counties and the towns of Pelham and Thomasville.
Valdosta, with a population of about 8,000 equally divided between the
races became a clearing house for many migrants from southern Georgia.
The pastor of one of the leading churches said that he lost twenty
per cent of his members. The industrial insurance companies reported
a twenty per cent loss in membership.[65] Waycross,[66] a railroad
center in the wire grass section of the State, with a population of
7,700 whites and 6,700 negroes, suffered greatly from the migration.
Hundreds of negroes in this section were induced by the employment
bureaus and industrial companies in eastern States to abandon their
homes. From Brunswick, one of the two principal seaports in Georgia,
went 1,000 negroes, the chief occupation of whom was stevedoring.
Savannah, another important seaport on the south Atlantic coast, with
a population of about 70,000, saw the migration attain unusually large
proportions, so as to cause almost a panic and to lead to drastic
measures to check it.
The migration was from all sections of Florida. The heaviest movements
were from west Florida, from Tampa and Jacksonville. Capitola early
reported that a considerable number of negroes left that vicinity,
some going north, a few to Jacksonville and others to south Florida to
work on the truck farms and in the phosphate mines. A large number of
them migrated from Tallahassee to Connecticut to work in the tobacco
fields. Owing to the depredations of the boll weevil, many others went
north. Most of the migration in west Florida, however, was rural as
there are very few large towns in that section. Yet, although they had
no such assembling points as there were in other parts of the South,
about thirty or thirty-five per cent of the labor left. In north
central Florida near Apalachicola fifteen or twenty per cent of the
labor left. In middle Florida around Ocala and Gainesville probably
twenty to twenty-five per cent of the laborers left, chiefly because
of the low wages. The stretch of territory between Pensacola and
Jacksonville was said to be one of the most neglected sections in the
South, the migration being largely of farm tenants with a considerable
number of farm owners. There were cases of the migration of a whole
community including the pastor of the church.[67]
Live Oak, a small town in Sewanee county, experienced the same
upheaval, losing a large proportion of its colored population.
Dunnelon, a small town in the southern part of Marion county, soon
found itself in the same situation. Lakeland, in Polk county, lost
about one-third of its negroes. Not less than one-fourth of the black
population of Orlando was swept into this movement. Probably half of
the negroes of Palatka, Miami and De Land, migrated as indicated by
schools and churches, the membership of which decreased one-half.
From 3,000 to 5,000 negroes migrated from Tampa and Hillsboro county.
Jacksonville, the largest city in Florida, with a population of about
35,000 negroes, lost about 6,000 or 8,000 of its own black population
and served as an assembling point for 14,000 or 15,000 others who went
to the North.[68]
By September, 1916, the movement in Alabama was well under way. In
Selma there was made the complaint that a new scheme was being used
to entice negroes away. Instead of advertising in Alabama papers, the
schemes of the labor agents were proclaimed through papers published
in other States and circulated in Alabama. As a result there was a
steady migration of negroes from Alabama to the North and to points in
Tennessee and Arkansas where conditions were more inviting and wages
higher. Estimates appear to indicate, however, that Alabama, through
the migration, lost a larger proportion of her negro population than
did any one of the other southern States.[69]
From Eufaula in the eastern part of the State it was reported in
September that trains leaving there on Sundays in 1916 were packed
with negroes going north, that hundreds left, joining crowds from
Clayton, Clio and Ozark. There seemed to be a "free ride" every Sunday
and many were giving up lucrative positions there to go. The majority
of these negroes, however, went from the country where they had had
a disastrous experience with the crops of the year 1916 on account
of the July floods.[70] By October the exodus from Dallas county had
reached such alarming proportions that farmers and business men were
devising means to stop it.
Bullock county, with a working population of 15,000 negroes, lost
about one-third and in addition about 1,500 non-workers. The reports
of churches as to the loss of membership at certain points justify
this conclusion. Hardly any of the churches escaped without a serious
loss and the percentage in most cases was from twenty-five to seventy
per cent.[71] It seemed that these intolerable conditions did not
obtain in Union Springs. According to persons living in Kingston, the
wealthiest and the most prosperous negroes of the district migrated.
In October, 1916, some of the first large groups left Mobile, Alabama,
for the Northwest. The report says: "Two trainloads of negroes
were sent over the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to work in the
railroad yards and on the tracks in the West. Thousands more are
expected to leave during the next month."
As soon as the exodus got well under way, Birmingham became one of the
chief assembling points in the South for the migrants and was one of
the chief stations on the way north. Thousands came from the flood
and boll weevil districts to Birmingham. The records of the negro
industrial insurance companies showed the effects of the migration
both from and to Birmingham. The Atlanta Mutual Insurance Company lost
500 of its members and added 2,000. Its debit for November, 1916, was
$502.25; for November, 1917, it was $740. The business of the Union
Central Relief Association was greatly affected by the migration. The
company in 1916 lost heavily. In 1917 it cleared some money.
The State of Mississippi, with a larger percentage of negroes than any
other State in the Union, naturally lost a large number of its
working population. There has been in progress for a number of years
a movement from the hill counties of the State of Mississippi to the
Delta, and from the Delta to Arkansas. The interstate migration
has resulted from the land poverty of the hill country and from
intimidation of the "poor whites" particularly in Amite, Lincoln,
Franklin and Wilkinson counties. In 1908 when the floods and boll
weevil worked such general havoc in the southwestern corner of
the State, labor agents from the Delta went down and carried away
thousands of families. It is estimated that more than 8,000 negroes
left Adams county during the first two years of the boll weevil
period. Census figures for 1910 show that the southwestern counties
suffered a loss of 18,000 negroes. The migration of recent years to
adjacent States has been principally to Arkansas.[72]
Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, seriously felt the migration. The
majority of the "lower middle class" of negroes, twenty-five per cent
of the business men and fully one-third of the professional men left
the city--in all between 2,000 and 5,000. Two of the largest churches
lost their pastors and about 200 of each of their memberships. Other
churches suffered a decrease of forty per cent in their communicants.
