Unit
Years: 1900-1960
Freedom & Equal Rights
Historical Events, Movements, and Figures
Students should have some familiarity with the failures of Reconstruction–especially the legacy of Jim Crow laws and the racial terrorism of lynching, which in large part led to the Great Migration. Some understanding of the ways in which the Great Depression and both World Wars impacted American economic and employment trends would also help students to understand the economic causes of the Great Migration.
You may want to consider prior to teaching this lesson: The Breakdown of Justice: Lynching and the Scottsboro Case
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, millions of Black Americans left the South for new homes and new lives in the North, creating a major demographic and cultural shift that led to the creation of new Black communities in Northern cities. While Black migrants experienced better economic, political, and social outcomes in the North, structural racism–and the resistance to it–existed there too.
Introduction
The Great Migration, the voluntary movement of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans northward, mainly into cities, was one of the most important events in the social history of the United States in the twentieth century. Though the Great Migration began after Reconstruction and slowly built momentum through the turn of the century, it became a mass event around 1915 with increasing violence and economic inequality in the Jim Crow South. This mass migration of some four to five million Black Americans out of the rural and urban South to northern and mid-western cities changed the character of Black life and culture as well as American cities as a whole.
In the North, the Great Migration created a new type and sense of community, especially in cities. Between 1910 and 1940, the Black population of New York City grew by 500 percent. Other cities experienced similar patterns of growth in the number of black residents during this period: Chicago 600 percent; Philadelphia 300 percent; Cleveland 450 percent; Detroit 1000 percent. In New York the Great Migration turned an almost all-white neighborhood into the nation’s largest black community: Harlem.
Push and Pull Factors of the Great Migration
“Participants of the Great Migration were typically working-class people making personal choices for their families and themselves, but their actions fueled broad societal change. Several “pull” factors made the North a desirable destination for Black Americans looking for a better life. For one, World War I created war industry jobs for Black workers in the North, as white men went into the military service and the war disrupted the flow of European immigrant workers to the United States. The promise of joining a thriving Black cultural center like Harlem was another pull factor. However, the “push” factors that made life in the South untenable for many Black Americans were what drove many to Northern cities. Economic and political conditions in the South—low-paying jobs, structural racism and discrimination, and rigid segregation pushed Black Americans out of the South in droves. Schools for Black children were under-funded and of low quality, causing many Black families to move in search of higher quality education. Jim Crow voting restrictions like poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses made meaningful political change nearly impossible. And the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in 1920, combined with alarming rates of lynching and racial terrorism made the South an extremely violent environment for Black Americans. All of these factors fueled the migration North.
Black Americans in the South often learned of employment opportunities and life in the North through family and friends who had previously migrated. Black migrants would sometimes return to the South to visit, or they kept in touch with family, friends, their churches, and their communities through letters. Some Black migrants were assured employment in the North through labor recruiters who were sent to southern regions by northern companies to recruit cheap laborers for their industries. Black newspapers such as The Chicago Defender also published ads and articles to help recruit Black workers to Northern cities. Readers leafed through the classifieds in search of employment opportunities, or they learned of life in the North by reading advertisements, editorials, and feature stories.
Structural Racism and Black Life in Northern Cities
Black migrants soon discovered that structural racism was alive and well in the North just as it was in the South, only in different forms. In the workplace, Black hires were subjected to lower wages and more dangerous or less desirable work than their white counterparts and had less access to leadership positions. In urban and suburban communities, redlining became a common form of housing discrimination and de facto segregation, locking Black homeowners into low-income neighborhoods and contributing to a racial wealth gap that continues today. And socially, white Northerners sometimes responded to the Black Migration with physical violence towards their new neighbors. The Red Summer of 1919 consisted of a series of instances of White-on-Black violence and race riots in several cities throughout the United States, including the cities of Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Nevertheless, for thousands of people, migrating to a new job offered a chance to escape conditions in the South and begin anew. In every U.S. Census between 1890 and 1950, Black Americans had higher labor force participation rates than White Americans. The Great Migration also fueled the Harlem Renaissance (or “New Negro Cultural Movement”), an outpouring of Black art, music, and literature centered in the new hub of Black culture in Harlem but with national and international reach. Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood became known as the “Black Metropolis” and was home to numerous Black entrepreneurs and Black mutual aid organizations seeking to build community. Black migration to the North and West surged again after World War II, in response to the mechanization of southern agriculture and the aspirations of Black veterans. Without a doubt, the Great Migration led to the creation of new and vibrant Black communities throughout the North.
