American History 102: 1865 to the Present
Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History
William P. Tishler, Producer
Shane Hamilton, Web Editor
Lecture 09
[Graphics Version]
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 slavery had taken its place. Lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and economic hardship made southern blacks feel as if very little had improved since the days of slavery. 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 toleration. However, even such basic requests fueled great controversy and debate over the place of blacks in white America.
"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 blacks to understand their indentity in a white world. Ridiculed, rejected, and without a true sense of self, black Americans have continually had to adjust to a world where the rules are made by someone else.
Never did this point become more clear than in the late years of the 19th century as blacks began moving from their homes in the rural South to Northern urban centers. 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 living in the Deep South.
By the 1890s, however, an increasing number of blacks were moving farther and farther from the land that had been their home since the days of the slave trade. 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 (California, Colorado, etc.).
The "Great Migration" increased dramatically in the years between about 1910 and the early 1920s. Between 300,000 and 1,000,000 moved north in this period, largely in response to an increased number of unskilled factory job openings as manufacturers boosted production for World War I.
Black migration from 1916 through the 1960s remained strong, except during the Great Depression, and over 6 million southern black people made the move to the North in this period.
Black Population Trends |
||
| 1890s | 1960s | |
| Southern | 90.3% | 60% |
| Rural | 90% | 27% |
| Northern | 9.7% | 34%* |
| Urban | 10% | 73% |
*includes New England, Middle Atlantic, East North Central, and West North Central regions
"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
"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
In 1916 he moved to New York City, establishing the headquarters of UNIA 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 UNIA 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 UNIA 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
All but the most staunchly racist whites were willing to accept Booker T. Washington's demands; after all, Washington was essentially demanding that blacks be given the jobs that whites did not want anyway. Du Bois and Garvey, however, posed a real threat to the comfort of most whites. Du Bois's assertiveness and Garvey's veiled threats of violence had many northern whites afraid that society's very foundations were being shaken by "those lazy and shiftless Negroes." Whites turned to the "evidence" of late 19th-century "science" to justify their racist claims.
Ethnology and anthropology, along with many other "-ologies," made their first appearance in the late 19th century. One doctrine of both ethnology and anthropology that was widely accepted at the time was that all of humankind had evolved from a common stock, but that at various points, that stock had become racially separated. The results of this racial separation were the Caucasian, Mongolian, Negroid, and Indian races.
Some ethnologists and anthropologists maintained that the Negroid race had been the last distinct race to form, following the other three in chronological development. These "scientists" argued that the Negro race had not had time to develop the highly civilized society of the Caucasian race, and was therefore inferior.
Other ethnologists and anthropoligists contended that Negroes were the first offshoot of the common race. As such, Negroes could be viewed as the most "primitive" and "backwards" 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."
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 began as attempts to explain such phenomena.
Early eugenicists and geneticists used "scientific proof" to strike fear in the white population by forecasting that the "purity" of white stock would be destroyed by intermingling blood. Since white blood was obviously superior, any introduction of other racial characteristics would result in the weakening of mankind, reasoned eugenicists and early geneticists. Such "scientists," like W.E.D. Stokes, felt that the "best" traits of humans could be selectively bred into the next generation to produce a continually improving stock of humans.
Stokes was an experienced horse breeder, and in his book The Right to be Well-Born, or Horse Breeding in its Relation to Eugenics, Stokes compared the breeding of a fine racehorse to the breeding of a good Christian Anglo-Saxon.
The ultimate triumph of psychology was the discovery of IQ testing. Psychologists, in their infinite wisdom, invented an extremely effective means of finding out just how smart people really are and giving that intelligence factor a specific number which could be compared to other people's intelligence numbers.
Early psychologists relied on IQ tests to "prove" that blacks were, on average, less intelligent than whites. George O. Ferguson, in The Psychology of the Negro, claimed that the average IQ of a white was 100, while the average score of a black was 75. Those blacks that did have higher scores must have had lighter skin color, reasoned Ferguson.
Life in America was changing dramatically in the years following the Civil
War. Urban centers popped up all across the continent, railroads made transportation
cheaper and more reliable, businessmen and laborers had to redefine their relationships
with each other, and immigration and migration forced Americans to reconsider their
definition of who exactly was an "American." This turmoil was not confined to
the East or North or even to urban centers, however. Rural America is often viewed
(probably incorrectly) as the home of morality, Christianity, hard work, and simple
living. However, as technology, politics, religious conflicts, railroads, and a new
economic structure encroached upon the pastoral American scene, small farmers began to
fear that society was "going to hell in a handbasket." 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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