THE DRAINING OF THE BLACK BELT
In order better to understand the migration movement, a special study
of it was made for five adjoining States, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi and Louisiana, from which came more than half of all
migrants. The negro population of these five States was 4,115,299,
which was almost half of the negro population of the South. In the
particular sections of these States where the migration was the
heaviest, the one crop system, cotton, was general. As a result of
the cotton price demoralization resulting from the war, the labor
depression, the ravages of the cotton boll weevil, and in some regions
unusual floods, as already stated, there was in this section of the
South an exceptionally large amount of surplus labor. The several
trunk line railroads directly connecting this section with the
northern industrial centers made the transportation of this labor an
easy matter.
In 1915, the labor depression in Georgia was critical and work at
remunerative wages was scarce. In Atlanta strong pressure was brought
to bear to have the negroes employed in cleaning the streets replaced
by whites who were out of work. It was reported that the organized
charities of Macon, in dealing with the question of the unemployed,
urged whites employing negroes to discharge the blacks and hire
whites. Mr. Bridges Smith, the mayor of the city, bitterly opposed
this suggestion. When the 1915 cotton crop began to ripen it was
proposed to compel the unemployed negroes in the towns to go to the
fields and pick cotton. Commenting editorially on this, the _Atlanta
Constitution_ said:
The problem of the unemployed in Albany, Georgia, is being
dealt with practically. All negroes who have not regular
employment are offered it in the cotton fields, the immense
crop requiring more labor than the plantations ordinarily
have. If the unemployed refuse the opportunity, the order
"move on" and out of the community is given by the chief of
police, and the order must be obeyed. Though the government is
taking up very systematically the problem of the unemployed,
its solving will be slow, and the government aid for a long
time will have to be supplementary to work in this direction,
initiated in communities, municipalities and States, where the
problem of the unemployed is usually complex.[62]
In the course of time, when the negroes did leave, they departed in
such large numbers that their going caused alarm. Because they left
at night the number of negroes going north from the immediate vicinity
was not generally realized. One night nearly fifty of Tifton boarded
northbound passenger trains, which already carried, it is said, some
three hundred negroes. Labor agents had been very active in that
section all fall, but so cleverly had they done their work that
officers had not been able to get a line on them. For several weeks,
the daily exodus, it is said, had ranged from ten to twenty-five.[63]
Columbus was an assembling point for migrants going from east Alabama
and west Georgia. Railroad tickets would be bought from local stations
to Columbus, and there the tickets or transportation for the North,
mainly to Chicago, would be secured. Americus was in many respects
similarly affected, having had many of its important industries
thereby paralyzed. Albany, a railroad center, became another
assembling point for migrants from another area. Although difficulties
would be experienced in leaving the smaller places directly for the
North, it was easy to purchase a ticket to Albany and later depart
from that town. The result was that Albany was the point of departure
for several thousand negroes, of whom a very large percentage did
not come from the towns or Dougherty county in which Albany is
situated.[64]
A negro minister, well acquainted with the situation in southwest
Georgia, was of the opinion that the greatest number had gone from
Thomas and Mitchell counties and the towns of Pelham and Thomasville.
Valdosta, with a population of about 8,000 equally divided between the
races became a clearing house for many migrants from southern Georgia.
The pastor of one of the leading churches said that he lost twenty
per cent of his members. The industrial insurance companies reported
a twenty per cent loss in membership.[65] Waycross,[66] a railroad
center in the wire grass section of the State, with a population of
7,700 whites and 6,700 negroes, suffered greatly from the migration.
Hundreds of negroes in this section were induced by the employment
bureaus and industrial companies in eastern States to abandon their
homes. From Brunswick, one of the two principal seaports in Georgia,
went 1,000 negroes, the chief occupation of whom was stevedoring.
Savannah, another important seaport on the south Atlantic coast, with
a population of about 70,000, saw the migration attain unusually large
proportions, so as to cause almost a panic and to lead to drastic
measures to check it.
The migration was from all sections of Florida. The heaviest movements
were from west Florida, from Tampa and Jacksonville. Capitola early
reported that a considerable number of negroes left that vicinity,
some going north, a few to Jacksonville and others to south Florida to
work on the truck farms and in the phosphate mines. A large number of
them migrated from Tallahassee to Connecticut to work in the tobacco
fields. Owing to the depredations of the boll weevil, many others went
north. Most of the migration in west Florida, however, was rural as
there are very few large towns in that section. Yet, although they had
no such assembling points as there were in other parts of the South,
about thirty or thirty-five per cent of the labor left. In north
central Florida near Apalachicola fifteen or twenty per cent of the
labor left. In middle Florida around Ocala and Gainesville probably
twenty to twenty-five per cent of the laborers left, chiefly because
of the low wages. The stretch of territory between Pensacola and
Jacksonville was said to be one of the most neglected sections in the
South, the migration being largely of farm tenants with a considerable
number of farm owners. There were cases of the migration of a whole
community including the pastor of the church.[67]
Live Oak, a small town in Sewanee county, experienced the same
upheaval, losing a large proportion of its colored population.