The New Great Migration
Since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 70s, the trends of the Great Migration have reversed. Many Black Americans are now migrating from the North to the South, with the states of Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina experiencing the highest rates of growth and New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois experiencing the most population loss. The promises of the “New South,” with its updated infrastructure and business-friendly policies have drawn many middle class Black Americans, especially as Northern cities have become increasingly segregated and as deindustrialization caused job loss for the working class. Continued social, cultural, and family ties to Southern regions are another pull factor of this “New Great Migration.”
Arnesen, Eric. Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2002.
Bunch, Lonnie G., II and Crew, Spencer R. “A Historian’s Eye: Jacob Lawrence, Historical Reality, and the Migration Series.” Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Editor. Washington, DC: Rappahnock Press, 1993.
Coit, Jonathan S. “‘Our Changed Attitude’: Armed Defense and the New Negro in the 1919 Chicago Race Riot.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 11, no. 2, 2012, pp. 225–56. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23249074. Accessed 5 June 2023.
Davis, Alicia and Greg Wiggan. “Black Education and the Great Migration.” Black History Bulletin, vol. 81, no. 2, 2018, pp. 12–16. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5323/blachistbull.81.2.0012. Accessed 5 June 2023.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “New Negroes, Migration, and Cultural Exchange.” Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series. Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Editor. Washington, DC: Rappahnock Press, 1993.
“Great Migration.” National Archives, June 28, 2021, https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration#:~:text=The%20Great%20Migration%20was%20one,the%201910s%20until%20the%201970s.
“Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series.” Phillips Collection, https://lawrencemigration.phillipscollection.org/
LOGAN, JOHN R., et al. “Creating the Black Ghetto: Black Residential Patterns before and during the Great Migration.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 660, 2015, pp. 18–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24541825. Accessed 5 June 2023.
Lorensen, Jutta. “Between Image and Word, Color and Time: Jacob Lawrence’s ‘The Migration Series.’” African American Review, vol. 40, no. 3, 2006, pp. 571–86. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40027390. Accessed 5 June 2023.
Mathieu, Sarah-Jane (Saje). “The African American Great Migration Reconsidered.” OAH Magazine of History, vol. 23, no. 4, 2009, pp. 19–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40506010. Accessed 5 June 2023.
Norvell, Stanley B. and William M. Tuttle, Jr. “Views of a Negro During ‘The Red Summer’ of 1919.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 51, no. 3, 1966, pp. 209–18. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2716062. Accessed 5 June 2023.
Tolnay, Stewart E. “The African American ‘Great Migration’ and Beyond.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 29, 2003, pp. 209–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036966. Accessed 5 June 2023.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. Random House, 2010.
Woodson, Carter G. “The Migration of the Talented Tenth,” David Levering Lewis ed. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Viking Penguin Books, 1994.
It may be helpful to frame the Great Migration in the context of systemic racism–both the Southern conditions that caused many Black Americans to move North, and the shifting confines of Northern discrimination that shaped the experiences of Black migrants. Additionally, teaching about the Harlem Renaissance offers a rich opportunity to work with an English teacher, art teacher, and/or your school librarian to offer an interdisciplinary study of the growth of Black art and culture resulting from the Great Migration.
Please note that some of the articles or letters discuss extreme physical and sexual violence and contain racist language. It is important that you approach the use of resources from a trauma-informed stance and give students a content warning before distributing the articles. We recommend having a conversation with students about the ways in which the language we use about race has changed and to clarify that students should be mindful with language that they use to discuss the past, when terms, such as negro or colored, differ from what is most appropriate to use today.
The Great Migration refers to the mass movement of Black Americans from the South to the North, a trend that exploded in the early 1900s and continued for decades after, well into the 1960s. There were both push and pull factors leading to the change. Push factors, those that drove Black Americans away from the South, included widespread violence and the racial terrorism of lynching, the political and economic discrimination of Jim Crow laws, and the racial segregation of schools and public spaces. Several pull factors also made the North appealing, especially employment opportunities in urban areas resulting from World War I and the promise of a more integrated life for Black Americans.
The Great Migration had major economic, political, and social impacts across the United States. Northern cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland grew their Black populations exponentially, which led to an outpouring of Black art, literature, and political thought in the Harlem Renaissance and to the creation of thriving Black communities across the North. But while Black Americans had greater access to jobs, housing, and social support in the North, structural racism continued to cause economic and social inequality, if only in different forms than it did in the South. For instance, redlining, a banking practice that restricted Black homeowners from taking out mortgages in White communities, became a commonplace form of housing discrimination that led to segregation in Northern cities and suburbs. White Americans responded to the Great Migration in some places with violence, and race riots rocked several U.S. cities during the Red Summer of 1919. Even so, the Great Migration led to the creation of new and vibrant Black communities throughout the North and was a defining aspect of the 20th century in the United States.
