The Warmth of Other Suns (94 page)

122
“We must have”:
The Macon Telegraph
, September 15, 1916, p. 4.

123
“Why hunt for the cause”:
Montgomery Advertiser
, a letter in response to “Exodus of the Negroes to Be Probed,” September 1916.

124
“If you thought”:
George Brown Tindall,
Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967), p. 149; cited in Henri,
Black Migration
, p. 75.

125
“Conditions recently”:
U.S. Department of Labor, Division of Negro Economics,
Negro Migration in 1916–1917
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919), p. 63.

126
Macon, Georgia, required:
St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton,
Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945), p. 59.

127
“Every Negro”:
U.S. Department of Labor,
Negro Migration in 1916–1917
, p. 12.

128
The chief of police:
Grossman,
Land of Hope
, p. 44.

129
In Brookhaven, Mississippi:
Scott,
Negro Migration During the War
, p. 77.

130
In Albany, Georgia:
U.S. Department of Labor,
Negro Migration in 1916–17
, p. 110.

131
In Summit, Mississippi:
Grossman,
Land of Hope
, p. 48, from Junius B. Wood,
The Negro in Chicago
(Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1916), p. 9; Scott,
Negro Migration
, p. 73;
Chicago Defender
, August 26, 1916; Emmett J. Scott, “Additional Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916–1918,”
Journal of Negro History
, October 1919, p. 451; William F. Holmes, “Labor Agents and the Georgia Exodus,”
South Atlantic Quarterly 79
(1980), pp. 445–46, on dispersal of Georgia migrants at train station.

132
“served to intensify”:
Willis D. Weatherford and Charles S. Johnson,
Race Relations: Adjustment of Whites and Negroes in the United States
(Boston: D. C. Heath, 1934), p. 339.

133
some migrants:
Scott,
Negro Migration During the War
, p. 77.

134
one man disguising himself:
Interviews with Ruby Lee Welch Mays Smith, Chicago, January–October 1996.

135
one delegation:
David L. Cohn,
Where I Was Born and Raised
(South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), pp. 340–45. Managers at King and Anderson plantation went to Chicago to convince sharecroppers to come back in the 1940s; cited in Nicholas Lemann,
The Promised Land
(New York: Knopf, 1991), pp. 47–48.

136
In the 1920s:
Chicago Commission on Race Relations,
The Negro in Chicago: A Study
of Race Relations and a Race Riot
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), p. 104.

137
“Owing to the scarcity”:
U.S. Department of Labor,
Negro Migration in 1916–17
, p. 96.

138
Men hopped freight trains:
Grossman,
Land of Hope
, p. 40.

139
“One section gang”:
Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy,
Anyplace but Here
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1945), p. 164.

140
the weeds grew up:
Grossman,
Land of Hope
, p. 40.

B
REAKING
A
WAY

141
I was leaving:
Richard Wright,
Black Boy
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 493.

142
Of the few who got:
Hortense Powdermaker,
After Freedom: A Cultural Study of the Deep South
(New York: Viking Press, 1930), pp. 86–87.

143
“How a man treats”:
Ibid., p. 86.

144
Like one planter:
Based on a letter sent to me by Ruth McClendon of Waukegan, Illinois. She heard me speaking about the Great Migration on WBEZ-FM, the public radio station in Chicago. The letter, dated August 17, 1995, was three pages, handwritten on yellow legal paper. In it, she shared the story of her grandparents leaving Alabama for Illinois during World War I.

145
Pershing was working:
Ozeil Fryer Woolcock, “Social Swirl,”
Atlanta Daily World
, March 8, 1953, p. 3, and March 15, 1953, p. 18. Both stories are useful in that they confirm the general timing of Robert Foster’s departure. They note that he went to see his wife and daughters in Atlanta in early to mid-March before his migration trip to California. On Friday, March 13, 1953, the latter story notes, he was feted with “a small impromptu party by his wife, Alice Clement Foster, who invited a few former college mates in for an evening of dancing and chatting. The residence was most colorful with the St. Patrick motif, assisting Mrs. Foster was her mother, Mrs. Rufus E. Clement.” The story said that Robert was to leave Atlanta that Tuesday, which would have been March 17. Robert would head back to Monroe one last time before his migration, as he would have to pass through Louisiana en route to California. There, he had at least two weeks to spend time with his own family and friends and to prepare for the long journey ahead. When he later recounted the time leading up to his departure, he went on at length about his final weeks in Monroe and the pre-Easter send-off given him by his close friends and family in his hometown, marking the beginning of his journey out of the South. He never mentioned the visit to Atlanta or the party given him by his in-laws, which suggests it did not figure into his definition of his migration journey or the moment of his emotional break from the South. It also reflected how he viewed the more formal, socially correct world of the Clements compared to the humbler circles of his origins, which seemed to have greater meaning to him.

146
I pick up my life:
Langston Hughes,
One-Way Ticket
(New York: Knopf, 1949), p. 61.

147
“Migratory currents flow”:
E. G. Ravenstein, “The Laws of Migration,”
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
, no. 2 (June 1889): 284.

148
“They are like”:
Ibid., p. 280.