Two-thirds of the remaining families in Jackson are part families with
relatives who have recently migrated to the North.
For years the negroes of Greenville have been unsettled and
dissatisfied to the extent of leaving. Negroes came from Leland to
Greenville to start for the North. This condition has obtained there
ever since the World's Fair in Chicago, when families first learned
to go to that section whenever opportunities for establishment
were offered them. Although the negroes from Greenville are usually
prosperous, during this exodus they have mortgaged their property or
placed it in the hands of friends on leaving for the North. Statistics
indicate that in the early part of the movement at least 1,000 left
the immediate vicinity of Greenville and since that time others have
continued to go in large numbers.[73]
Greenwood, with a population evenly balanced between the white and
black, had passed through the unusual crisis of bad crops and the
invasion of the boll weevil. The migration from this point, therefore,
was at first a relief to the city rather than a loss. The negroes,
in the beginning, therefore, moved into the Delta and out to Arkansas
until the call for laborers in the North. The migration from this
point to the North reached its height in the winter and spring of 1916
and 1917. The migrants would say that they were going to Memphis, but
when you next heard from them they would be in Chicago, St. Louis or
Detroit. The police at the Illinois Central depot had been handling
men roughly. When they were rude to one, ten or twelve left. Young men
usually left on night trains. Next day their friends would say, "Ten
left last night," or, "Twelve left last night." In this manner the
stream started. Friends would notify others of the time and place of
special trains. The type of negro leaving is indicated in the decline
in the church membership. Over 300 of those who left were actively
connected with some church. During the summer of 1917, 100 houses
stood vacant in the town and over 300 were abandoned in the McShein
addition. As the crops were gathered people moved in from the country,
from the southern part of the State and from the "hills" generally to
take the places of those who had left for the North.
There was no concerted movement from Clarksdale, a town with a
population of about 400 whites and 600 blacks; but families appeared
to slip away because of the restlessness and uneasiness in evidence
everywhere. From the rural district around there was considerable
migration to Arkansas, but considerable numbers were influenced to
leave for Buffalo and Chicago. Mound Bayou lost some of its population
also to Arkansas and the North, as they could buy land cheaper in the
former and find more lucrative employment in the latter. Natchez did
not suffer a serious loss of population until the invasion of the boll
weevil and the floods.
Hattiesburg, a large lumber center, was at the beginning of the
exodus, almost depopulated. Some of the first migrants went to
Pennsylvania but the larger number went to Chicago. It became a
rallying point for many negroes who assembled there ostensibly to
go to New Orleans, at which place they easily provided for their
transportation to Chicago and other points in the North. From Laurel
in Jones county, a large sawmill district, it is estimated that
between 4,000 and 5,000 negroes moved north. About 3,000 left Meridian
for Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit and Pittsburgh. Indianola, a town with
a number of negro independent enterprises, also became upset by
this movement, losing a considerable number of progressive families.
Gulfport, a coast town a short distance from New Orleans, lost about
one-third of its negro population. About 45 families left Bobo for
Arkansas, and 15 families went to the North. Johnstown, Mississippi,
lost 150 of its 400 negroes.[74]
The owners of turpentine industries and lumber plants in southeastern
Mississippi were especially affected by the exodus. In Hinds, Copiah,
Lincoln, Rankin, Newton and Lake counties, many white residents rather
than suffer their crops to be lost, worked in the fields. It was
reported that numbers of these whites were leaving for the Delta and
for Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. Firms there attempted to look
in the North that they might send for the negroes whom they had
previously employed, promising them an advance in wages.
At the same time the Illinois Central Railroad was carrying from New
Orleans and other parts of Louisiana thousands into Indiana, Illinois
and Michigan. At the Illinois Central Railroad station in that city,
the agent had been having his hands full taking names of colored
laborers wanting and waiting to go North. About the first of April,
1917, there came also the reports from New Orleans that 300 negro
laborers left there on the Southern Pacific steamer for New York, and
500 more left later on another of the same company's steamships bound
also for New York, it was said, to work for the company. Thousands
thus left for the North and West and East, the number reaching over
1,200.
It is an interesting fact that this migration from the South followed
the path marked out by the Underground Railroad of antebellum days.
Negroes from the rural districts moved first to the nearest village or
town, then to the city. On the plantations it was not regarded safe to
arrange for transportation to the North through receiving and sending
letters. On the other hand, in the towns and cities there was more
security in meeting labor agents. The result of it was that cities
like New Orleans, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Savannah and Memphis
became concentration points. From these cities migrants were rerouted
along the lines most in favor.
The principal difference between this course and the Underground
Railroad was that in the later movement the southernmost States
contributed the largest numbers. This perhaps is due in part to the
selection of Florida and Georgia by the first concerns offering the
inducement of free transportation, and at the same time it accounts
for the very general and intimate knowledge of the movement by
the people in States through which they were forced to pass. In
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for example, the first intimation of a great
movement of negroes to the North came through reports that thousands
of negroes were leaving Florida for the North. To the negroes
of Florida, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia the North means
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England. The route is more
direct, and it is this section of the northern expanse of the United
States that gets widest advertisement through tourists, and passengers
and porters on the Atlantic coast steamers. The northern newspapers
with the greatest circulation are from Pennsylvania and New York, and
the New York colored weeklies are widely read. Reports from all of
these south Atlantic States indicate that comparatively few persons
ventured into the Northwest when a better known country lay before
them.
The Pennsylvania Railroad, one of the first to import laborers
in large numbers, reports that of the 12,000 persons brought to
Pennsylvania over its road, all but 2,000 were from Florida and
Georgia. The tendency was to continue along the first definite path.