Select the activities and sources you would like to include in the student view and click “Launch Student View.”
It is highly recommended that you review the Teaching Tips and sources before selecting the activities to best meet the needs and readiness of your students. Activities may utilize resources or primary sources that contain historical expressions of racism, outdated language or racial slurs.
Divide students into groups. Hand out copies of the sample articles from the black-owned newspaper the Chicago Defender and letters from Black migrants. (Consider selecting only those letters and articles that you think are most appropriate for your students. Please note that some of the articles or letters discuss extreme physical and sexual violence and contain racist and outdated language. Prior to using, give students a content warning about the articles.)
After students have had a chance to read the stories and letters carefully, have them work in their small groups to analyze just one source of their choice using the OPCVL protocol.
Have the groups share out their analyses with the class, and have a closing discussion on the following questions:
Sample articles from the Black-owned newspaper, the Chicago Defender, encouraging African Americans to move to the North.
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 (Ga.) Constitution, dated Feb. 6).
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 stake, where your father, brother and son are treated with contempt and hung to a pole, riddled with bullets at the least mention that he does not like the way he has been treated?
Come North then, all of you folks, both good and bad. If you don't behave yourself 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.
LEAVING FOR THE NORTH
Tampa, Fla., Jan. 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."
DETERMINED TO GO NORTH
Jackson, Miss., March 23.—Although the white police and sheriff and others are using every effort to intimidate the citizens from going North, even Dr. Redmond's speech was circulated around, this has not deterred our people from leaving. Many have walked miles to take the train for the North. There is a determination to leave and there is no hand save death to keep them from it.
Source: Illinois Periodicals Inline, Northern Illinois University Libraries www.lib.niu.edu/ipo/iht329633.html
Document 5.13.1
Letters from African American/Black migrants living in the South, submitted to the Chicago Defender, 1916–1918.
Fayette, Ga., January 17, 1917
Dear Sir: I have learned of the splendid work which you are doing in placing colored men in touch with industrial opportunities. I therefore write to you to ask if you have an opening anywhere for me. I am a college graduate and understand Bookkeeping. But I am not above doing hard labor in a foundry or other industrial establishment. Please let me know if you can place me.
Lexington, Miss., May 12-17
My dear Mr. H-----:-- I am writing to you for some information and assistance if you can give it.
I am a young man and am disable, in a very great degree, to do hard manual labor. I was educated at Alcorn College and have been teaching a few years: but ah: me the Superintendent under whom we poor colored teachers have to teach cares less for a colored man than he does for the vilest beast. I am compelled to teach 150 children without any assistance and receives only $27.00 a month, the white with 30 get $100.
I am so sick I am so tired of such conditions that I sometimes think that life for me is not worth while and most eminently believe with Patrick Henry “Give me liberty or give me death.” If I was a strong able bodied man I would have gone from here long ago, but this handicaps me and, I must make inquiries before I leap.
Mr. H----, do you think you can assist me to a position I am good at stenography typewriting and bookkeeping or any kind of work not to rough or heavy. I am 4 feet 6 in high and weigh 105 pounds.
I will gladly give any other information you may desire and will greatly appreciate any assistance you may render me.
Mobile, Ala., May 11, 1917
Dear sir and brother: on last Sunday I addressed you a letter asking you for information and I have received no answer. But we would like to know could 300 or 500 men and women get employment? And will the company or thoes that needs help send them a ticket or a pass and let them pay it back in weekly payments? We have men and women here in all lines of work we have organized a association to help them through you.
We are anxiously awaiting your reply.
Port Arthur, Texas, May, 5, 1917
Dear Sir: Permitt me to inform you that I have had the pleasure of reading the Defender for the first time in my life as I never dreamed that there was such a race paper published and I must say that its some paper.
However I can unhestitatingly say that it is extraordinarily interesting and had I know that there was such a paper in my town or such being handled in my vicinity I would have been a subscriber years ago.
Nevertheless I read every space of the paper dated April 28th which is my first and only paper at present. Although I am greatfully anticipating the pleasure of receiving my next defender as I now consider myself a full fledged defender fan and I have also requested the representative of said paper to deliver my Defender weekly.
In reading the Defenders want ad I notice that there is lots of work to be had if I havent miscomprehended I think I also understand that the transportation is advanced to able bodied working men who is out of work and desire work. Am I not right? With the understanding that those who have been advanced transportation same will be deducted from their salary after they have begun work. Now then if this is they proposition I have about 10 or 15 good working men who is out of work and are dying to leave the south and I assure you that they are working men and will be too glad to come north east or west, any where but the south.
