Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History
William P. Tishler, Producer
Lecture 09
The Great Migration: Blacks in White America
Although chattel slavery had been illegal for three decades by the 1890s, southern blacks often felt that a new kind of de facto slavery had taken its place. Lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and economic hardship made southern blacks feel as if very little had improved since emancipation. Beginning in the 1890s and lasting well into the 1970s, a "Great Migration" of southern blacks to the West and North changed the demographic structure of the nation. Blacks turned to the "Promised Land" of the North in search of jobs and greater racial toleration. However, such basic demands fueled increasing debate over the place of blacks in predominantly white America in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Some questions to keep in mind:
- Why did so many African-Americans migrate to the North during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
- Who were some of the most significant African-American leaders during this period? How did their visions for American society differ?
- How did the "science" of the times shape perceptions of race in American society?
"In a poll by Book Week, [Invisible Man] was judged 'the most distinguished single work' published in America between 1945 and 1965. Its complex time structure, spacious setting, nameless ethnic protagonist, allegorical and legendary characters, rites of passage, ironic theme, and ritualistic use of music and language suggest that Ellison drew on African-American folklore and the Western epic tradition to render his vision of the historical odyssey of blacks in America to define themselves." (Source: The Reader's Companion to American History, edited by E. Foner and J. A. Garraty. Published in Boston by Houghton Mifflin. ©1991.)
Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible Man, examines the painful inability of many African-Americans to understand their identity in a largely white world. Ridiculed, rejected, and often left without a clear sense of self, black Americans have often had to exist to a world where the rules are made by white Americans. This point became increasingly clearer during the late-nineteenth century, when blacks began moving from the rural South to Northern cities. As early as the 1870s, large numbers of blacks had migrated to states like Texas, Kansas, and other predominantly rural areas to escape the negative aspects of life in the Deep South. By the 1890s, an increasing number of blacks were moving farther and farther from the land that had been their home since before the Civil War. Almost a quarter of a million blacks moved to the North between 1890 and 1910, while about 35,000 blacks moved to the Far West during this same period.
The "Great Migration" increased dramatically in the years between about 1910 and the early 1920s. Between 300,000 and 1,000,000 African-Americans moved north during this period, largely in response to an increased number of unskilled factory job openings as northern manufacturers boosted production for World War I. Black migration between 1916 and the 1960s remained strong, except during the Great Depression. More than 6 million southern blacks made the move to the North during this period.
Black Population Trends |
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| 1890s | 1960s | |
| Southern | 90.3% | 10% |
| Rural | 90% | 5% |
| Northern | 9.7% | 90% |
| Urban | 10% | 95% |
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A Great Debate:
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| Booker T. Washington "Born a slave on April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Virginia, Washington, whose father is believed to have been white, was taken by his mother, with her two other children, to Malden, near Charleston, West Virginia, after the emancipation. There, poverty necessitated his working from the age of nine, first in a salt furnace and then a coal mine. He attended a school for Negroes where he identified himself as Booker Washington, only later to learn that his mother had named him Booker Taliaferro; he ultimately combined all three names. Having always been eager to acquire an education, he went to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia in 1872, and there studied for three years, working as a janitor to pay his expenses....The founding of Tuskegee Institute, a Negro normal and agricultural school in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1881, and the choice of Washington as its first principal, began his major career....A staunch believer in industrial training for Negroes rather than liberal-arts education, he was shunned by many black intellectuals, notably W. E. B. Du Bois, who saw in his philosophy the guarantee of continued Negro servility...." Source: Webster's American Biographies, G&C Merriam Co., 1975. |
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Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) and family | ||
Copyright 1997 State Historical Society of Wisconsin |
"The wisest among my race understand that agitation for social equality is an extremist folly. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges."--Booker T. Washington, speech at the Atlanta Exposition, 1895
| W. E. B. Du Bois "Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on February 23, 1868, W. E. B. Du Bois was of African, French, and Dutch ancestry. He was educated at Fisk and Harvard universities and soon after obtaining his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1895 joined the faculty of Atlanta University, where he taught economics and history from 1897 to 1910 and edited the Atlanta University Studies, 1897-1911. With his Souls of Black Folk in 1903 he announced the intellectual revolt against the accomodationist principles of Booker T. Washington that crystallized two years later in the founding, under Du Bois's leadership, of the Niagara Movement. When this group was merged with the newly founded National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, Du Bois became editor of the association's journal, Crisis, holding the post until 1932....A thorough scholar and an eloquent public speaker, Du Bois became and remained an influential and profoundly inspiring figure among blacks in the United States and abroad....During the 1940s Du Bois began a move from nonideological radicalism toward a Marxist and pro-Soviet viewpoint; this change culminated in his joining the Communist party in 1961...." Source: Webster's American Biographies, G&C Merriam Co., 1975. |
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Dr. Du Bois at his desk at Atlanta University where he initiated and edited the famous Atlanta University Studies on Negro Americans | ||
Copyright 1997 State Historical Society of Wisconsin |
"By every civilized and peaceful method we must
strive for the rights which the world accords to men."--W. E. B. Du Bois
Dubois on Booker T. Washington
| Marcus Garvey "Born on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, Garvey was largely self-educated and began working as a printer's apprentice at fourteen. He moved to Kingston three years later and became foreman of a large printing company. Blacklisted after leading the employees in a strike for higher wages, he worked briefly for the government printing office, founded two nationalistic publications and a political club, and then sought more lucrative employment in South America. He observed the poor working conditions in many countries and, continuing on to London in 1912, met and assisted an Afro-Egyptian scholar, learning much of Negro history and culture in the course of his work. He returned to Jamaica in 1914 and founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (U. N. I. A.) and the African Communities League. |
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Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), head of U. N. I. A. | ||
Copyright 1997 State Historical Society of Wisconsin |
In 1916 he moved to New York City, establishing the headquarters of U. N. I. A. there and founding branches during 1919-1920 in nearly every urban area of the country where there was a substantial black population. He also founded the Negro World, the weekly U. N. I. A. newspaper, which continued from 1919 to 1933....[He urged] that black men accept a black Deity, exalting African beauty, expounding on the lives and notable achievements of Negroes throughout history, and projecting plans for Negroes to resettle in Liberia in a "back to Africa" movement. He began several enterprises, including the Black Star Steamship Line and the Negro Factories Corporation, financed by the sale of stock to U. N. I. A. members. Much of his traveling became promotional; he declared that black-owned, black-operated ventures would rebuild the confidence of Negroes in their own people and prepare them for economic independence.