Each member of the vanguard controlled a small group of friends at
home, if only the members of his immediate family. Letters sent
back, representing that section of the North and giving directions
concerning the route best known, easily influenced the next groups
to join their friends rather than explore new fields. In fact, it is
evident throughout the movement that the most congested points in
the North when the migration reached its height, were those favorite
cities to which the first group had gone.[75] An intensive study of
a group of 77 families from the South, selected at random in Chicago,
showed but one family from Florida and no representation at all from
North and South Carolina. A tabulation of figures and facts from 500
applications for work by the Chicago League on Urban Conditions among
Negroes gives but a few persons from North Carolina, twelve from South
Carolina and one from Virginia. The largest number, 102, came from
Georgia. Applicants for work in New York from the south Atlantic
States are overwhelming.[76]
For the east and west south central States, the Northwest was more
accessible and better known. St. Louis and Cincinnati are the nearest
northern cities to the South and excursions have frequently been run
there from New Orleans, through the State of Mississippi. There are
in St. Louis, as in other more northern cities, little communities of
negroes from the different sections of the South. The mail order and
clothing houses of Chicago have advertised this city throughout the
South. The convenience of transportation makes the Northwest a popular
destination for migrants from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas
and Tennessee. The Illinois Central Railroad runs directly to New
Orleans through Tennessee and Mississippi.
There were other incidental factors which determined the course of
the movement. Free trains from different sections broke new paths by
overcoming the obstacles of funds for transportation. No questions
were asked of the passengers, and, in some instances, as many as were
disposed to leave were carried. When once they had advanced beyond the
Mason and Dixon line, many fearing that fees for transportation would
be deducted from subsequent pay, if they were in the employ of the
parties who, as they understood, were advancing their fares, deserted
the train at almost any point that looked attractive. Employment could
be easily secured and at good wages. Many of these unexpected and
premature destinations became the nucleuses for small colonies
whose growth was stimulated and assisted by the United States postal
service.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Map of where migrants came from and went]
* * * * *
[Footnote 62: _Atlanta Constitution_, August 28, 1915.]
[Footnote 63: Ibid., December 13, 1916.]
[Footnote 64: A leading colored physician of Albany in commenting on
the exodus said: "A considerable number went from town and county. The
number was not near so great, however, as from other counties." He was
of the opinion that not more than eight or ten families had left. He
said that his practice had not been affected. Individuals came in from
other sections and took the place of those who went away. He was
of the opinion that the fever was about over. This was due to the
shortage of labor created by the draft, the increase in wages and
better treatment, particularly the latter. Tenants on plantations
were receiving better treatment than they formerly received. Some
plantation owners as an inducement to their tenants were furnishing
each with a cow and a sow. Farm labor which was formerly paid $8 to
$12 per month, now received from $20 to $30 per month. He said he knew
of one plantation owner who was paying his hands $1.25 per day. This
doctor said he was reliably informed that many negroes had left Lee
and Calhoun counties and the whites had to go in the fields and plow.
As a result of the exodus, the white and colored men of Albany had got
closer together. He had recently been elected a member of the Albany
Chamber of Commerce, and he understood that about twelve colored men
had been invited to become members of the Chamber to assist in working
for the development of the county.
One of the colored druggists in Georgia said that Albany was a central
point, and that a great many came from Cuthbert, Arlington, Leary and
Calhoun, Early and Miller counties to Albany as a starting point for
the North. Many went from Albany to Chicago and Philadelphia, but he
was of the opinion that the largest number had gone to New Jersey.
Migration has been affected by the draft and new opportunities opening
up in the South. He said that whites became alarmed and called a
meeting and invited some colored persons to consult with them.--Work,
_Report on Migration from Georgia_.]
[Footnote 65: "The migration of negroes from this city to the North
set in again this week, after a comparative lull of two months. A
party of twelve left here yesterday for Jersey City, while twenty
others are expected to leave shortly. Many women are going with the
men, in some cases leaving their children. Stories of suffering from
cold, brought back by negroes during this winter, checked the
movement considerably. Several hundred negroes will leave here this
spring."--_Atlanta Constitution_, March 26, 1917.]
[Footnote 66: A report from there, in the _Savannah Morning News_, of
December 3, 1916, said: "Hundreds of negroes in this section recently
have been fleeced by white men posing as agents of large employment
bureaus and industrial companies in the eastern States. The most
recent instance of the easy marks is reported from Coffee county,
but it is in line with what has been happening in other counties. The
so-called agent collects a registration fee, giving in return for the
money, usually one or two dollars, a card which is said to entitle the
bearer to a position at such and such a plant. The negroes get on the
train on the date specified, the agent meeting them at the station.
He tells them he will have a party ticket for the entire number and
to tell the conductor to collect their fares from him. The negroes of
course leave home for the point where they think they will be given
work, and apparently are a happy lot. But when ticket collecting time
comes there is another story to tell.
"Thirty-seven negroes the other day boarded a northbound train at
Douglas for Pittsburgh. The agent was on hand to check each one
and then he got aboard, or so the negroes thought. A few miles from
Douglas the conductor found he had thirty-seven ticketless passengers.
And none of the negroes had the money to pay the fare to Pittsburgh.
The train was stopped, and the negroes returned home, wiser and vowing
they were 'done with leaving home.' Quite a number of negroes have
come to Waycross to meet agents and go north. Before coming here the
negroes of course had contributed."]
[Footnote 67: Work, _Report on the Migration from Florida_.]
[Footnote 68: Work, _Report on the Migration from Florida_.]
[Footnote 69: Work, _Report on the Migration from Alabama_.]
[Footnote 70: _Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser_, September 27, 1916.]