Now then if this is the proposition kindly let me know by return mail. However I assure you that it shall be my pleasure to furnish you with further or all information that you may undertake to ask or all information necessary concerning this communication.
Thanking you in advance for the courtesy of a prompt reply with much interest, I am
Newbern, Ala., April 7, 1917
Dear Sir: I am in receipt of a letter from __ of ____, _____, in regards to placing two young women of our community in positions to the north or West, as he was unable to give the above assistance he enclosed your address.We desire to know if you are in a position to put us in touch with any reliable firm or private family that desire to employ two young women; one is a teacher in the public school of this country, and has been for the past six years having duties of a mother and sister to care for she is forced to seek employment else where as labor is very cheap here. The other is a high school pupil, is capable of during the work of a private family with much credit.
Doubtless you have learned of the great exodus of our people to the north and west from this and other southern states. I wish to say that we are forced to go when one things of a grown man wages is only fifty to seventy five cents per day for all grades of work. He is compelled to go where there is better wages and sociable conditions, believe me. When I say that many places here in this state the only thing that the black man gets is a peck of meal and from three to four lbs. of bacon per week, and he is treated as a slave. As leaders we are powerless for we dare not resent such or to show even the slightest disapproval. Only a few days ago more than 1000 people left here for the north and west. They cannot stay here. The white man is saying that you must not go but they are not doing anything by way of assisting the black man to stay. As a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church (north) I am on the verge of starvation simply because of the above conditions. I shall be glad to know if there is any possible way by which I could be of real service to you as director of your society. Thanking you in advance for an early reply, and for any suggestions that you may be able to offer.
With best wishes for your success, I remain,
Very sincerely yours.
Troy, Ala., Oct. 17, 1916
Dear Sirs: I am enclosing a clipping of a lynching again which speaks for itself. I do wish there could be sufficient presure brought about to have federal investigation of such work. I wrote you a few days ago if you could furnish me with the addresses of some firms or co-opporations that needed common labor. So many of our people here are almost starving. The government is feeding quite a number here would go any where to better their conditions. If you can do any thing for us write me as early as possible.
Dapne, Ala., April 20, 1917
Sir: I am writing you to let you know that there is 15 or 20 familys wants to coem up there at once but cant come on account of money to come with and we cant phone you here we will be killed they don’t want us to leave here & say if we don’t go to war and fight for our country they are going to kill us and wants to get away if we can if you send 20 passes there is no doubt that every one of us will com at once. We are not doing any thing here we cant get a living out of what we do now some of these people are farmers and som are cooks barbers and black smiths but the greater part are farmers & good worker & honest people & up to date the trash pile don’t want to go no where These are nice people and respectable find a place like that & send passes & we all will come at once we all wants to leave here out of this hard luck place if you cant use us find some place that does need this kind of people we are called Negroes here. I am a reader of the defender and am delighted to know how times are there & was to glad to, know if we could get some one to pass us away from here to a better land. We work but cant get scarcely any thing for it & they don’t want us to go away & there is not much of anything here to do & nothing for it. Please find some one that need this kind of people & send at once for us. We don’t want anything but our wareing and bed clothes & have not got no money to get away from here with & beging to get away before we are killed and hope to here from you at once. We cant talk to you over the phone here we are afraid to they don’t want to hear one say that he or she wants to leave here if we do we are apt to be killed. They say if we don’t go to war they are not going to let us stay here with their folks and it is not any thing that we have done to them. We are law abiding people want to treat every bordy right. These people wants to leave here but we cant we are here and have nothing to go with if you will send us some way to get away from here we will work till we pay it all if it takes that for us to go or get away. Now get busy for the south race. The conditions are horrible here with us. They wont give us anything to do & say that we wont need anything but something to eat & wont give us anything for what we do & wants us to stay here. Write me at once that you will do for us we want & opertunity that all we wants is to show you what we can do and will do if we can find some place. We wants to leave here for a north drive somewhere. We see starvation ahead of us here. We want to imigrate to the farmers who need our labor. We have not had no chance to have anything here that’s why we plead to you for help to leave here to the North. We are humane but we are not treated such we are treated like brute by our whites here we don’t have no privilige no where in the south. We must take anything they put on us. Its hard if its fair. We have not got no cotegous diseases here. We are looking to here from you soon.
Source: Selections of letters from Scott, Emmett J. “Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918,” Journal of Negro History, 4 (Jul.1919), 290-340 and Scott, Emmett J. “More Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918,” Journal of Negro History, 4 (Oct., 1919), 412-465.
Document 5.13.2
Divide students into three small groups, and distribute one of the excerpts from Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns to each group.
