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NEGRO MIGRATION DURING THE WAR
EMMETT J. SCOTT
FOREWORD
In the preparation of this study I have had the encouragement and
support of Dr. Robert R. Moton, Principal of the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute, Alabama, who generously placed at my disposal
the facilities of the Institute's Division of Records and Research,
directed by Mr. Monroe N. Work, the editor of the _Negro Year Book_.
Mr. Work has cooperated with me in the most thoroughgoing manner. I
have also had the support of the National League on Urban Conditions
and particularly of the Chicago branch of which Dr. Robert E. Park
is President and of which Mr. T. Arnold Hill is Secretary. Mr. Hill
placed at my disposal his first assistant, Mr. Charles S. Johnson,
graduate student of the University of Chicago, to whom I am greatly
indebted. I must also make acknowledgment of my indebtedness to Dr.
Carter G. Woodson, Director of the Association for the Study of Negro
Life and History, Incorporated, Washington, D.C., for placing at my
disposal the facilities of his organization.
The work of investigation was divided up by assigning Mr. Work to
Alabama, Georgia and Florida; Mr. Johnson to Mississippi and to
centers in Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, while the
eastern centers were assigned to Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, Trenton, New
Jersey, a former editor of the _New York Age_, and a publicist and
investigator of well known ability. It is upon the reports submitted
by these investigators that this study rests. I can not speak too
warmly of the enthusiastic and painstaking care with which these
men have labored to secure the essential facts with regard to the
migration of the negro people from the South.
Emmett J. Scott.
Washington, D.C.,
_June 5, 1919._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I Introduction 3
II Causes of the Migration 13
III Stimulation of the Movement 26
IV The Spread of the Movement 38
V The Call of the Self-Sufficient North 49
VI The Draining of the Black Belt 59
VII Efforts to Check the Movement 72
VIII Effects of the Movement on the South 86
IX The Situation in St. Louis 95
X Chicago and Its Environs 102
XI The Situation at Points in the Middle West 119
XII The Situation at Points in the East 134
XIII Remedies for Relief by National Organizations 143
XIV Public Opinion Regarding the Migration 152
Bibliography 175
Index 185
NEGRO MIGRATION DURING THE WAR
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Within the brief period of three years following the outbreak of the
great war in Europe, more than four hundred thousand negroes suddenly
moved north. In extent this movement is without parallel in American
history, for it swept on thousands of the blacks from remote regions
of the South, depopulated entire communities, drew upon the negro
inhabitants of practically every city of the South, and spread from
Florida to the western limits of Texas. In character it was not
without precedent. In fact, it bears such a significant resemblance to
the migration to Kansas in 1879 and the one to Arkansas and Texas
in 1888 and 1889 that this of 1916-1917 may be regarded as the same
movement with intervals of a number of years.
Strange as it might seem the migration of 1879 first attracted general
notice when the accusation was brought that it was a political scheme
to transplant thousands of negro voters from their disfranchisement
in the South to States where their votes might swell the Republican
majority. Just here may be found a striking analogy to one of the
current charges brought against the movement nearly forty years later.
The congressional inquiry which is responsible for the discovery of
the fundamental causes of the movement was occasioned by this charge
and succeeded in proving its baselessness.[1]
The real causes of the migration of 1879 were not far to seek.
The economic cause was the agricultural depression in the lower
Mississippi Valley. But by far the most potent factor in effecting
the movement was the treatment received by negroes at the hands of the
South. More specifically, as expressed by the leaders of the movement
and refugees themselves, they were a long series of oppression,
injustice and violence extending over a period of fifteen years; the
convict system by which the courts are permitted to inflict heavy
fines for trivial offenses and the sheriff to hire the convicts to
planters on the basis of peonage; denial of political rights; long
continued persecution for political reasons; a system of cheating by
landlords and storekeepers which rendered it impossible for tenants
to make a living, and the inadequacy of school facilities.[2] Sworn
public documents show that nearly 3,500 persons, most of whom were
negroes, were killed between 1866 and 1879, and their murderers were
never brought to trial or even arrested. Several massacres of
negroes occurred in the parishes of Louisiana. Henry Adams, traveling
throughout the State and taking note of crime committed against
negroes, said that 683 colored men were whipped, maimed or murdered
within eleven years.[3]
In the year 1879, therefore, thousands of negroes from Mississippi,
Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina moved to
Kansas. Henry Adams of Shreveport, Louisiana, an uneducated negro
but a man of extraordinary talent, organized that year a colonization
council. He had been a soldier in the United States Army until 1869
when he returned to his home in Louisiana and found the condition of
negroes intolerable. Together with a number of other negroes he first
formed a committee which in his own words was intended to "look into
affairs and see the true condition of our race, to see whether it was
possible we could stay under a people who held us in bondage or not."
