The Negro in Chicago - A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot. Chicago Commission on Race Relations
how some parts of the South treat colored folks; poor white trash were awful mean where we came from; wish all the colored folks would come up here where you ain't afraid to breathe.
8. Yes. Want friend and husband to come; also sister and family who want her to come back that they may see how she looks before they break up and come. Youngest son begs mother never to think of going back South. Oldest son not so well satisfied when first came, but since he is working, likes it a little better.
Only a few migrants were found who came on free transportation, and many of these had friends in Chicago before they came. Few expressed a desire to return.
VII. EFFORTS TO CHECK MIGRATION
The withdrawal of great numbers of Negroes, both because of the migration and because of military service, left large gaps in the industries of the South dependent upon Negro labor. Thousands of acres of rice and sugar cane went to waste. The turpentine industry of the Carolinas and the milling interests of Tennessee were hard pressed for labor. Cotton-growing was much affected, especially in the delta region of Mississippi. The situation became critical, presenting a real economic problem. Organized efforts were made, and at times extreme measures were taken, to start a return movement. A report was circulated that on one day in the winter of 1919 in Chicago, 17,000 Negroes were counted in a bread line. The "horrors of northern winters" were played up as they had been during the migration.
The press throughout the country was used to spread broadcast the South's needs, its kind treatment of Negroes, its opportunities, and its growing change of heart on the question of race relations. Newspaper articles from sections of the North and South carried about the same story. The Chicago Tribune said in a conspicuous headline: "Louisiana Wants Negroes to Return." Other such headlines were: Washington Post—"South Needs Negroes. Try to Get Labor for Their Cotton Fields. Tell of Kind Treatment"; New York Evening Sun—"To Aid Negro Return"; Philadelphia Press—"South Is Urging Negroes to Return. Many Districts Willing to Pay Fare of Those Who Come Back"; Memphis Commercial Appeal—"South Is Best for Negro, Say Mississippians. Colored People Found Prosperous and Happy."
Though such reports were widely circulated throughout the North, the actual efforts of agencies from the South seeking the return of Negro labor centered around Chicago. This was due largely to the fact that from the southern states most acutely in need the drift during the migration had been to Chicago, and because the increase of Chicago's Negro population had been so great.
Immediately following the riots in Chicago and Washington, rumors gained wide currency that hundreds of migrants were leaving for sections of the South. So strong was the belief in the truth of this report that a Chicago newspaper telegraphed the governors of southern states inquiring the number of Negroes they needed. Agents of the South, including representatives of the Tennessee Association of Commerce, the Department of Immigration of Louisiana, the Mississippi Welfare League, and the Southern Alluvial Land Association, visited northern cities with a view to providing means for the return of Negroes. Although free transportation was offered, together with promises of increased wages and better living conditions, the various commissions were disappointed.
Their interviews with Negroes living in Chicago revealed a determination not to return to conditions they had left two years before. To offset this objection, two Chicago Negroes and one white man were taken to Mississippi by a representative of the Mississippi Welfare League to make an investigation. They visited several delta towns, traveling for the most part in automobiles and interviewing farmers and laborers. They reported in substance as follows:
Railroad accommodations for Negroes were adequate and uniform, irrespective of locality; treatment accorded Negro passengers by railroad officials was courteous throughout. Public-school terms were nine months in the city and eight months in the country for white and colored alike, and the strongest possible human ties between planter and worker exist. … In no instance were Negroes not given the freest use of sidewalks, streets, and thoroughfares and we were unable to find any trace of friction of any kind between the races.
An effort was then made by the Chicago Urban League to ascertain the precise state of affairs. Its southern representative questioned hundreds of Negroes living in the South, regarding improved relationships. Answers to this query were all about the same. Some of them are quoted:
There has been no change. Lincoln League organized in this city has been denounced by the white newspapers as a movement that will cause trouble, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Urban Leagues of various cities have been called "strife breeders and meddlers in southern affairs"; Jim Crow accommodations are just the same as ever. If there is any change for the better, I can't see it.
It is ridiculous for any Negro to say he finds conditions better here. Don't you remember that Negroes answering an invitation to meet the Welfare Committee of white men not long ago were told as soon as they got into the meeting place that the Committee was ready to hear what Negroes wanted, but that the question of the Negro's right to exercise the right of voting would not be allowed to be discussed at all, and that that must be agreed to before any discussion whatever would be entertained, and that the Negroes left the meeting place without a chance to demand the one thing they wished to enjoy?
Some deceitful, lying Negro may say that times are better, but he would, at the same time, know that he was not telling the truth. Haven't you been hearing more reports of lynching of Negroes than you ever did in your life, since the war? Where, then, is there any improvement? Ain't all the judges, all the police and constables, all the juries as white man as ever? Does the word of a Negro count for more now than it did before the war? Don't white men insult our wives and daughters and sisters and get off at it, unless we take the law into our own hand and punish them for it ourselves, and get lynched for protecting our own, just as often as ever? How much more schooling from public funds do our children get now than they got before the war? How much more do we have to say now than we had to say before the war about the way the taxes we pay shall be spent for schools, or for salaries, or for anything connected with administration and government? Why, even the colored man in Caddo parish who subscribed for $100,000 in Liberty bonds and bought lots of War Savings stamps, and others who bought less, but in the hundreds, and thousands of the bonds and War Saving stamps, have no more to say about affairs now than they ever had. Where is the improvement?
The Urban League also made an inquiry into the numbers of Negroes leaving and arriving in the week following the riot, and when the strongest efforts were being made to induce a return of migrants. During this period 261 Negroes came to Chicago and 219 left the city. Of the 219 leaving, eighty-three gave some southern state as their destination. For the most part, they were persons returning from vacations in the North, and Chicago Negroes going South to visit or on business. Some were rejoining their families. Fourteen were leaving because of the riot. None, however, indicated any intention of going South to work.
It is clear that migrant Negroes are not returning South. On the contrary, there is a small but continuous stream of migration to the industrial centers of the North. No great number of Negroes returned to the South even during the trying unemployment period in the early part of 1921. Census figures for Chicago for 1920 show a number much smaller than the usual estimates of the size of the Negro population during the period of the heaviest migration. This may be accounted for by the fact that Chicago has been used as a re-routing point to other northern cities. The decrease from 1918 undoubtedly means that some returned to the South, but it is apparent that the great majority of the migrants remain, despite the hardships attending shortage of work.
CHAPTER IV
THE NEGRO POPULATION OF CHICAGO
A. DISTRIBUTION AND DENSITY