149
Some participants:
Joe William Trotter, Jr.,
Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915–1945
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985). Trotter recounts the especially convoluted migration of a man, identified as J.H., who was “born in Canton, Mississippi. At 16, he went to Memphis, Tennessee. From Memphis he went to Sapulpa, Oklahoma. From Sapulpa he went to the army and to France. After the war [World War I] he settled in Kansas City. From Kansas City [he migrated to] Chicago and then Milwaukee at the age of 40. He has lived in Milwaukee for six years.” The account was originally published by the Milwaukee Urban League in its 1942–1943 Annual Report.

150
“go no further”:
Ravenstein, “Laws of Migration,” p. 250.

151
“The more enterprising”:
Ibid., p. 279.

P
ART
III: E
XODUS

  1
There is no mistaking:
The Cleveland Advocate
, April 28, 1917.

  2
We look up at:
Richard Wright,
12 Million Black Voices
(New York: Viking Press, 1941), p. 92.

T
HE
A
PPOINTED
T
IME OF
T
HEIR
C
OMING

  3
A toddler named Huey Newton:
Dennis Hevesi, “Huey Newton Symbolized the Rising Black Anger of a Generation,”
The New York Times
, August 23, 1989, p. 37.

  4
Another boy from Monroe:
Bill Russell,
Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man
(New York: Fireside, 1979), pp. 24–27.

  5
It carried so many:
Hollis R. Lynch,
The Black Urban Condition: A Documentary History, 1866–1971
(New York: Crowell, 1973), pp. 425–32. The black population of Chicago rose from 30,150 in 1900 to 44,103 in 1910, the last census before the Migration statistically began, and rose to 1,102,620 in 1970. In Detroit, the black population rose from 4,111 in 1900 to 5,741 in 1910 and 660,428 in 1970.

  6
the Illinois Central:
John F. Stover,
History of the Illinois Central Railroad
(New York: Macmillan, 1975), p. 15 on its founding, p. 89 on Lincoln’s role.

  7
Later, it was the first stop:
Ray Stannard Baker,
Following the Color Line
(New York: Doubleday, Page, 1908), p. 113.

  8
“How a colored man”:
Robert Russa Moton,
What the Negro Thinks
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1929), p. 82. See also Bertram Wilbur Doyle,
The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South: A Study in Social Control
(Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1937), p. 156. Doyle was a professor of sociology at Fisk University.

  9
a family from Beaumont:
Interview with Pat Botshekan in Los Angeles, March 18, 1996.

C
ROSSING
O
VER

10
Do you remember:
Charles H. Nichols, ed.,
Arna Bontemps–Langston Hughes Letters, 1925–1967
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980), p. 24.

11
In South Carolina:
Graham Russell Hodges,
Studies in African History and Culture
(New York: Garland, 2000), p. 155.

12
Some of my people:
Chicago Commission on Race Relations,
The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), pp. 97–98.

13
The earliest departures:
Emmett J. Scott,
Negro Migration During the War (
New York: Oxford University Press, 1920), p. 13.

14
Instead of the weakening stream:
E. G. Ravenstein, “The Laws of
Migration,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
52, no. 2 (1889), p. 278. “The most striking feature of the northern migration was its individualism,” Emmett J. Scott wrote in 1920, as if the Migration were over.

15
“A large error”:
Florette Henri,
Black Migration: Movement North, 1900–1920
(Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor/Doubleday, 1975), p. 72.

16
Robert Fields:
Interview with Robert Fields in Chicago, 1995.

17
Eddie Earvin:
Interview with Eddie Earvin in Chicago, May 1995, after having been given his name at a reunion at DuSable High School.

P
ART
IV: T
HE
K
INDER
M
ISTRESS

  1
The lazy, laughing South:
Langston Hughes, “The South,”
The Crisis
, June 1922.

C
HICAGO

  2
Timidly, we get:
Richard Wright,
12 Million Black Voices
(New York: Viking Press, 1941), pp. 99–100.

N
EW
Y
ORK

  3
A blue haze:
Arna Bontemps, “The Two Harlems,”
American Scholar
, Spring 1945, p. 167.

L
OS
A
NGELES

  4
Maybe we can start again:
John Steinbeck,
The Grapes of Wrath
(New York: Viking Press, 1939; updated edition New York: Penguin Books, 1997), p. 89.

  5
They went to court:
“Covenant Suit Arguments on August 22,”
Los Angeles Sentinel
, July 31, 1947, p. 3, gives an overview of the case as it is about to go before the court.

  6
a small contingent:
Lawrence Brooks de Graaf, “Recognition, Racism and Reflections on the Writing of Western Black History,”
Pacific Historical Review
44, no. 1 (February 1975): 23.

  7
strongly discouraged:
Lawrence Brooks de Graaf, “Negro Migration to Los Angeles, 1930–1950,” dissertation submitted to the University of California, Los Angeles, May 1962, p. 14.

  8
By 1900:
Ibid., p. 16.

  9
“Even the seeming”:
Octavia B. Vivian,
The Story of the Negro in Los Angeles County
(Washington, D.C.: Federal Writers’ Project, Works Progress Administration, 1936), p. 31.