[Footnote 71: The investigator had been in Union Springs on a Saturday
before there was a migration. The crowds on the streets were so great
that it was difficult for one to pass. On Saturday, November 17, 1917,
the investigator was again in Union Springs. It was an ideal autumn
day. Good crops had been made in the county. Especially high prices
were being paid for all sorts of farm produce. The market season was
on. Court was in session. The streets, however, had about the crowds
to be found on some days, other than Saturday, before the migration
began.]
[Footnote 72: The reasons back of this, as obtained from migrants
themselves, are that, except in the town of Mound Bayou, negroes have
not been encouraged to own property or rent, but to work on shares;
in Arkansas it is possible to buy good land cheaply and on reasonable
terms; inducements are offered by Arkansas in the form of better
treatment and schools; there are no such "excessive" taxes as are
required in the Mississippi Delta to protect them from the overflows;
the boll weevil has not yet seriously affected that State, and a small
farmer may be fairly independent in Arkansas.]
[Footnote 73: The lumber mills and the local corporations provide
a great part of the work for laborers in the city. Wages last year
ranged from $1.25 to $1.50 a day. Wages at present are $1.75 and $2
a day. Cotton picking last year brought 60 and 75 cents a hundred;
at present $2 is paid for every hundred pounds picked. The city has
enacted "move on" laws intending to get rid of drones. The police, it
is said, could not distinguish drones from "all negroes."
It was further complained that the police deputies and sheriffs
are too free with the use of their clubs and guns when a negro
is involved. It was related that Dr. ----, practising 47 years in
Greenville, Mississippi, was driving his buggy in a crowded street on
circus day when he was commanded by a policeman to drive to one side
and let a man pass. He replied that he could not because he himself
was jammed. He was commanded again and then dragged from the buggy,
clubbed and haled into the police court and fined. The officer who
arrested him swore that he had given frequent trouble, which was
untrue according to reliable testimony and his own statement. This
incident is also told:
A policeman's friend needed a cook. The policeman drove by a negro
home and, seeing a woman on the porch, told her to get in the buggy.
No questions were permitted. She was carried to his friend's home and
told to work. The woman prepared one meal and left the city for the
North.--Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 74: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 75: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 76: Ibid.]
CHAPTER VII
EFFORTS TO CHECK THE MOVEMENT
The departure of the first negroes usually elicited no concern
from the authorities. It was assumed that their actions were merely
expressions of the negro's "love for travel," and that they would
soon return. When, however, they did not return and hosts of others
followed, the white South became deeply concerned and endeavored to
check the movement. Throughout the exodus drastic legislation and
force were employed. In Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia
laws were passed in an effort to suppress the activities of labor
agents. Licenses were made prohibitively high; labor agents were
arrested and heavily fined. In some cases their coming was penalized
to prohibit their operations entirely and they frequently suffered
physical injury.
In Florida labor recruiting early assumed a serious aspect. Precaution
was, therefore, taken to impede the progress of the work of labor
agents among negroes, at first by moral suasion and then by actual
force. The cities and towns of this State enacted measures requiring
a very high license of labor agents, imposing in case of failure to
comply with these regulations, a penalty of imprisonment. For example,
in Tampa when these operations were brought to the attention of
the authorities, Joe Robinson, a negro officer, was detailed to
investigate the matter. He discovered that one Joyce and another negro
named Alex Reeves were implicated in the movement. These men were
charged with having collected $7 from each of several hundred negroes
who wanted to go to Pennsylvania. A meeting among the negroes of Tampa
was then held to secure pledges of assistance for the negro officer,
then making an effort to prevent the exodus. Being under the
impression that the ignorant members of their race were being imposed
upon by agents from without, many of these leading negroes pledged
themselves to assist in the suppression of it.[77]
In Jacksonville, where the labor agents flourished, the City Council
passed an ordinance requiring that migration agents should pay $1,000
license to recruit labor sent out of the State under penalty of $600
fine and 60 days in jail. Several police detectives were assigned the
task of arresting those who were said to be spreading false reports
among negroes there to the effect that special trains were ready on
various specified dates to take them to points in the North. When,
therefore, large crowds of negroes gathered near the Union Depot in
Jacksonville, awaiting the so-called special train, they were handled
rather roughly by the police when it was shown that they had
not purchased tickets and there was no one to vouch for their
transportation.
The same condition with respect to the apparent necessity for
prohibitive measures obtained in Georgia. The local governments early
took action to prevent the drain of the labor population to northern
States through the operation of labor agents. It was soon observed,
however, that these agents worked out their schemes so clandestinely
that it was impossible to check the movement by such measures. Fearing
that the general unrest among the negroes of the city and the efforts
that were being put forth on the part of the authorities to keep them
from being transported from Macon to the North, might result in a riot
with which the city authorities would not be able to cope, Chief of
Police George S. Riley recommended to the civil service commission
that forty magazine rifles be purchased for the police department.[78]
At that time the police had only their pistols and clubs. It was
said that surliness then existed among certain negroes and the police
wanted to be able to cope with any situation that might arise. The
City Council, thereafter, raised the license fee for labor agents to
$25,000, requiring also that such an agent be recommended by ten local
ministers, ten manufacturers and twenty-five business men. The police
of Macon were very active in running down labor agents violating this
law.
Americus was honeycombed and carefully watched and searched for
persons inducing negroes to migrate, as there was a large exodus of
negroes from this city to the tobacco fields of Connecticut. Negroes
attempting to leave were arrested and held to see if by legal measures
they could be deterred from going North. The officers in charge of
this raid were armed with State warrants charging misdemeanors and
assisted by a formidable array of policemen and deputy sheriffs.
Negroes were roughly taken from the trains and crowded into the
prisons to await trial for these so-called misdemeanors. Although the
majority of them were set free after their trains had left the city,
the leaders in most cases suffered humiliation at the hands of the
officers of the law.[79]
At Thomasville, a white man and a negro were arrested, charged with
the usual crime of being labor agents. Much excitement followed.