Throughout this time he was harassed by both white and black members of
middle-class society....In 1925 he was convicted of fraud in connection with his handling
of the funds of the Black Star Line, which had gone bankrupt. He was sentenced to five
years' imprisonment, but his sentence was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge and in
1927 he was released and immediately deported to Jamaica...."
Source: Webster's American Biographies, G&C
Merriam Co., 1975.
"Up you mighty race! You can accomplish what you will! The negro of yesterday has disappeared from the scene, and his place is taken by a new negro who stands erect, conscious of his manhood rights, fully determined to preserve them at all costs."--Marcus Garvey
White Attitudes and "Scientific Racism"
All but the most staunchly racist whites were willing to accept Booker T. Washington's plans to uplift African-Americans. Washington, after all, was essentially arguing that blacks should work jobs that most white Americans did not really want. Du Bois's assertiveness and Garvey's veiled threats of racial violence, however, frightened many Northern whites. Many whites, in fact, turned to late-nineteenth-century "science" to justify segregation and racism.
Evolutionary "Science"
Ethnology and anthropology, along with many other "-ologies," first gained popularity in the United States during the late nineteenth century. Many ethnologists and anthropologists accepted the idea that all humans had evolved from a common ancestor, but had branched off into different races: Caucasian, Mongolian, Negroid, and Indian. Some ethnologists and anthropologists maintained that the Negroid race had emerged after the other three. These scientists argued that the Negro race had not had time to develop and was therefore inferior to the other races. Other ethnologists and anthropologists contended that Negroes were the first offshoot of the human tree. As such, they were the most primitive and backward race. These scientists pointed to evolutionary "proof" that showed the first life forms on the planet were the simplest and least developed. T. T. Waterman, a prominent ethnologist of the day, stated that Negroes were by far the most primitive race on Earth; so primitive, in fact, that they faced danger of extinction due to their inability to adapt to modern society. As such, Waterman urged his fellow Caucasians to "save out a few good Negro types."
Hereditary "Science"
The work of Charles Darwin sparked an interest in the means by which an organism's traits are passed to the next generation. Eugenics and genetics both emerged when scientists attempted to explain such phenomena. Early eugenicists and geneticists used scientific "proof" to strike fear in the white population when they predicted that that racial interbreeding would destroy the purity of the Caucasian race and undermine civil society. Such scientists, like W. E. D. Stokes, felt that they could selectively breed the best human traits into the next generation and improve human stock. Stokes was an experienced horse breeder who argued, in The Right to be Well-Born, or Horse Breeding in its Relation to Eugenics, that scientists should apply the principles of fine racehorse breeding to humanity.
Psychology
One of the lasting legacies of early psychology was the invention of I. Q. testing. Many psychologists believed that they could discover just how smart people were and rank their intelligence level on a comparative scale. Early psychologists relied on I. Q. tests to assert that blacks were, on average, less intelligent than whites. George O. Ferguson, in The Psychology of the Negro, claimed that the average I. Q. of a white American was 100, while the average score of an African-American was just 75. He went on to argue that lighter-skinned African-Americans scored higher on intelligence tests.
Life in America was changing dramatically in the years
following the Civil War. Large cities emerged across the continent, railroads
made transportation cheaper and more reliable, businessmen and laborers struggled
to shape American capitalism, and immigration and migration forced Americans
to reconsider their definition of who exactly was an "American." This
turmoil, however, was not simply confined to the East or North, or even to urban
centers. Rural America, in fact, increasingly became a political and economic
battleground at the end of the century. As technological, political, religious,
and economic changes transformed rural life, many small farmers began to fear
that society was "going to hell in a hand basket." The story of this
swiftly-changing rural world is an extremely interesting aspect of American
history; so interesting, in fact, that it is the topic of the next lecture:
Lecture #10: How Ya' Gonna' Keep 'Em Down on the Farm?--The
Rise of Populism.
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