Dunnelon, a small town in the southern part of Marion county, soon
found itself in the same situation. Lakeland, in Polk county, lost
about one-third of its negroes. Not less than one-fourth of the black
population of Orlando was swept into this movement. Probably half of
the negroes of Palatka, Miami and De Land, migrated as indicated by
schools and churches, the membership of which decreased one-half.
From 3,000 to 5,000 negroes migrated from Tampa and Hillsboro county.
Jacksonville, the largest city in Florida, with a population of about
35,000 negroes, lost about 6,000 or 8,000 of its own black population
and served as an assembling point for 14,000 or 15,000 others who went
to the North.[68]
By September, 1916, the movement in Alabama was well under way. In
Selma there was made the complaint that a new scheme was being used
to entice negroes away. Instead of advertising in Alabama papers, the
schemes of the labor agents were proclaimed through papers published
in other States and circulated in Alabama. As a result there was a
steady migration of negroes from Alabama to the North and to points in
Tennessee and Arkansas where conditions were more inviting and wages
higher. Estimates appear to indicate, however, that Alabama, through
the migration, lost a larger proportion of her negro population than
did any one of the other southern States.[69]
From Eufaula in the eastern part of the State it was reported in
September that trains leaving there on Sundays in 1916 were packed
with negroes going north, that hundreds left, joining crowds from
Clayton, Clio and Ozark. There seemed to be a "free ride" every Sunday
and many were giving up lucrative positions there to go. The majority
of these negroes, however, went from the country where they had had
a disastrous experience with the crops of the year 1916 on account
of the July floods.[70] By October the exodus from Dallas county had
reached such alarming proportions that farmers and business men were
devising means to stop it.
Bullock county, with a working population of 15,000 negroes, lost
about one-third and in addition about 1,500 non-workers. The reports
of churches as to the loss of membership at certain points justify
this conclusion. Hardly any of the churches escaped without a serious
loss and the percentage in most cases was from twenty-five to seventy
per cent.[71] It seemed that these intolerable conditions did not
obtain in Union Springs. According to persons living in Kingston, the
wealthiest and the most prosperous negroes of the district migrated.
In October, 1916, some of the first large groups left Mobile, Alabama,
for the Northwest. The report says: "Two trainloads of negroes
were sent over the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to work in the
railroad yards and on the tracks in the West. Thousands more are
expected to leave during the next month."
As soon as the exodus got well under way, Birmingham became one of the
chief assembling points in the South for the migrants and was one of
the chief stations on the way north. Thousands came from the flood
and boll weevil districts to Birmingham. The records of the negro
industrial insurance companies showed the effects of the migration
both from and to Birmingham. The Atlanta Mutual Insurance Company lost
500 of its members and added 2,000. Its debit for November, 1916, was
$502.25; for November, 1917, it was $740. The business of the Union
Central Relief Association was greatly affected by the migration. The
company in 1916 lost heavily. In 1917 it cleared some money.
The State of Mississippi, with a larger percentage of negroes than any
other State in the Union, naturally lost a large number of its
working population. There has been in progress for a number of years
a movement from the hill counties of the State of Mississippi to the
Delta, and from the Delta to Arkansas. The interstate migration
has resulted from the land poverty of the hill country and from
intimidation of the "poor whites" particularly in Amite, Lincoln,
Franklin and Wilkinson counties. In 1908 when the floods and boll
weevil worked such general havoc in the southwestern corner of
the State, labor agents from the Delta went down and carried away
thousands of families. It is estimated that more than 8,000 negroes
left Adams county during the first two years of the boll weevil
period. Census figures for 1910 show that the southwestern counties
suffered a loss of 18,000 negroes. The migration of recent years to
adjacent States has been principally to Arkansas.[72]
Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, seriously felt the migration. The
majority of the "lower middle class" of negroes, twenty-five per cent
of the business men and fully one-third of the professional men left
the city--in all between 2,000 and 5,000. Two of the largest churches
lost their pastors and about 200 of each of their memberships. Other
churches suffered a decrease of forty per cent in their communicants.