Have each group read their assigned excerpt and answer the following questions about it, in writing:
Instruct each group to create an artistic representation of their person’s story from the excerpt. They can choose between writing a poem, creating an art work, or creating a song or rap.
Conclude the class by having each group share their poem/art/song with the class, and have a final discussion of the following question:
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (Excerpts)
By Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
Excerpt 1:
Chickasaw County, Mississippi, Late October 1937
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney
The night clouds were closing in on the salt licks east of the oxbow lakes along the folds in the earth beyond the Yalobusha River. The cotton was at last cleared from the field. Ida Mae tried now to get the children ready and to gather the clothes and quilts and somehow keep her mind off the churning within her. She had sold off the turkeys and doled out in secret the old stools, the wash pots, the tin tub, the bed pallets. Her husband was settling with Mr. Edd over the worth of a year's labor, and she did not know what would come of it. None of them had been on a train before — not unless you counted the clattering local from Bacon Switch to Okolona, where, "by the time you sit down, you there," as Ida Mae put it. None of them had been out of Mississippi. Or Chickasaw County, for that matter.
There was no explaining to little James and Velma the stuffed bags and chaos and all that was at stake or why they had to put on their shoes and not cry and bring undue attention from anyone who might happen to see them leaving. Things had to look normal, like any other time they might ride into town, which was rare enough to begin with.
Velma was six. She sat with her ankles crossed and three braids in her hair and did what she was told. James was too little to understand. He was three. He was upset at the commotion. Hold still now, James. Lemme put your shoes on, Ida Mae told him. James wriggled and kicked. He did not like shoes. He ran free in the field. What were these things? He did not like them on his feet. So Ida Mae let him go barefoot.
Miss Theenie stood watching. One by one, her children had left her and gone up north. Sam and Cleve to Ohio. Josie to Syracuse. Irene to Milwaukee. Now the man Miss Theenie had tried to keep Ida Mae from marrying in the first place was taking her away, too. Miss Theenie had no choice but to accept it and let Ida Mae and the grandchildren go for good. Miss Theenie drew them close to her, as she always did whenever anyone was leaving. She had them bow their heads. She whispered a prayer that her daughter and her daughter's family be protected on the long journey ahead in the Jim Crow car.
"May the Lord be the first in the car," she prayed, "and the last out."
When the time had come, Ida Mae and little James and Velma and all that they could carry were loaded into a brother-in-law's truck, and the three of them went to meet Ida Mae's husband at the train depot in Okolona for the night ride out of the bottomland.
Excerpt 2
Wildwood, Florida, April 14, 1945
George Swanson Starling
A man named Roscoe Colton gave Lil George Starling a ride in his pickup truck to the train station in Wildwood through the fruit-bearing scrubland of central Florida. And Schoolboy, as the toothless orange pickers mockingly called him, boarded the Silver Meteor pointing north.
A railing divided the stairs onto the train, one side of the railing for white passengers, the other for colored, so the soles of their shoes would not touch the same stair. He boarded on the colored side of the railing, a final reminder from the place of his birth of the absurdity of the world he was leaving.
He was getting out alive. So he didn't let it bother him. "I got on the car where they told me to get on," he said years later.
He hadn't had time to bid farewell to everyone he wanted to. He stopped to say good-bye to Rachel Jackson, who owned a little café up on what they called the Avenue and the few others he could safely get to in the little time he had. He figured everybody in Egypt town, the colored section of Eustis, probably knew he was leaving before he had climbed onto the train, small as the town was and as much as people talked.
It was a clear afternoon in the middle of April. He folded his tall frame into the hard surface of the seat, his knees knocking against the seat back in front of him. He was packed into the Jim Crow car, where the railroad stored the luggage, when the train pulled away at last. He was on the run, and he wouldn't rest easy until he was out of range of Lake County, beyond the reach of the grove owners whose invisible laws he had broken.
The train rumbled past the forest of citrus trees that he had climbed since he was a boy and that he had tried to wrestle some dignity out of and, for a time, had. They could have their trees. He wasn't going to lose his life over them. He had come close enough as it was.
He had lived up to his family's accidental surname. Starling. Distant cousin to the mockingbird. He had spoken up about what he had seen in the world he was born into, like the starling that sang Mozart's own music back to him or the starling out of Shakespeare that tormented the king by speaking the name of Mortimer. Only, George was paying the price for tormenting the ruling class that owned the citrus groves. There was no place in the Jim Crow South for a colored starling like him.
He didn't know what he would do once he got to New York or what his life would be. He didn't know how long it would take before he could send for Inez. His wife was mad right now, but she'd get over it once he got her there. At least that's what he told himself. He turned his face to the North and sat with his back to Florida.
