The Warmth of Other Suns (97 page)

135
Those on the lowest rung:
Brenda Clegg Gray,
Black Female Domestics During the Depression in New York City, 1930–1940
(New York: Garland Publishing, 1993), pp. 57, 58.

136
One was by:
Vivian Morris, “Slave Market” and “Domestic Price Wars,” in
A Renaissance in Harlem: Lost Essays of the WPA
, ed. Lionel C. Bascom (New York: Amistad Press, 1999), pp. 146–57.

137
In Chicago:
St. Clair Drake and Horace H. Cayton,
Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945, reprinted 1993), pp. 245–46.

138
“Someone would invariably”:
Gray,
Black Female Domestics
, p. 51.

139
One colored woman:
Keith Collins,
Black Los Angeles: The Maturing of the Ghetto, 1940–1950
(Saratoga, Calif.: Century Twenty One Publishing, 1980), pp. 53–54, cited in Kevin Leonard,
Years of Hope, Days of Fear: The Impact of World War II on Race Relations in Los Angeles
, pp. 40, 41.

140
turning back the hands:
Morris, “Slave Market,” p. 150.

141
One housewife:
Gray,
Black Female Domestics
, p. 61.

142
In many cases:
Ibid., p. 67.

143
Boy Willie:
August Wilson,
The Piano Lesson
(New York: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 20.

144
The bartender:
“Restaurant Keeper Who Breaks Dishes He Uses in Serving Negroes, Will Have to Get New Supply if This Plan Works,”
The Pittsburgh Courier
, February 14, 1931, p. A7, a story about black resistance to the practice of restaurants breaking the dishes used by blacks.

145
For several days:
Michael Lydon,
Ray Charles: Man and Music
(New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), p. 197. Ray Charles and David Ritz,
Brother Ray
(New York: Dial Press, 1978), p. 201.

146
After the dealer’s:
Charles and Ritz,
Brother Ray
, p. 201.

147
It was around that time:
Lydon,
Ray Charles
, p. 197.

148
They chose not to call:
Charles and Ritz,
Brother Ray
, p. 202; Lydon,
Ray Charles
, p. 198. These accounts differ in the timing and nature of Ray’s arrival at the hospital. His biographer’s account is more consistent with the sense of obligation and protocol with which Robert Foster was known to have treated his patients. Foster, honoring the patient-doctor privilege, did not speak in detail about individual patients.

149
“Naturally, I refused”:
Charles and Ritz,
Brother Ray
, p. 202.

150
“Everyone I met”:
Ibid.

151
The tour was a dream:
Lydon,
Ray Charles
, p. 198.

152
“one of the dearest”:
Charles and Ritz,
Brother Ray
, p. 202.

153
“Do you feel greater freedom”:
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. 98–101.

T
HE
R
IVER
K
EEPS
R
UNNING

154
“Why do they come?”:
Ray Stannard Baker,
Following the Color Line
(New York: Doubleday, Page, 1908), p. 133.

155
“Every train, every bus”:
Interview with Manley Thomas, who migrated from Jackson, Tennessee, to Milwaukee in September 1950. Interview conducted June 26, 1998, in Milwaukee.

156
Arrington High:
Dan Burley, “Mississippi Escapee Yearns to Return,”
Chicago Defender
, February 24, 1958, p. A4.

157
Henry Brown:
Henry Box Brown,
Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown (
Manchester, England: Lee and Glynn, 1851; reprint, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), p. 84.

158
Brown was in agony:
From the account by William Still from
The Underground Rail Road
on the arrival of Henry Box Brown at the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society offices. Cited in Appendix B of the 2008 reprint of
Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown
, pp. 160–63.

159
They locked the door:
Henry Box Brown,
Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide. Written from a Statement Made by Himself. With Remarks upon the Remedy for Slavery by Charles Stearns
(Boston: Brown and Stearns, 1849); cited in Alan Govenar,
African American Frontiers: Slave Narratives and Oral Histories
(Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2000), pp. 9–16.

160
many funeral directors:
Interviews with black funeral directors in Chicago and at an annual National Funeral Directors Association meeting in Norfolk, Virginia, yielded polite changes of subject when directors were asked about the issue of funeral home involvement in these escapes out of the South.

161
“That underground”:
Burley, “Mississippi Escapee Yearns to Return.”

T
HE
P
RODIGALS

162
[My father], along with:
James Baldwin,
Notes of a Native Son
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. 72.

163
’Sides, they can’t run us:
Marita Golden,
Long Distance Life
(New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 39.

164
“Even in the North”:
Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy,
Anyplace but Here
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1945), p. 170.

D
ISILLUSIONMENT

165
Let’s not fool ourselves:
Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., May 17, 1956, MLK speech file, MLK Library, cited in James R. Ralph, Jr.,
Northern Protest: Martin Luther King Jr., Chicago and the Civil Rights Movement (
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 30.

166
It was a hoax:
Robert Coles, “When the Southern Negro Moves North,”
The New York Times Magazine
, September 17, 1967, pp. 25–27.

167
“They don’t want”:
L. Alex Wilson, “Plan 2-Year Ban on Migrants,”
Chicago Defender
, July 1, 1950, p. 22.