Two-thirds of the remaining families in Jackson are part families with
relatives who have recently migrated to the North.
For years the negroes of Greenville have been unsettled and
dissatisfied to the extent of leaving. Negroes came from Leland to
Greenville to start for the North. This condition has obtained there
ever since the World's Fair in Chicago, when families first learned
to go to that section whenever opportunities for establishment
were offered them. Although the negroes from Greenville are usually
prosperous, during this exodus they have mortgaged their property or
placed it in the hands of friends on leaving for the North. Statistics
indicate that in the early part of the movement at least 1,000 left
the immediate vicinity of Greenville and since that time others have
continued to go in large numbers.[73]
Greenwood, with a population evenly balanced between the white and
black, had passed through the unusual crisis of bad crops and the
invasion of the boll weevil. The migration from this point, therefore,
was at first a relief to the city rather than a loss. The negroes,
in the beginning, therefore, moved into the Delta and out to Arkansas
until the call for laborers in the North. The migration from this
point to the North reached its height in the winter and spring of 1916
and 1917. The migrants would say that they were going to Memphis, but
when you next heard from them they would be in Chicago, St. Louis or
Detroit. The police at the Illinois Central depot had been handling
men roughly. When they were rude to one, ten or twelve left. Young men
usually left on night trains. Next day their friends would say, "Ten
left last night," or, "Twelve left last night." In this manner the
stream started. Friends would notify others of the time and place of
special trains. The type of negro leaving is indicated in the decline
in the church membership. Over 300 of those who left were actively
connected with some church. During the summer of 1917, 100 houses
stood vacant in the town and over 300 were abandoned in the McShein
addition. As the crops were gathered people moved in from the country,
from the southern part of the State and from the "hills" generally to
take the places of those who had left for the North.
There was no concerted movement from Clarksdale, a town with a
population of about 400 whites and 600 blacks; but families appeared
to slip away because of the restlessness and uneasiness in evidence
everywhere. From the rural district around there was considerable
migration to Arkansas, but considerable numbers were influenced to
leave for Buffalo and Chicago. Mound Bayou lost some of its population
also to Arkansas and the North, as they could buy land cheaper in the
former and find more lucrative employment in the latter. Natchez did
not suffer a serious loss of population until the invasion of the boll
weevil and the floods.
Hattiesburg, a large lumber center, was at the beginning of the
exodus, almost depopulated. Some of the first migrants went to
Pennsylvania but the larger number went to Chicago. It became a
rallying point for many negroes who assembled there ostensibly to
go to New Orleans, at which place they easily provided for their
transportation to Chicago and other points in the North. From Laurel
in Jones county, a large sawmill district, it is estimated that
between 4,000 and 5,000 negroes moved north. About 3,000 left Meridian
for Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit and Pittsburgh. Indianola, a town with
a number of negro independent enterprises, also became upset by
this movement, losing a considerable number of progressive families.
Gulfport, a coast town a short distance from New Orleans, lost about
one-third of its negro population. About 45 families left Bobo for
Arkansas, and 15 families went to the North. Johnstown, Mississippi,
lost 150 of its 400 negroes.[74]
The owners of turpentine industries and lumber plants in southeastern
Mississippi were especially affected by the exodus. In Hinds, Copiah,
Lincoln, Rankin, Newton and Lake counties, many white residents rather
than suffer their crops to be lost, worked in the fields. It was
reported that numbers of these whites were leaving for the Delta and
for Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. Firms there attempted to look
in the North that they might send for the negroes whom they had
previously employed, promising them an advance in wages.
At the same time the Illinois Central Railroad was carrying from New
Orleans and other parts of Louisiana thousands into Indiana, Illinois
and Michigan. At the Illinois Central Railroad station in that city,
the agent had been having his hands full taking names of colored
laborers wanting and waiting to go North. About the first of April,
1917, there came also the reports from New Orleans that 300 negro
laborers left there on the Southern Pacific steamer for New York, and
500 more left later on another of the same company's steamships bound
also for New York, it was said, to work for the company. Thousands
thus left for the North and West and East, the number reaching over
1,200.
It is an interesting fact that this migration from the South followed
the path marked out by the Underground Railroad of antebellum days.
Negroes from the rural districts moved first to the nearest village or
town, then to the city. On the plantations it was not regarded safe to
arrange for transportation to the North through receiving and sending
letters. On the other hand, in the towns and cities there was more
security in meeting labor agents. The result of it was that cities
like New Orleans, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Savannah and Memphis
became concentration points. From these cities migrants were rerouted
along the lines most in favor.