Leaving as he did, he figured he would never set foot in Eustis again for as long as he lived. And as he settled in for the twenty-three-hour train ride up the coast of the Atlantic, he had no desire to have anything to do with the town he grew up in, the state of Florida, or the South as a whole, for that matter.
Excerpt 3
Monroe, Louisiana, Easter Monday, April 6, 1953
Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
In the dark hours of the morning, Pershing Foster packed his surgery books, his medical bag, and his suit and sport coats in the trunk, along with a map, an address book, and Ivorye Covington's fried chicken left over from Saturday night.
He said good-bye to his father, who had told him to follow his dreams. His father's dreams had fallen apart, but there was still hope for the son, the father knew. He had a reluctant embrace with his older brother, Madison, who had tried in vain to get him to stay. Then Pershing pointed his 1949 Buick Roadmaster, a burgundy one with whitewall tires and a shark-tooth grille, in the direction of Five Points, the crossroads of town.
He drove down the narrow dirt roads with the ditches on either side that, when he was a boy, had left his freshly pressed Sunday suit caked with mud when it rained. He passed the shotgun houses perched on cinder blocks and hurtled over the railroad tracks away from where people who looked like him were consigned to live and into the section where the roads were not dirt ditches anymore but suddenly level and paved.
He headed in the direction of Desiard Street, the main thorough- fare, and, without a whiff of sentimentality, sped away from the small-town bank buildings and bail bondsmen, the Paramount Theater with its urine-scented steps, and away from St. Francis Hospital, which wouldn't let doctors who looked like him perform a simple tonsillectomy.
Perhaps he might have stayed had they let him practice surgery like he was trained to do or let him walk into the Palace and try on a suit like anyone else of his station. The resentments had grown heavy over the years. He knew he was as smart as anybody else — smarter, to his mind — but he wasn't allowed to do anything with it, the caste system being what it was. Now he was going about as far away as you could get from Monroe, Louisiana. The rope lines that had hemmed in his life seemed to loosen with each plodding mile on the odometer.
Like many of the men in the Great Migration and like many emigrant men in general, he was setting out alone. He would scout out the New World on his own and get situated before sending for anyone else. He drove west into the morning stillness and onto the Endom Bridge, a tight crossing with one lane acting like two that spans the Ouachita River into West Monroe. He would soon pass the mossback flatland of central Louisiana and the Red River toward Texas, where he was planning to see an old friend from medical school, a Dr. Anthony Beale, en route to California.
Pershing had no idea where he would end up in California or how he would make a go of it or when he would be able to wrest his wife and daughters from the in-laws who had tried to talk him out of going to California in the first place. He would contemplate these uncertainties in the unbroken days ahead.
From Louisiana, he followed the hyphens in the road that blurred together toward a faraway place, bridging unrelated things as hyphens do. Alone in the car, he had close to two thousand miles of curving road in front of him, farther than farmworker emigrants leaving Guatemala for Texas, not to mention Tijuana for California, where a northerly wind could blow a Mexican clothesline over the border.
Place students into pairs to compare two primary sources documenting the experiences of European immigrants and Black migrants as they moved from old to new hoping for a better life.
Students should work together to complete a comparison T chart. With the full class, lead a discussion of the following questions:
Letters from African American/Black migrants living in the South, submitted to the Chicago Defender, 1916–1918.
Fayette, Ga., January 17, 1917
Dear Sir: I have learned of the splendid work which you are doing in placing colored men in touch with industrial opportunities. I therefore write to you to ask if you have an opening anywhere for me. I am a college graduate and understand Bookkeeping. But I am not above doing hard labor in a foundry or other industrial establishment. Please let me know if you can place me.
Lexington, Miss., May 12-17
My dear Mr. H-----:-- I am writing to you for some information and assistance if you can give it.
I am a young man and am disable, in a very great degree, to do hard manual labor. I was educated at Alcorn College and have been teaching a few years: but ah: me the Superintendent under whom we poor colored teachers have to teach cares less for a colored man than he does for the vilest beast. I am compelled to teach 150 children without any assistance and receives only $27.00 a month, the white with 30 get $100.
I am so sick I am so tired of such conditions that I sometimes think that life for me is not worth while and most eminently believe with Patrick Henry “Give me liberty or give me death.” If I was a strong able bodied man I would have gone from here long ago, but this handicaps me and, I must make inquiries before I leap.
Mr. H----, do you think you can assist me to a position I am good at stenography typewriting and bookkeeping or any kind of work not to rough or heavy. I am 4 feet 6 in high and weigh 105 pounds.
