The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot. Chicago Commission on Race Relations
of whites and Negroes in northern schools made possible a higher grade of instruction for the children of migrants.[16]
II. SENTIMENTAL CAUSES OF THE MIGRATION
The causes classed as sentimental include those which have reference to the feelings of Negroes concerning their surroundings in the South and their reactions to the social systems and practices of certain sections of the South. Frequently these causes were given as the source of an old discontent among Negroes concerning the South. Frequently they took prominence over economic causes, and they were held for the most part by a fairly high class of Negroes. These causes are in part as follows:
Lack of protection from mob violence.—Between 1885 and 1918, 2,881 Negroes were lynched in the United States, more than 85 per cent of these lynchings occurring in the South. In 1917, 2,500 Negroes were driven by force out of Dawson and Forsythe counties, Georgia.[17]
The Chicago Urban League reported that numbers of migrants from towns where lynchings had occurred registered for jobs in Chicago very shortly after lynchings. Concerning mob violence and general insecurity both whites and Negroes living in the South have had much to say. Their statements at the time of the migration are here quoted.
From the Atlanta Constitution (white), November 24, 1916:
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:
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.
These statements are most significant. Mob law as we have known in Georgia has furnished emigration agents with all the leverage they want; it is a foundation upon which it is easy to build with a well concocted lie or two, and they have not been slow to take advantage of it.
This loss of her best labor is another penalty Georgia is paying for her indifference and inactivity in suppressing mob law.
From the Southwestern Christian Advocate (Negro), April 26, 1917:
But why do they [the Negroes] go? We give a concrete answer: some months ago Anthony Crawford, a highly respectable, honest and industrious Negro, with a good farm and holdings estimated to be worth $300,000, was lynched in Abbeville, South Carolina. He was guilty of no crime. He would not be cheated out of his cotton. That was insolence. He must be taught a lesson. When the mob went for him he defended himself. They overpowered him and brutally lynched him. This murder was without excuse and was condemned in no uncertain words by the Governor, other high officials and the press in general of South Carolina. Officials pledged that the lynchers would be punished. The case went to the grand jury. Mr. Crawford was lynched in the daytime and dragged through the streets by unmasked men. The names of the leaders were supposed to have been known, and yet the grand jury, under oath, says that it could not find sufficient evidence to warrant an indictment. …
Is any one surprised that Negroes are leaving South Carolina by the thousands? The wonder is that any of them remain. They will suffer in the North. Some of them will die. But Anthony Crawford did not get a chance to die in Abbeville, South Carolina. He was shamefully murdered. Any place would be paradise compared with some sections of the South where the Negroes receive such maltreatment.
From the Savannah (Georgia) Morning News (white), January 3, 1917:
Another cause is the feeling of insecurity. The lack of legal protection in the country is a constant nightmare to the colored people who are trying to accumulate a comfortable little home and farm. There is scarcely a Negro mother in the country who does not live in dread and fear that her husband or son may come in unfriendly contact with some white person as to bring the lynchers or the arresting officers to her door which may result in the wiping out of her entire family. It must be acknowledged that this is a sad condition. …
The Southern white man ought to be willing to give the Negro a man's chance without regard to his race or color, give him at least the same protection of law given to anyone else. If he will not do this, the Negro must seek those North or West, who will give him better wages and better treatment. I hope, however, that this will not be necessary.
Injustice in the courts.—An excerpt from one of the newspapers of that period illustrates the basis of this cause:
While our very solvency is being sucked out from underneath we go out about affairs as usual—our police officers raid poolrooms for "loafing Negroes," bring in twelve, keep them in the barracks all night, and next morning find that many of them have steady, regular jobs, valuable assets to their white employers, suddenly left and gone to Cleveland, "where they don't arrest fifty niggers for what three of 'em done" [Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser (white), September 21, 1916].
Inferior transportation facilities.—This refers to "Jim Crow cars," a partitioned section of one railway car, usually the baggage car, and partitioned sections of railway waiting-rooms, poorly kept, bearing signs, "For colored only." This dissatisfaction is expressed in part in the following comment of a Negro presiding elder, writing in the Macon (Georgia) Ledger, a white paper:
The petty offenses, which you mention, are far more numerous than you are aware of, besides other unjust treatments enacted daily on the streets, street cars and trains. Our women are inhumanly treated by some conductors, both on the street cars and trains. White men are often found in compartments for Negroes smoking, and if anything is said against it they who speak are insulted, or the car is purposely filled with big puffs of smoke and the conductor's reply is, "He'll quit to-rectly." Recently a white man entered a trailer for Negroes with two little dogs. One of the dogs went between the seats and crouched by a woman; she pushed him from her and the white man took both dogs and set them aside her and she was forced to ride with them. This is one of the many, many acts of injustice which often result in a row for which the Negro has to pay the penalty. These things are driving the Negro from the South.
Other causes stated are (a) the deprivation of the right to vote, (b) the "rough-handed" and unfair competition of "poor whites," (c) persecution by petty officers of the law, and (d) the "persecution of the Press."
III. BEGINNING AND SPREAD OF MIGRATION
The enormous proportions to which the exodus grew obscure its beginning. Several experiments had been tried with southern labor in the Northeast, particularly in the Connecticut tobacco fields and in Pennsylvania. In Connecticut, Negro students from the southern schools had been employed during summers with great success. Early in 1916, industries in Pennsylvania imported many Negroes from Georgia and Florida. During July one railroad company stated that it had brought to Pennsylvania more than 13,000 Negroes. They wrote back for their friends and families, and from the points to which they had been brought they spread out into new and "labor slack" territories. Once begun, this means of recruiting labor was used by hard-pressed industries in other sections of the North. The reports of high wages, of the unexpected welcome of the North, and of unusually good treatment accorded Negroes spread throughout the South from Georgia and Florida to Texas.
The stimuli of suggestion and hysteria gave the migration an almost religious significance, and it became a mass movement. Letters, rumors, Negro newspapers, gossip, and other forms of social control operated to add volume and enthusiasm to the exodus. Songs and poems of the period characterized