The principal difference between this course and the Underground
Railroad was that in the later movement the southernmost States
contributed the largest numbers. This perhaps is due in part to the
selection of Florida and Georgia by the first concerns offering the
inducement of free transportation, and at the same time it accounts
for the very general and intimate knowledge of the movement by
the people in States through which they were forced to pass. In
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for example, the first intimation of a great
movement of negroes to the North came through reports that thousands
of negroes were leaving Florida for the North. To the negroes
of Florida, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia the North means
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England. The route is more
direct, and it is this section of the northern expanse of the United
States that gets widest advertisement through tourists, and passengers
and porters on the Atlantic coast steamers. The northern newspapers
with the greatest circulation are from Pennsylvania and New York, and
the New York colored weeklies are widely read. Reports from all of
these south Atlantic States indicate that comparatively few persons
ventured into the Northwest when a better known country lay before
them.
The Pennsylvania Railroad, one of the first to import laborers
in large numbers, reports that of the 12,000 persons brought to
Pennsylvania over its road, all but 2,000 were from Florida and
Georgia. The tendency was to continue along the first definite path.
Each member of the vanguard controlled a small group of friends at
home, if only the members of his immediate family. Letters sent
back, representing that section of the North and giving directions
concerning the route best known, easily influenced the next groups
to join their friends rather than explore new fields. In fact, it is
evident throughout the movement that the most congested points in
the North when the migration reached its height, were those favorite
cities to which the first group had gone.[75] An intensive study of
a group of 77 families from the South, selected at random in Chicago,
showed but one family from Florida and no representation at all from
North and South Carolina. A tabulation of figures and facts from 500
applications for work by the Chicago League on Urban Conditions among
Negroes gives but a few persons from North Carolina, twelve from South
Carolina and one from Virginia. The largest number, 102, came from
Georgia. Applicants for work in New York from the south Atlantic
States are overwhelming.[76]
For the east and west south central States, the Northwest was more
accessible and better known. St. Louis and Cincinnati are the nearest
northern cities to the South and excursions have frequently been run
there from New Orleans, through the State of Mississippi. There are
in St. Louis, as in other more northern cities, little communities of
negroes from the different sections of the South. The mail order and
clothing houses of Chicago have advertised this city throughout the
South. The convenience of transportation makes the Northwest a popular
destination for migrants from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas
and Tennessee. The Illinois Central Railroad runs directly to New
Orleans through Tennessee and Mississippi.
There were other incidental factors which determined the course of
the movement. Free trains from different sections broke new paths by
overcoming the obstacles of funds for transportation. No questions
were asked of the passengers, and, in some instances, as many as were
disposed to leave were carried. When once they had advanced beyond the
Mason and Dixon line, many fearing that fees for transportation would
be deducted from subsequent pay, if they were in the employ of the
parties who, as they understood, were advancing their fares, deserted
the train at almost any point that looked attractive. Employment could
be easily secured and at good wages. Many of these unexpected and
premature destinations became the nucleuses for small colonies
whose growth was stimulated and assisted by the United States postal
service.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Map of where migrants came from and went]
* * * * *
[Footnote 62: _Atlanta Constitution_, August 28, 1915.]
[Footnote 63: Ibid., December 13, 1916.]
[Footnote 64: A leading colored physician of Albany in commenting on
the exodus said: "A considerable number went from town and county. The
number was not near so great, however, as from other counties." He was
of the opinion that not more than eight or ten families had left. He
said that his practice had not been affected. Individuals came in from
other sections and took the place of those who went away. He was
of the opinion that the fever was about over. This was due to the
shortage of labor created by the draft, the increase in wages and
better treatment, particularly the latter. Tenants on plantations
were receiving better treatment than they formerly received. Some
plantation owners as an inducement to their tenants were furnishing
each with a cow and a sow. Farm labor which was formerly paid $8 to
$12 per month, now received from $20 to $30 per month. He said he knew
of one plantation owner who was paying his hands $1.25 per day. This
doctor said he was reliably informed that many negroes had left Lee
and Calhoun counties and the whites had to go in the fields and plow.
As a result of the exodus, the white and colored men of Albany had got
closer together. He had recently been elected a member of the Albany
Chamber of Commerce, and he understood that about twelve colored men
had been invited to become members of the Chamber to assist in working
for the development of the county.
One of the colored druggists in Georgia said that Albany was a central
point, and that a great many came from Cuthbert, Arlington, Leary and
Calhoun, Early and Miller counties to Albany as a starting point for
the North. Many went from Albany to Chicago and Philadelphia, but he
was of the opinion that the largest number had gone to New Jersey.