I will gladly give any other information you may desire and will greatly appreciate any assistance you may render me.
Mobile, Ala., May 11, 1917
Dear sir and brother: on last Sunday I addressed you a letter asking you for information and I have received no answer. But we would like to know could 300 or 500 men and women get employment? And will the company or thoes that needs help send them a ticket or a pass and let them pay it back in weekly payments? We have men and women here in all lines of work we have organized a association to help them through you.
We are anxiously awaiting your reply.
Port Arthur, Texas, May, 5, 1917
Dear Sir: Permitt me to inform you that I have had the pleasure of reading the Defender for the first time in my life as I never dreamed that there was such a race paper published and I must say that its some paper.
However I can unhestitatingly say that it is extraordinarily interesting and had I know that there was such a paper in my town or such being handled in my vicinity I would have been a subscriber years ago.
Nevertheless I read every space of the paper dated April 28th which is my first and only paper at present. Although I am greatfully anticipating the pleasure of receiving my next defender as I now consider myself a full fledged defender fan and I have also requested the representative of said paper to deliver my Defender weekly.
In reading the Defenders want ad I notice that there is lots of work to be had if I havent miscomprehended I think I also understand that the transportation is advanced to able bodied working men who is out of work and desire work. Am I not right? With the understanding that those who have been advanced transportation same will be deducted from their salary after they have begun work. Now then if this is they proposition I have about 10 or 15 good working men who is out of work and are dying to leave the south and I assure you that they are working men and will be too glad to come north east or west, any where but the south.
Now then if this is the proposition kindly let me know by return mail. However I assure you that it shall be my pleasure to furnish you with further or all information that you may undertake to ask or all information necessary concerning this communication.
Thanking you in advance for the courtesy of a prompt reply with much interest, I am
Newbern, Ala., April 7, 1917
Dear Sir: I am in receipt of a letter from __ of ____, _____, in regards to placing two young women of our community in positions to the north or West, as he was unable to give the above assistance he enclosed your address.We desire to know if you are in a position to put us in touch with any reliable firm or private family that desire to employ two young women; one is a teacher in the public school of this country, and has been for the past six years having duties of a mother and sister to care for she is forced to seek employment else where as labor is very cheap here. The other is a high school pupil, is capable of during the work of a private family with much credit.
Doubtless you have learned of the great exodus of our people to the north and west from this and other southern states. I wish to say that we are forced to go when one things of a grown man wages is only fifty to seventy five cents per day for all grades of work. He is compelled to go where there is better wages and sociable conditions, believe me. When I say that many places here in this state the only thing that the black man gets is a peck of meal and from three to four lbs. of bacon per week, and he is treated as a slave. As leaders we are powerless for we dare not resent such or to show even the slightest disapproval. Only a few days ago more than 1000 people left here for the north and west. They cannot stay here. The white man is saying that you must not go but they are not doing anything by way of assisting the black man to stay. As a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church (north) I am on the verge of starvation simply because of the above conditions. I shall be glad to know if there is any possible way by which I could be of real service to you as director of your society. Thanking you in advance for an early reply, and for any suggestions that you may be able to offer.
With best wishes for your success, I remain,
Very sincerely yours.
Troy, Ala., Oct. 17, 1916
Dear Sirs: I am enclosing a clipping of a lynching again which speaks for itself. I do wish there could be sufficient presure brought about to have federal investigation of such work. I wrote you a few days ago if you could furnish me with the addresses of some firms or co-opporations that needed common labor. So many of our people here are almost starving. The government is feeding quite a number here would go any where to better their conditions. If you can do any thing for us write me as early as possible.