Fearing serious results, the colored ministers of this city endeavored
to stop the exodus. A committee of their most prominent citizens met
with the mayor and discussed the matter freely. They arranged for
a large mass meeting of white and colored citizens who undertook to
cooperate in bringing the exodus to an end. The white citizens of
Waycross experienced the same trouble with labor agents, but had much
difficulty in finding out exactly who they were and how they contrived
to make such inroads on the population.[80]
The situation became more critical in Savannah, one of the largest
assembling points for migrants in the South. When the loss of labor
became so serious and ordinary efforts to check it failed, more
drastic measures were resorted to. On the thirteenth of August, for
example, when there spread through the city the rumor that two special
trains would leave for the North there followed great commotion among
the negroes, who, already much disturbed by the agitation for and
against the movement, were easily induced to start for the North.
When, at about five o'clock that morning, 2,000 negroes assembled
at the station for this purpose, the county police, augmented by a
detachment of city officers, appeared at the station and attempted to
clear the tracks; but the crowd being so large the officers finally
found their task impossible, for as they would clear one section of
the tracks the crowd would surge to another. The crowd was extremely
orderly and good natured and the two arrests that were made were for
minor offenses. As these trains failed to move according to orders,
over 300 of this group paid their own fares and proceeded to the
North.[81]
A few days later Savannah reached a crisis in the labor movement
agitation, when over 100 negroes were placed under arrest at the Union
Depot and sent to the police barracks. Several patrol wagon loads of
police arrived at the station and immediately a cordon was formed by
the police around all negroes in the lobby and every exit from the
station was guarded. By this unusual sight many persons were attracted
to the station and excitement ran high. Many negroes were arrested
with a view to finding out the leaders of the movement, but upon
failure to discover the facts in the case the lieutenant in charge
ordered the men in custody to be incarcerated on charges of loitering.
To show how groundless these charges were, one need but to note
the character of some of the persons arrested. Four carpenters from
Lumpkin, Georgia, had just arrived and were waiting for a contractor
for whom they had agreed to work a short distance from the city.
Another young man entered the station to purchase a ticket to
Burroughs, Georgia, to see relatives, but he was not only incarcerated
but had to give a bond of $100 for his appearance next morning.
Another young man, working for the Pullman Company, entered the
depot to cash a check for $11 when he was arrested, sent to jail
and searched. Still another, a middle-aged man of most pleasing
appearance, had just arrived from Jacksonville, Florida, and was
waiting in the station until the time to proceed by boat that
afternoon to New York. On one occasion, J.H. Butler, manager of the
_Savannah Tribune_, a negro newspaper, was arrested charged with
violation of the city and State law of sending labor out of the city.
He was obliged to give bond of $400 to appear in court the next day.
At the same time seventeen college boys who were waiting at a New York
steamer dock were also apprehended. The trial of the men before the
recorder proved farcical, not a single one of the hundred or more
prisoners being required to testify. After the chief of the detective
force and several police lieutenants had testified, Recorder Schwartz
ordered the men all released, but not before he had taken occasion
to upbraid the police force for the unnecessarily large number of
arrests.[82]
Alabama was equally alive to the need to suppress the migration
propaganda among negroes. To this end the Montgomery City Commission
on September 19, 1916, passed an ordinance to the effect that any
person who would entice, persuade or influence any laborer or other
person to leave the city of Montgomery for the purpose of being
employed at any other place as a laborer must on conviction be
fined not less than one nor more than one hundred dollars, or may be
sentenced to hard labor for the city, for not more than six months,
one or both in the discretion of the court. The other ordinance
provided that any person, firm or corporation who published, printed
or wrote or delivered or distributed or posted or caused to be
published, printed or written or delivered or distributed or posted,
any advertisement, letter, newspaper, pamphlet, handbill or other
writing, for the purpose of enticing, persuading or influencing
any laborer or other person to leave the city of Montgomery for the
purpose of being employed at any other place as a laborer must on
conviction be fined not less than one hundred dollars, or may be
sentenced to hard labor for the city for not more than six months, one
or both in the discretion of the court. Labor agents and other leaders
both white and black were arrested throughout the State in accordance
with the usual custom of preferring technical charges.[83]
The treatment of the movement in Mississippi was no exception to the
rule. At Jackson, the "pass riders," as they were called, were so
molested by the police that they were finally driven from the town. In
the same town the citizens were reported to have forced the railroads
to discontinue the use of passes on the threat of damaging their
interests and influencing decisions in court cases. Negroes were
secretly enticed away, however, after they had been dispersed from
the railway stations and imprisoned when in the act of boarding
the trains. The police interfered at one time with negroes leaving,
especially when it was suspected that they were leaving on passes. To
circumvent this, negroes would go two or three stations below Jackson
where there were no policemen and board the trains. It was the
unanimous opinion of whites and blacks who observed the almost frantic
efforts to leave the town, that any attempt to hinder by intimidation
or by making it difficult to leave, simply served to make them more
determined to leave.[84]
At Greenville, Mississippi, trains were stopped. Negroes were dragged
therefrom and others were prevented from boarding them. Strangers were
searched for evidence that might convict them as labor agents. It is
also reported that local authorities were reprimanded for interfering
with interstate commerce. At Greenwood there was much complaint
against the brutality of the police, whose efforts to intimidate
negroes carried them beyond bounds. A chartered car carrying fifty
men and women was sidetracked at Brookhaven for three days. The man
conducting the passengers was arrested, but when no charge was brought
against him, he was released.[85]
A Hattiesburg, Mississippi, ticket agent attempted on the advice
of citizens to interfere with negroes leaving by refusing to sell
tickets. Some one called the attention of the general superintendent
to the matter. Thereafter the man was courteous and even assisted
the migrants. Police arrested one or two men at the station, and,
according to one of the men, made the crowd so angry that they swore
they would not stop until all had gone. There are cited further
