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Image credit: The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
“South State Street was in its glory then, a teeming Negro street with crowded theatres, restaurants and cabarets. And excitement from noon to noon. Midnight was like day. The street was full of workers and gamblers, prostitutes and pimps, church folks and sinners.” — Langston Hughes
In many ways, the North delivered on its promise. The migrants enjoyed higher wages, better education for their children, and the opportunity to participate in the political process. Perhaps most refreshingly, they no longer had to behave in a subservient manner to white people. Letters from migrants to their Southern friends and families, drew more and more blacks out of the South.
Dear Sir:
I take this method of thanking you for your early responding and the glorious effect of the treatment. Oh. I do feel so fine. Dr., the treatment reach[ed] me almost ready to move. I am now housekeeping again. I like it so much better than rooming. Well, Dr., with the aid of God I am making very good. I make $75 per month. I am carrying enough insurance to pay me $20 per week if I am not able to be on duty. I don’t have to work hard, don’t have to mister every little white boy comes along. I haven’t heard a white man call a colored a n*****r you know now–since I been in the state of PA. I can ride in the electric street and steam cars anywhere I get a seat. I don’t care to mix with white. What I mean–I am not crazy about being with white folks, but if I have to pay the same fare, I have learn[ed] to want the same accommodation. And if you are first in a place here shopping, you don’t have to wait until the white folks get through trading. Yet amid all this, I shall ever love the good old South and I am praying that God may give every well wisher a chance to be a man regardless of his color, and if my going to the front would bring about such conditions, I am ready any day. Well, Dr., I don’t want to worry you but read between lines; and maybe you can see a little sense in my weak statement. The kids are in school every day. I have only two, and I guess that [is] all. Dr., when you find time, I would be delighted to have a word from the good old home state. Wife join[s] me in sending love you and yours.
I am your friend and patient.
However, while wages were higher than the migrants had earned before, the pay was often low relative to the higher cost of living. Many migrants were forced to live in overcrowded and dilapidated neighborhoods. In Chicago, the newcomers clashed culturally with the Old Settlers–blacks who had lived in the city much longer. And, they clashed violently with whites, in Chicago and throughout the North.
I referred to several sources, but used the following most heavily–
“The Forgotten March That Started the National Civil Rights Movement Took Place 100 Years Ago”
“Blowing the Trumpet: The ‘Chicago Defender’ and Black Migration during World War I,” James R. Grossman
Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration, James R. Grossman
“In Motion: The African-American Experience (The Great Migration)
“The Origins and Diffusion of Racial Restrictive Covenants,”Michael Jones-Correa
The Journal of Negro History, Volume IV, 1919
The Journal of Negro History, Volume VI, 1921
“‘If You Can’t Push, Pull, If You Can’t Pull, Please Get Out of the Way’: The Phyllis Wheatley Club and Home in Chicago, 1896 to 1920,”Anne Meis Knupfer
The Defender: How a Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America, Ethan Michaeli
The Great Black Migration: A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic, Steven A. Reich
“Negro Migration During the War,” Emmett J. Scott