Dapne, Ala., April 20, 1917
Sir: I am writing you to let you know that there is 15 or 20 familys wants to coem up there at once but cant come on account of money to come with and we cant phone you here we will be killed they don’t want us to leave here & say if we don’t go to war and fight for our country they are going to kill us and wants to get away if we can if you send 20 passes there is no doubt that every one of us will com at once. We are not doing any thing here we cant get a living out of what we do now some of these people are farmers and som are cooks barbers and black smiths but the greater part are farmers & good worker & honest people & up to date the trash pile don’t want to go no where These are nice people and respectable find a place like that & send passes & we all will come at once we all wants to leave here out of this hard luck place if you cant use us find some place that does need this kind of people we are called Negroes here. I am a reader of the defender and am delighted to know how times are there & was to glad to, know if we could get some one to pass us away from here to a better land. We work but cant get scarcely any thing for it & they don’t want us to go away & there is not much of anything here to do & nothing for it. Please find some one that need this kind of people & send at once for us. We don’t want anything but our wareing and bed clothes & have not got no money to get away from here with & beging to get away before we are killed and hope to here from you at once. We cant talk to you over the phone here we are afraid to they don’t want to hear one say that he or she wants to leave here if we do we are apt to be killed. They say if we don’t go to war they are not going to let us stay here with their folks and it is not any thing that we have done to them. We are law abiding people want to treat every bordy right. These people wants to leave here but we cant we are here and have nothing to go with if you will send us some way to get away from here we will work till we pay it all if it takes that for us to go or get away. Now get busy for the south race. The conditions are horrible here with us. They wont give us anything to do & say that we wont need anything but something to eat & wont give us anything for what we do & wants us to stay here. Write me at once that you will do for us we want & opertunity that all we wants is to show you what we can do and will do if we can find some place. We wants to leave here for a north drive somewhere. We see starvation ahead of us here. We want to imigrate to the farmers who need our labor. We have not had no chance to have anything here that’s why we plead to you for help to leave here to the North. We are humane but we are not treated such we are treated like brute by our whites here we don’t have no privilige no where in the south. We must take anything they put on us. Its hard if its fair. We have not got no cotegous diseases here. We are looking to here from you soon.
Source: Selections of letters from Scott, Emmett J. “Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918,” Journal of Negro History, 4 (Jul.1919), 290-340 and Scott, Emmett J. “More Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918,” Journal of Negro History, 4 (Oct., 1919), 412-465.
Document 5.13.2
Place students into small groups, and instruct each group to use the internet to find answers to the following research questions:
Each group should make a pamphlet that argues against redlining in their chosen city. The pamphlet should include:
Have groups share their pamphlets with the class and conclude with a class discussion:
Have students read Walter White’s summary of the causes of the Red Summer race riots, published in the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis. In his article, White describes what he sees as the eight central causes of the race riots of 1919.
Divide students into two large groups and assign each group one of the eight causes. (You can choose the two causes that you most want your class to focus on for this activity.) Each group should have a class period to prepare an argument that supports that their assigned cause was the leading cause of the Red Summer of 1919. They can use the Walter White article, primary sources, and internet research to prepare their arguments.
Hold the debate during the next class and follow this schedule:
Have students complete a written reflection after the debate answering the following question with their own opinion:
Start by having students read Langston Hughes’s essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” Explain that you will be spending some time analyzing the Black poetry of the Harlem Renaissance.
Divide students into small groups, and give each group one of the poems from the Harlem Renaissance from this Poetry Foundation collection. You should select the poems that you think are the most appropriate for your class and for the topics you’d most like to cover.
Each group should prepare an informal oral presentation to the class that contains:
For this Socratic Seminar, have students read “The Stirrings of Discontent,” which is a chapter from Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns.
After the seminar, lead a reflection in which students answer the following questions:
African American artist Jacob Lawrence painted his “Migration Series” in 1940. It includes sixty panels that tell the story of the migration North. Have students read Lawrence’s introduction to his paintings and then browse the selected paintings. Discuss:
Each student should pick just one panel of the series to focus on for this performance task. Once the students have selected their panels, they should read the caption and research the subject of the panel. Use the following criteria questions to guide the research for students:
Have each student create a one-page analysis of the panel. The essay should answer the research questions and aim to help viewers understand the meaning of the artwork. The guiding question that the analysis should answer is: to what extent did the Great Migration improve the lives of Black migrants from 1900 to 1960?
Create a museum exhibit by hanging up the panels that students chose with their accompanying essays underneath the paintings, like museum captions. Invite students to view the museum exhibit to learn about the Great Migration from the students’ examination of Lawrence’s body of work.
Document 5.13.4: Excerpts from Jacob Lawrence’s introduction to Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, 1992
This is the story of an exodus of African Americans who left their homes and farms in the South around the time of World War I and traveled to northern industrial cities in search of better lives. It was a momentous journey. . . . The great migration is a part of my life. . . . There was always talk in my house of other families arriving from the South. My family was part of the first big wave of migration, which occurred between the years 1916 and 1919. . . .It seemed almost inevitable that I would tell this story in my art. I spent hours at the Schomburg Library in Harlem reading books about the great migration, and I took notes.
I started the Migration series in 1940, when I was twenty-two years old, and finished it one year later. . . . There are sixty panels in the series. . .
To me, migration means movement. While I was painting, I thought about trains and people walking to the stations. I thought about field hands leaving their farms to become factory workers, and about the families that sometimes got left behind. . . .
My family and others left the South on a quest for freedom, justice, and dignity. If our story rings true for you today, then it must still strike a chord in our American experience.
Source: Lawrence, Jacob. The Great Migration: An American Story. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993.
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