168
“successfully defended”:
Allan H. Spear,
Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 223.

169
“chronic urban guerilla warfare”:
Arnold R. Hirsch,
Making of the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 41.

170
The moving truck arrived:
“Justice Department Probes Case of Negro Kept Out of Home,”
Atlanta Daily World
, July 11, 1951, p. 1.

171
The Clarks did not let:
“Truman May Act in Cicero Case,”
Chicago Defender
, September 29, 1951, p. 1.

172
A mob stormed the apartment:
Stephen Grant Meyer,
As Long as They Don’t Move Next Door: Segregation and Racial Conflict in American Neighborhoods
(Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), pp. 118–19. Details of the mob’s destruction of the Clarks’ apartment and belongings from
Chicago Defender
, August 11, 1951, p. 7;
Chicago Defender
, July 21, 1951, p. 5;
Atlanta Daily World
, July 13, 1951, p. 1; “Ugly Nights in Cicero,”
Time
, July 23, 1953.

173
The next day:
“Chicago Called Guard for 1919 Riots,”
Chicago Defender
, July 21, 1951, p. 5, for reference to National Guard in racial incidents. “Truman May Act in Cicero Case,”
Chicago Defender
, September 29, 1951, p. 1, on arrests of 118 people in the Cicero rioting and the grand jury’s decision not to indict.

174
“It was appalling”:
Walter White, “Probe of Cicero Outbreaks Reveals Rioters Not Red but Yellow,”
Chicago Defender
, July 28, 1951, p. 7.

175
“bigoted idiots”:
“Support Is Growing for Cicero Riot Victims,”
Atlanta Daily World
, p. 1.

176
“This is the root”:
“Illinois Gov. Blames Housing Shortage for Riot in Cicero,”
Atlanta Daily World
, October 21, 1951, p. 1.

177
“A resident of Accra”:
Hirsch,
Making of the Second Ghetto
, p. 53.

178
“
Our nation is moving”:
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968), p. 1. The 609-page report, issued by a commission chaired by Otto Kerner, then governor of Illinois, and at the behest of President Lyndon B. Johnson, examined the causes of a national outbreak of violence in twenty-three cities in the mid-1960s. The commission stated: “This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

179
“The panic peddler”:
Hirsch,
Making of the Second Ghetto
, pp. 31–35.

180
We are going to blow:
“Bomb Explosion Wrecks Flat Building; Lives Imperiled When Angry Whites Hurl Dynamite: Police Failed to Protect Homes,”
Chicago Defender
, September 28, 1918, p. 1.

181
“crowded out of Detroit”:
Meyer,
As Long as They Don’t Move Next Door
, p. 122.

182
He read in:
See “RR Employes Give to Church Fund,”
New York Amsterdam News
, January 5, 1963, p. 24, for George Starling raising money to help rebuild churches in Georgia.

183
In March, George:
See “Airline Workers Still Helping Razed Church,”
New York Amsterdam News
, March 16, 1963, p. 5, for George Starling handing over the second check to help rebuild churches in Georgia.

R
EVOLUTIONS

184
I can conceive:
James Baldwin,
Notes of a Native Son
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. 59.

185
“Negroes have continued”:
James R. Ralph, Jr.,
Northern Protest: Martin Luther King Jr., Chicago and the Civil Rights Movement (
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 35.

186
“almost everybody is against”:
Gunnar Myrdal,
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy
, vol. 2 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944), p. 1010.

187
“So long as this city”:
“White and Black in Chicago,”
Chicago Tribune
, August 3, 1919, p. F6. The editorial also said, “We admit frankly that if political equality had meant the election of Negro mayors, judges, and a majority of the city council, the whites would not have tolerated it. We do not believe that the whites of Chicago would be any different from the whites of the south in this respect.…  Legally a Negro has a right to service anywhere the public generally is served. He does not get it. Wisely, he does not ask for it. There has been an illegal, nonlegal or extra legal adjustment founded upon common sense which has worked in the past, and it will work in the future.”

188
“in one sense”:
Ralph,
Northern Protest
, p. 34.

189
It was August 5, 1966:
Gene Roberts, “Rock Hits Dr. King as Whites Attack March in Chicago,”
The New York Times
, August 6, 1966, p. 1.

190
The march had barely begun:
Ibid. on where the rock hit King. Ralph,
Northern Protest
, on the size of the rock.

191
As the eight hundred:
Roberts, “Rock Hits Dr. King as Whites Attack March in Chicago.”

192
Some of King’s aides:
See Ralph,
Northern Protest
, p. 33, for attempts by top advisers to dissuade King from going north. The advisers argued that their work in the South was far from complete, that the North would be unreceptive, and that such efforts would hurt northern support for their cause. “King thought otherwise, and rejected this counsel just as he would subsequent warnings,” according to Ralph.

193
“I have to do this”:
“Dr. King Is Felled by Rock: 30 Injured as He Leads Protesters; Many Arrested in Race Clash,”
Chicago Tribune
, August 6, 1966, p. 1.

194
“I have seen many demonstrations”:
Ibid.

195
“It happened slowly”:
Louis Rosen,
The South Side: The Racial Transformation of an American Neighborhood
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998), p. 118.