instances of letters to plantation hands which were detained and
telegrams which were delayed. At Meridian, Mississippi, a trainload of
negroes en route to the North was held up by the chief of police on a
technical charge. It is said that the United States marshal arrested
him and placed him under heavy bond for delaying the train. The
federal authorities were importuned to stop the movement. They
withdrew the assistance of the Employment Department, but admitted
that they could not stop the interstate migration.[86]
One remarked, however, "It will scarcely be possible, to make a
sectional issue of these Columbus convictions, as the charge of
'enticing away of labor' in that country is aimed at certain Arkansas
planters who carried away several carloads of negroes to work on their
places, leaving the Mississippi employers without the labor to gather
or grow their crops. It can not, therefore, be interpreted as an
attempt to keep the negro in semislavery in the South and prevent him
from going to work at better wages in the northern munition factories;
it is only an effort to protect Mississippi employers from Arkansas
planters."[87]
The alarm felt over the exodus prompted the mayor of New Orleans to
telegraph the president of the Illinois Central Railroad, asking that
his road stop carrying negroes to the North. The latter replied that
he had viewed with much concern the heavy exodus of negro labor from
the South during the past year, and, because of his very important
interest in that section, it was not to his advantage to encourage it,
but as common carriers, they could not refuse to sell tickets or to
provide the necessary transportation. It seemed to him that as long as
their friends and kinsmen who had preceded them to the North and East
were receiving a high scale of wages, the South would have to look for
continued movement.[88]
After having enforced these drastic measures without securing
satisfactory results, and having seen that any attempt to hold the
negroes by force resulted apparently in an increased determination to
leave, there was resort to the policy of frightening the negroes
away from the North by circulating rumors as to the misfortunes to be
experienced there. Negroes were then warned against the rigors of the
northern winter and the death rate from pneumonia and tuberculosis.
Social workers in the North reported frequent cases of men with simple
colds who actually believed that they had developed "consumption."
Speakers who wished to discourage the exodus reported "exact" figures
on the death rate of the migrants in the North that were astounding.
As, for example, it was said by one Reverend Mr. Parks that there
were 2,000 of them sick in Philadelphia. The editor of a leading white
paper in Jackson, Mississippi, made the remark that he feared that
the result of the first winter's experience in the North would prove
serious to the South, in so far as it would remove the bugbear of the
northern climate. The returned migrants were encouraged to speak
in disparagement of the North and to give wide publicity to their
utterances, emphasizing incidents of suffering reported through the
press.
When such efforts as these failed, however, the disconcerted planters
and business men of the South resorted to another plan. Reconciliation
and persuasion were tried. Meetings were held and speakers were
secured and advised what to say. In cities and communities where
contact on this plane had been infrequent, it was a bit difficult
to approach the subject. The press of Georgia gave much space to the
discussion of the movement and what ought to be done to stop it. The
consensus of opinion of the white papers in the State was that the
negro had not been fairly treated, and that better treatment would
be one of the most effective means of checking the migration. Mob
violence, it was pointed out, was one of the chief causes of the
exodus.[89]
The _Tifton_ (Georgia) _Gazette_ commenting on the causes said:
They have allowed negroes to be lynched, five at a time,
on nothing stronger than suspicion; they have allowed whole
sections to be depopulated of them (notably in several north
Georgia counties); they have allowed them to be whitecapped
and to be whipped, and their homes burned, with only the
weakest and most spasmodic efforts to apprehend or punish
those guilty--when any efforts were made at all. Loss of much
of the State's best labor is one of the prices Georgia is
paying for unchecked mob activity against negroes often
charged only with ordinary crimes. Current dispatches from
Albany, Georgia, in the center of the section apparently most
affected, and where efforts are being made to stop the exodus
by spreading correct information among the negroes, say that
the heaviest migration of negroes has been from those counties
in which there have been the worst outbreaks against negroes.
It is developed by investigation that where there have been
lynchings, the negroes have been most eager to believe what
the emigration agents have told them of plots for the removal
or extermination of the race. Comparatively few negroes have
left Dougherty county, which is considered significant in
view of the fact that this is one of the counties in southwest
Georgia in which a lynching has never occurred.
At Thomasville, Georgia, a mass meeting of colored citizens of the
town with many from the country was held at the court house and
addresses were made by several prominent white men, as well as by
several colored with a view to taking some steps in regard to the
exodus of negroes from this section to the North and West. The whole
sentiment of the meeting was very amicable, the negroes applauding
enthusiastically the speeches of the white men and the advice given by
them. Resolutions were drawn up by a committee expressing the desire
that the people of the two races continue to live together as they
have done in the past and that steps be taken to adjust any difference
between them.[90]
After a conference of three days at Waycross, Georgia, the negroes
came to a decision as to the best manner in which to present their
cause to the white people with a view to securing their cooperation
towards the improvement of conditions in the South to make that
section more habitable. "There are four things of which our people
complain," they said, "and this conference urges our white friends
to secure for us these things with all possible speed. First, more
protection at the hands of the law. We ask that the law of the State,
made and enforced by white men, should be made to apply with exact
justice to both races. We have no sympathy for criminals, but we ask
that the innocent shall be protected to the fullest extent of the law.
Second, that more liberal provisions be made for the education of
our people." They commended Governor Dorsey for his courageous
recommendation in his inaugural address that an agricultural school
should be established for negroes in some center in southern Georgia,
and asked their friends everywhere to urge the members of the
legislature from the various counties to put Governor Dorsey's noble
sentiments into law. These memorialists felt, too, that as far as
possible, wages should be in keeping with the cost of living, and
that the white people generally should take an interest in the general
welfare of the negroes.[91]
Tuskegee Institute was also quick to offer a remedy for the migration.