This committee grew to the enormous size of five hundred members. One
hundred and fifty of these members were scattered throughout the South
to live and work among the negroes and report their observations.
These agents quickly reached the conclusion that the treatment the
negroes received was generally unbearable.[4] Some of the conditions
reported were that land rent was still high; that in the part of the
country where the committee was organized the people were still being
whipped, some of them by their former owners; that they were cheated
out of their crops and that in some parts of the country where they
voted they were being shot.
It was decided about 1877 that all hope and confidence that conditions
could be changed should be abandoned. Members of this committee felt
that they could no longer remain in the South, and decided to leave
even if they "had to run away and go into the woods." Membership in
the council was solicited with the result that by 1878 there were
ninety-eight thousand persons from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and
Texas belonging to the colonization council and ready to move.[5]
About the same time there was another conspicuous figure working in
Tennessee--Benjamin or "Pap" Singleton, who styled himself the father
of the exodus. He began the work of inducing negroes to move to the
State of Kansas about 1869, founded two colonies and carried a total
of 7,432 blacks from Tennessee. During this time he paid from his own
pocket over $600 for circulars which he distributed throughout the
southern States. "The advantages of living in a free State" were the
inducements offered.[6]
The movement spread as far east as North Carolina. There a similar
movement was started in 1872 when there were distributed a number of
circulars from Nebraska telling of the United States government and
railroad lands which could be cheaply obtained. This brief excitement
subsided, but was revived again by reports of thousands of negroes
leaving the other States of the South for Kansas. Several hundred of
these migrants from North Carolina were persuaded en route to change
their course and go to Indiana.[7]
Much excitement characterized the movement. One description of this
exodus says:
Homeless, penniless and in rags, these poor people were
thronging the wharves of St. Louis, crowding the steamers
on the Mississippi River, hailing the passing steamers and
imploring them for a passage to the land of freedom, where the
rights of citizens are respected and honest toil rewarded by
honest compensation. The newspapers were filled with accounts
of their destitution, and the very air was burdened with the
cry of distress from a class of American citizens flying from
persecution which they could no longer endure. Their piteous
tales of outrage, suffering and wrong touched the hearts of
the more fortunate members of their race in the North and
West, and aid societies, designed to afford temporary relief
and composed almost wholly of colored people, were organized
in Washington, St. Louis, Topeka and various other places.[8]
Men still living, who participated in this movement, tell of the long
straggling procession of migrants, stretching to the length at times
of from three to five miles, crossing States on foot. Churches were
opened all along the route to receive them. Songs were composed, some
of which still linger in the memory of survivors. The hardships under
which they made this journey are pathetic. Yet it is estimated that
nearly 25,000 negroes left their homes for Kansas.[9]
The exodus during the World War, like both of these, was fundamentally
economic, though its roots were entangled in the entire social system
of the South. It was hailed as the "Exodus to the Promised Land" and
characterized by the same frenzy and excitement. Unlike the Kansas
movement, it had no conspicuous leaders of the type of the renowned
"Pap" Singleton and Henry Adams. Apparently they were not needed. The
great horde of restless migrants swung loose from their acknowledged
leaders. The very pervasiveness of the impulse to move at the first
definite call of the North was sufficient to stir up and carry away
thousands before the excitement subsided.
Despite the apparent suddenness of this movement, all evidence
indicates that it is but the accentuation of a process which has
been going on for more than fifty years. So silently indeed has this
shifting of the negro population taken place that it has quite escaped
popular attention. Following the decennial revelation of the census
there is a momentary outburst of dismay and apprehension at the
manifest trend in the interstate migration of negroes. Inquiries into
the living standards of selected groups of negroes in large cities
antedating the migration of 1916-1917 have revealed from year to year
an increasing number of persons of southern birth whose length of
residence has been surprisingly short. The rapid increase in the negro
population of the cities of the North bears eloquent testimony to this
tendency. The total increase in the negro population between 1900 and
1910 was 11.2 per cent. In the past fifty years the northern movement
has transferred about 4 per cent of the entire negro population; and
the movement has taken place in spite of the negro's economic handicap
in the North. Within the same period Chicago increased her negro
population 46.3 per cent and Columbus, Ohio, 55.3 per cent. This
increase was wholly at the expense of the South, for the rural
communities of the North are very sparsely populated with negroes
and the increment accruing from surplus birth over deaths is almost
negligible.[10]
When any attempt is made to estimate the volume of this most recent
movement, however, there is introduced a confusing element, for it can
not definitely be separated from a process which has been in operation
since emancipation. Another difficulty in obtaining reliable
estimates is the distribution of the colored population over the rural
districts. It is next to impossible to estimate the numbers leaving
the South even on the basis of the numbers leaving the cities. The
cities are merely concentration points and they are continually
recruiting from the surrounding rural districts. It might be stated
that 2,000 negroes left a certain city. As a matter of fact, scarcely
half that number were residents of the city. The others had moved in
because it was easier to leave for the North from a large city, and
there was a greater likelihood of securing free transportation or
traveling with a party of friends. It is conservatively stated, for