Migration has been affected by the draft and new opportunities opening
up in the South. He said that whites became alarmed and called a
meeting and invited some colored persons to consult with them.--Work,
_Report on Migration from Georgia_.]
[Footnote 65: "The migration of negroes from this city to the North
set in again this week, after a comparative lull of two months. A
party of twelve left here yesterday for Jersey City, while twenty
others are expected to leave shortly. Many women are going with the
men, in some cases leaving their children. Stories of suffering from
cold, brought back by negroes during this winter, checked the
movement considerably. Several hundred negroes will leave here this
spring."--_Atlanta Constitution_, March 26, 1917.]
[Footnote 66: A report from there, in the _Savannah Morning News_, of
December 3, 1916, said: "Hundreds of negroes in this section recently
have been fleeced by white men posing as agents of large employment
bureaus and industrial companies in the eastern States. The most
recent instance of the easy marks is reported from Coffee county,
but it is in line with what has been happening in other counties. The
so-called agent collects a registration fee, giving in return for the
money, usually one or two dollars, a card which is said to entitle the
bearer to a position at such and such a plant. The negroes get on the
train on the date specified, the agent meeting them at the station.
He tells them he will have a party ticket for the entire number and
to tell the conductor to collect their fares from him. The negroes of
course leave home for the point where they think they will be given
work, and apparently are a happy lot. But when ticket collecting time
comes there is another story to tell.
"Thirty-seven negroes the other day boarded a northbound train at
Douglas for Pittsburgh. The agent was on hand to check each one
and then he got aboard, or so the negroes thought. A few miles from
Douglas the conductor found he had thirty-seven ticketless passengers.
And none of the negroes had the money to pay the fare to Pittsburgh.
The train was stopped, and the negroes returned home, wiser and vowing
they were 'done with leaving home.' Quite a number of negroes have
come to Waycross to meet agents and go north. Before coming here the
negroes of course had contributed."]
[Footnote 67: Work, _Report on the Migration from Florida_.]
[Footnote 68: Work, _Report on the Migration from Florida_.]
[Footnote 69: Work, _Report on the Migration from Alabama_.]
[Footnote 70: _Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser_, September 27, 1916.]
[Footnote 71: The investigator had been in Union Springs on a Saturday
before there was a migration. The crowds on the streets were so great
that it was difficult for one to pass. On Saturday, November 17, 1917,
the investigator was again in Union Springs. It was an ideal autumn
day. Good crops had been made in the county. Especially high prices
were being paid for all sorts of farm produce. The market season was
on. Court was in session. The streets, however, had about the crowds
to be found on some days, other than Saturday, before the migration
began.]
[Footnote 72: The reasons back of this, as obtained from migrants
themselves, are that, except in the town of Mound Bayou, negroes have
not been encouraged to own property or rent, but to work on shares;
in Arkansas it is possible to buy good land cheaply and on reasonable
terms; inducements are offered by Arkansas in the form of better
treatment and schools; there are no such "excessive" taxes as are
required in the Mississippi Delta to protect them from the overflows;
the boll weevil has not yet seriously affected that State, and a small
farmer may be fairly independent in Arkansas.]
[Footnote 73: The lumber mills and the local corporations provide
a great part of the work for laborers in the city. Wages last year
ranged from $1.25 to $1.50 a day. Wages at present are $1.75 and $2
a day. Cotton picking last year brought 60 and 75 cents a hundred;
at present $2 is paid for every hundred pounds picked. The city has
enacted "move on" laws intending to get rid of drones. The police, it
is said, could not distinguish drones from "all negroes."
It was further complained that the police deputies and sheriffs
are too free with the use of their clubs and guns when a negro
is involved. It was related that Dr. ----, practising 47 years in
Greenville, Mississippi, was driving his buggy in a crowded street on
circus day when he was commanded by a policeman to drive to one side
and let a man pass. He replied that he could not because he himself
was jammed. He was commanded again and then dragged from the buggy,
clubbed and haled into the police court and fined. The officer who
arrested him swore that he had given frequent trouble, which was
untrue according to reliable testimony and his own statement. This
incident is also told:
A policeman's friend needed a cook. The policeman drove by a negro
home and, seeing a woman on the porch, told her to get in the buggy.
No questions were permitted. She was carried to his friend's home and
told to work. The woman prepared one meal and left the city for the
North.--Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 74: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 75: Johnson, _Report on the Migration from Mississippi_.]
[Footnote 76: Ibid.]