In the latter part of September, 1916, the institution made a strong
effort to persuade the negro farmers to remain on the land instead
of going to the cities. Conferences were held with the bankers of
Tuskegee and with many planters of Macon county and a method of
dealing with the situation was worked out. This method embraced a
number of helpful suggestions as to how to solve their many perplexing
problems.[92] At the twenty-sixth annual negro conference at Tuskegee
Institute, the institution took that occasion to send through certain
declarations a message to the negroes of the South. These declarations
recited the distress and suffering impelling the negroes to migrate,
expressing the appreciation of the necessity to do something to better
their condition by embracing the new opportunities offered them in the
North. On the other hand, this institution felt that there were many
permanent opportunities for the masses of the colored people in the
South, which is now entering upon a great era of development. Among
these are the millions of acres of land yet to be cultivated, cities
to be built, railroads to be extended and mines to be worked. These
memorialists considered it of still greater importance to the negro
that in the South they have acquired land, buildings, etc., valued at
about five hundred million dollars. The negroes were, therefore, urged
to stay on the soil which they owned.
Addressing a word to the white people of the South, the conference
said that the disposition of so many of the blacks to leave is not
because they do not love the Southland but because they believe that
in the North they will not only have more opportunity to get more
money but that they will get better treatment, better protection
under the law and better school facilities for their children. The
conference urged, therefore, that the southern white people avail
themselves of their greatest opportunity to cooperate with the blacks
in the various communities and have a thorough understanding as to
working for the common welfare of all. The delegates believed that the
time had come for the best element of the whites and blacks to unite
to protect the interests of both races to the end that more effective
work may be done in the upbuilding of a greater South.[93]
In the same way the people of Mississippi soon discovered that any
attempt forcibly to hold negroes resulted apparently in an increased
determination to leave. Nor was it sufficient to warn the negroes
against the rigors of the northern winter and the death rate from
pneumonia and tuberculosis. In Greenwood, Mississippi, the difficulty
was circumvented by using the Red Cross and the food conservation
meetings as a forum for the discussion of the movement. This was the
first time that the negroes and whites of Greenwood had met to discuss
matters of mutual welfare. Bishop W.P. Thirkield of New Orleans
addressed a body of negroes and whites on the movement. He suggested
that whites get representative colored persons together and find the
cause. He also suggested a remedy through better treatment, more wages
and more cooperation between the races. Negro ministers stated that
they were offered sums of money by bankers, planters and merchants to
speak in discouragement of the movement. Some spoke, and others, by
far the greater number, seem to have remained neutral.[94]
It was found necessary to increase wages from ten to twenty-five per
cent and in some cases as much as 100 per cent to hold labor. The
reasons for migration given by negroes were sought. In almost all
cases the chief complaint was about treatment. An effort was made
to meet this by calling conferences and by giving publicity to the
launching of a campaign to make unfair settlements and other such
grievances unpopular. Thus, in Bolivar county, Mississippi, a meeting
was called, ostensibly to look after the economic welfare of the Delta
country, but in reality to develop some plan for holding labor. A
subcommittee of seventeen men was appointed to look into the
labor situation. There were twelve white men and five negroes. The
subcommittee met and reported to the body that the present labor
shortage was due to the migration, and that the migration was due to a
feeling of insecurity before the law, the unrestrained action of mobs,
unfair methods of yearly settlement on farms and inadequate school
facilities. As a result of the report, it was agreed to make an
appropriation of $25,000 towards an agricultural high school, as a
step towards showing an interest in the negroes of Bolivar county and
thus give them reasons for remaining. A campaign was started to make
unpopular the practice among farmers of robbing negroes of the returns
from their labor, and a general effort was made by a few of the
leading men behind the movement to create "a better feeling" between
the races.[95]
Wide publicity was given to the experiment in plantation government,
and the policy was accepted by a number of planters as opportunistic
action. Thus, one Mr. Abbott of Natchez, Mississippi, told the
planters of his section that good treatment, adequate and sympathetic
oversight are the important factors in any effort to hold labor. He
made a trip to his farm every week, endeavoring to educate his tenants
in modes of right living. Every man on his place had a bank account
and was apparently satisfied. This example was presented with the
statement that where these methods had been used, few had left. One
planter purchased twenty-eight Ford automobiles to sell on easy terms
to his tenants with the hope of contenting them.
The newspapers published numerous letters from southern negro leaders
urging negroes to consider well their step, asserting that the South
is the best place for them and that the southern white man knows them
and will in consequence be more lenient with their shortcomings.
The papers further urged an increase in wages and better treatment.
Wherever possible, there were published articles which pointed to the
material prosperity of negroes in the South. For example, a writer of
Greenville, said of negroes' loyalty in 1917:
The prosperity as well as the patriotism of the negro farmer
has been shown in the purchase of Liberty Bonds in the Delta.
Many colored farm laborers subscribed for bonds. Every family
on the place of Planter C.D. Walcott, near Hollandale, took
a bond, while one negro, Boley Cox, a renter, bought bonds to
the amount of $1,000 and gave his check for the total amount
out of the savings of this year from his crop and still has
cotton to sell. There are negro families on Delta plantations
making more money this year than the salary of the governor of
the State.
When migrants could be induced to talk freely, they complained also
against the treatment in the courts. Some of the cities consequently
are known to have suspended their raids and arrests on petty charges.
In some instances the attempts at pacification reached almost
incredible bounds. For example, a negro missed connection with his
train through the fault of the railroad. His white friend advised him
to bring suit. This he did and urged as his principal grievance that
he was stranded in a strange town and was forced to sleep in quarters
wholly at the mercy of bed bugs. It is said that he was awarded
damages to the extent of $800. A Jackson, Mississippi, daily paper
that had been running a column of humorous incidents about negroes
taken from the daily court sessions, which was very distasteful to
the colored people of the city, discontinued it. Such methods as
these have been the only ones to prove effective in bringing about
an appreciable stem in the tide. With the advent of the United States
Government constructing cantonments and establishing manufacturing
plants in the South, the millions thus diverted to that section have
caused such an increase in wages that the movement has been decidedly
checked.