example, that Birmingham, Alabama, lost 38,000 negroes. Yet within
a period of three months the negro population had assumed its usual
proportions again.[11] Prior to the present migration of negroes,
there was somewhat greater mobility on the part of the white than on
the part of the negro population. As for example, according to
the census of 1910 of 68,070,294 native whites, 10,366,735 or 15.2 per
cent were living in some other division than that in which they were
born. Of 9,746,043 native negroes reported by the census of 1930,
963,153 or 9.9 per cent were living outside the division of birth.[12]
Previous to the present migration, the south Atlantic and the east
south central divisions were the only ones which had suffered a direct
loss in population through the migration of negroes.[13]
The census of 1910 brought out the fact that there had been
considerable migration from the North to the South, as well as from
the South to the North, and from the East to the West. The number of
persons born in the North and living in the South (1,449,229) was not
very different from the number born in the South and living in the
North (1,527,107). The North, however, has contributed more than five
times as many to the population of the West as the South has. The
number of negroes born in the South and living in the North in 1910
was 415,533, or a little over two-thirds of the total number living in
the North. Of the 9,109,153 negroes born in the South, 440,534, or 4.8
per cent, were, in 1910, living outside the South.[14] The migration
southward it will be noted, has been in recent years largely into the
west south central division, while the migration northward has been
more evenly distributed by divisions, except that a comparatively
small number from the South have gone into the New England States.[15]
The greater mobility of whites than of negroes is shown by the fact
that in 1910, 15 per cent of the whites and 10 per cent of the negroes
lived outside of the States in which they were born. This greater
mobility of the whites as compared with the negroes was due in a large
measure to the lack of opportunities for large numbers of negroes
to find employment in the sections outside the South. The World War
changed these conditions and gave to the negroes of the United States
the same opportunities for occupations in practically every section of
the country, which had heretofore been enjoyed only by the whites. In
1900, 27,000 negroes born in the North lived in the South. In 1910,
41,000 negroes born in the North lived in the South. This indicated
that there was beginning to be a considerable movement of negroes from
the North to the South because of the greater opportunities in the
South to find employment in teaching, medicine and business. The
migration conditions brought about by the war have probably changed
this to some extent. Previous to the World War, the States having
the greatest gain from negro migration were Arkansas, 105,500,
Pennsylvania, 85,000, Oklahoma, 85,000, Florida, 84,000, New York,
58,450 and Illinois, 57,500.
The point brought out here indicates that because of economic
opportunities, Arkansas and Oklahoma, being contiguously situated in
one section of the South and Florida in another section of the South,
had received a greater migration of negroes than any State in the
North.
Dr. William Oscar Scroggs of Louisiana calls attention to the tendency
of negroes to move within the South, although, as, he points out, this
tendency is not as great as it is for the whites. On this he says:
The negro shows a tendency, not only to move northward, but
also to move about very freely within the South. In fact, the
region registering the largest net gain of negroes in 1910
from this interstate movement was the west south central
division (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas) which
showed a gain from this source of 194,658. The middle Atlantic
division came second with a gain of 186,384, and the east
north central third with a gain of 119,649. On the other hand,
the south Atlantic States showed a loss of 392,827, and the
east south central States a loss of 200,876 from interstate
migration. While the negroes have shown this marked
inclination toward interstate movement, they nevertheless
exhibit this tendency in less degree than do the whites.[16]
The subjoined tables show the intersectional migration of the negro
population:
INTERSECTIONAL MIGRATION OF NEGROES
(As Reported by Census of 1910)
Number Born in Specified Divisions and Living In or Out of These Divisions
-------------------+---------------+---------------------+----------------
Number Living: Per Cent Living
+---------------------+ Without
Total Born in the Division
Division the Division Within Without in Which
Division Division Born
-------------------+---------------+----------+----------+----------------
United States 9,746,043 8,782,890 963,153 9.9
New England 37,799 30,815 6,984 18.5
Middle Atlantic 212,145 189,962 22,183 10.5
East North Central 173,226 145,187 28,039 16.2
West North Central 198,116 162,054 36,062 18.2
South Atlantic 4,487,313 4,039,173 448,140 10.0
East South Central 2,844,598 2,491,607 352,991 12.4
West South Central 1,777,242 1,713,888 63,354 3.6
Mountain 7,342 4,122 3,220 43.9
Pacific 8,262 6,082 2,180 26.4
-------------------+---------------+----------+----------+----------------
Number Living in Specified Divisions
-------------------+---------------+------------+-------------+--------------
Number Number Per Cent
Total Living Born in and Living in Living in
Division in the Living in the Division Division
Division the Division Born in Other Born in Other
Divisions Divisions
-------------------+---------------+------------+-------------+--------------
United States 9,746,043 8,782,890 963,153 9.9
New England 58,109 30,815 27,294 47.0
Middle Atlantic 398,529 189,962 208,567 52.3
East North Central 292,875 145,187 147,688 50.4
West North Central 238,613 162,054 76,559 32.1
South Atlantic 4,094,486 4,039,173 55,313 1.4
East South Central 2,643,722 2,491,607 152,115 5.8
West South Central 1,971,900 1,713,888 258,012 13.1
Mountain 20,571 4,122 16,449 80.0
Pacific 27,238 6,082 21,156 77.7
-------------------+---------------+------------+-------------+--------------
Migration North to South, South to North and East to West
-----------------+-----------+-------------------------------+-----------------
Born in: State of
----------+----------+---------+ Birth not
Total The North The South The West Reported
Race and Section Native or Born in
of Residence Population Possessions, etc.
-----------------+-----------+----------+----------+---------+-----------------
All Races
United States 78,456,380 46,179,002 29,010,255 2,906,162 360,961
The North 44,390,371 42,526,162 1,527,107 124,001 213,101
The South 28,649,319 1,449,229 27,079,282 38,230 82,578
The West 5,416,690 2,203,611 403,866 2,743,931 65,282
White
United States 68,386,412 45,488,942 19,814,860 2,766,492 316,118
The North 43,319,193 41,891,353 1,110,245 116,939 200,656
The South 19,821,249 1,407,262 18,326,236 34,523 53,228
The West 5,245,970 2,190,327 378,379 2,615,030 62,234
Negro
United States 9,787,424 621,286 9,109,153 15,604 41,381
The North 999,451 570,298 415,533 2,295 11,325
The South 8,738,858 39,077 8,668,619 2,412 28,750
The West 49,115 11,911 25,001 10,897 1,306
-----------------+-----------+----------+----------+---------+-----------------
Net Migration Eastward and Westward and Northward and Southward
-------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Population, 1910
+---------+------------------------------+-------+-----
Total White Negro All
+---------+---------+----------+ Other
Total Of Native Of Foreign
Parentage or Mixed
Section Parentage
-------------------+---------+---------+---------+----------+-------+-----
Born east and
living west of
the Mississippi
River 5,276,879 4,941,529 3,846,940 1,094,589 331,031 4,319
Born west and
living east of the
Mississippi River 684,773 616,939 417,541 199,398 63,671 4,163
---------+---------+---------+----------+-------+------
Net migration
westward across the
Mississippi River 4,592,106 4,324,590 3,429,399 895,191 267,360 156
Born North and
living South 1,449,229 1,407,262 1,156,122 251,140 39,077 2,890
Born South and
living North 1,527,107 1,110,245 944,572 165,673 415,533 1,329
---------+---------+---------+----------+-------+------
Net migration
southward 297,017 211,550 85,467 1,561
Net migration
northward 77,878 376,456
-------------------+---------+---------+---------+----------+-------+------
[Footnote 1: _Congressional Record_, 46th Cong., 2d sess., vol. X, p.
104.]
[Footnote 2: _Atlantic Monthly_, LXIV, p. 222; _Nation_, XXVIII, pp.
242, 386.]
[Footnote 3: Williams, _History of the Negro Race_, II, p. 375.]
[Footnote 4: _Atlantic Monthly_, LXIV, p. 222.]
[Footnote 5: Williams, _History of the Negro Race_, II, p. 375.]
[Footnote 6: W.L. Fleming, "Pap Singleton, the Moses of the Colored
Exodus," _American Journal of Sociology_, chapter XV, pp. 61-82.]
[Footnote 7: _Congressional Record_, Senate Reports, 693, part II,
46th Cong., 2d sess.]
[Footnote 8: _American Journal of Social Science_, XI, pp. 22-35.]
[Footnote 9: Ibid., p. 23.]
[Footnote 10: _The Censuses of the United States_.]
[Footnote 11: Ibid.]
[Footnote 12: Vol. I, census of 1910, Population, General Report and
Analysis, p. 693.]
[Footnote 13: Ibid., p. 694.]
[Footnote 14: Ibid., p. 698.]
[Footnote 15: Vol. 1, 1910 census, Population, General Report and
Analysis, p. 699.]
[Footnote 16: Scroggs, "Interstate Migration of Negro Population,"
_Journal of Political Economy_, December, 1917, p. 1040.]