[Footnote 77: Work, _Report on the Migration from Florida_.]
[Footnote 78: _Atlantic Constitution_, November 1, 1916.]
[Footnote 79: Work, _Report on the Migration from Georgia_.]
[Footnote 80: Ibid.]
[Footnote 81: Work, _Report on the Migration from Georgia_.]
[Footnote 82: Work, _Report on the Migration from Georgia_.]
[Footnote 83: Work, _Report on the Migration from Alabama_.]
[Footnote 84: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 85: Ibid.]
[Footnote 86: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 87: _Times Picayune_, New Orleans. October 1, 1916.]
[Footnote 88: Work, _Report on the Migration from Louisiana_.]
[Footnote 89: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 90: _Atlanta Constitution_, June 1, 1917.]
[Footnote 91: I.D. Davis served as president of the conference and
J.B. Ellis as secretary. Former Superior Court Judge T.A. Parker and
V.L. Stanton, president of the Chamber of Commerce, were among
the prominent white people who attended. It was the sense of the
conference that the colored people as a race should do all in their
power in the present crisis to assist the government and, above all
else, to help themselves by conserving food. The president of the
conference said the colored people had to work harder than ever before
with so many problems confronting their country. "It is no time for
loafing," he said, "we must work early and late, and make our work
count."--_Savannah Morning News_, July 18, 1917.]
[Footnote 92: The suggestions were: to encourage the farmer to plant
peanuts, soy beans, velvet beans and cotton as cash crops; to create
a cash market for such crops named above as at present have no cash
market; to encourage tenants to grow fall and winter gardens and to
plant at least five acres of oats to the plow, seed being furnished
when necessary; to stipulate, in making tenant contracts for another
year, that cotton stalks be plowed under in the fall, that special
methods of combating the boll weevil be used. To advance no more than
$25 to the plow, and, in every case possible, to refrain from any
advance; to encourage land holders to rent land for part of the crops
grown; to urge the exercise of leniency on unpaid notes and mortgages
due from thrifty and industrious farmers so as to give them a chance
to recover from the boll weevil conditions and storm losses; to create
a market lasting all year for such crops as hay, cow-peas, sweet
potatoes, poultry and live stock; to urge everybody to build fences
and make pastures so as to grow more live stock and to produce more
nearly all of the supplies used on the farm; to carry on a food
campaign in the country, devoting the first Sunday in October to
the work of urging the people to plant gardens and sow oats, and to
organize a Farmers' Loan Association in Macon county to work with the
Farmers' Loan Bank being established by the United States Government.]
[Footnote 93: Report of the Twenty-sixth Annual Negro Conference at
Tuskegee Institute.]
[Footnote 94: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 95: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
CHAPTER VIII
EFFECTS OF THE MOVEMENT ON THE SOUTH
The first changes wrought by this migration were unusually startling.
Homes found themselves without servants, factories could not operate
because of the lack of labor, farmers were unable to secure laborers
to harvest their crops. Streets in towns and cities once crowded
assumed the aspect of deserted thoroughfares, houses in congested
districts became empty, churches, lodges and societies suffered such
a large loss of membership that they had to close up or undergo
reorganization.
Probably the most striking change was the unusual increase in wages.
The wages for common labor in Thomasville, Georgia, increased almost
certainly 100 per cent. In Valdosta there was a general increase in
the town and county of about 50 per cent, in Brunswick and Savannah
the same condition obtained. The common laborer who had formerly
received 80 cents a day earned thereafter $1.50 to $1.75. Farm hands
working for from $10 to $15 per month were advanced to $20 or $35
per month. Brick masons who had received 50 cents per hour thereafter
earned 62-1/2 cents and 70 cents per hour. In Savannah common laborers
paid as high as $2 per day were advanced to $3. At the sugar refinery
the rates were for women, 15 to 22 cents per hour, men, 22 to 30
cents per hour. In the more skilled lines of work, the wages were
for carpenters, $4 to $6 per day, painters, $2.50 to $4 per day, and
bricklayers $4 to $5 per day.
The increase in the Birmingham district may be studied as a type
of the changes effected in the industrial centers of the South, as
Birmingham is a great coal mining center and, with the exception of
Pittsburgh, is the greatest iron ore district in the United States.
On November 6, 1917, the average daily wage earnings of forty-five men
was $5.49. On November 10, 1917, the average for seventy-five men was
$5.30. One man was earning $10 a day, two $9 to $10 a day, five $8 to
$9, six $7 to $8, ten $6 to $7, fourteen $5 to $6, thirty-two $4 to
$5, nine $3 to $4, and six under $3. In the other coal and iron ore
sections the earnings had been similarly increased.[96]
In Mississippi, largely a farming section, wages did not increase to
the extent that they did in Alabama, but some increase was necessary
to induce the negroes to remain on the plantations and towns to keep
the industries going. In Greenville wages increased at first about ten
per cent but this did not suffice to stop the migration, for, because
of the scarcity of labor, factories and stores had to employ white
porters, druggists had to deliver their own packages and firms had
to resort to employing negro women. On the farms much of the crop was
lost on account of the scarcity of labor. In Greenwood wages of common
laborers increased from $1 and $1.25 to $1.75 per day. Clarksdale was
also compelled to offer laborers more remuneration. Vicksburg found it
necessary to increase the wages of negroes from $1.25 to $2 per day.
There were laborers on steamboats who received $75 to $100 per month.
At Leland 500 to 1,000 men received $1.75 per day. The oil mills of
Indianola raised the wages of the negroes from $1.50 to $2 per day.
At Laurel the average daily wage was raised from $1.35 to $1.65, the
maximum wage bein
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