The Great Migration
Poem:
The Tired Worker
by Claude McKay
with brief analysis by Sharon Ponder
​O whisper, O my soul! The afternoon
Is waning into evening, whisper soft!
Peace, O my rebel heart! for soon the moon
From out its misty veil will swing aloft!
Be patient, weary body, soon the night
Will wrap thee gently in her sable sheet,
And with a leaden sigh thou wilt invite
To rest thy tired hands and aching feet.
The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine;
Come tender sleep, and fold me to thy breast.
But what steals out the gray clouds like red wine?
O dawn! O dreaded dawn! O let me rest
Weary my veins, my brain, my life! Have pity!
No! Once again the harsh, the ugly city.
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The viewpoint of the Black migrant has become distorted. Once the move to the north was thought to be a beautiful promise of hope. Finally, an opportunity to achieve the American dream. After living there for awhile the northern city is viewed as hard and ugly because the Black worker is only hired for the most unskilled and hazardous jobs.
Brief Overview of Reconstruction and Post-Reconstruction Circumstances
- Civil War Ended in 1865
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- Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery.
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- During Reconstruction, Congress established the Freedman's Bureau, which sought to aid formerly enslaved Americans transition to citizenship. It provided clothing, food, and passed laws giving African Americans the right to vote, hold office, and own land. It helped improve the social possibilities from 1865 until 1877 (The end of the Reconstruction Era).
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- Most states in the South passed "Black Codes" to counteract these rights, efforts, and legislative movements. These most directly influenced the right to own land, to work, and to live where desired.
- Voting injustice (poll tax, reading requirements, land ownership, etc.) made civic involvement and social change virtually impossible.
Brief Overview of the Great Migration
- Over one million African Americans moved out of the rural south of the United States to escape problems of racism, unemployment, and poor education and to seek a better way of life.
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- Train fare from New Orleans to Chicago was about $20.00, a month's pay for most workers.
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- Migrants wrote slogans on the side of the trains expressing their feelings such as, "Farewell We're Good and Gone," and "bound for the Land of Hope".
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- Richard Wright, a successful and well-known African American writer moved north from Mississippi as a young man and wrote about his train trip "We look around the train and we do not see the old familiar signs: 'For Colored and For Whites'."
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- Cities in the North, like Chicago, saw some of the biggest increases in Black population, going from 299,000 in 1940 to 500,000 in 1950 in Chicago alone.
Once on the farms I've labored hard,
And never missed a day;
With wife and children by my side
We journeyed on our way.
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(from National Geographic, The Great Black Migration)
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The Chicago Defender
The first issue of the Chicago Defender was distributed on May 6, 1905. What began as a four page brochure quickly became the most important Black metropolitan newspaper in America. The paper's producer Robert Sengstace Abbott call that "American Race Prejudice must be destroyed" led the Defender to fight against racial, economic, and social discrimination, boldly reporting on lynching, rape, mob violence, and Black disenfranchisement. The paper challenged fair housing and equal employment.
The Chicago Defender remains most noted for its active role in the Great Black Migration. Southern Migrants received their first glance of life in Chicago in the pages of the Defender. Fueling the enthusiasm for migration across the south, articles in the newspaper urged African Americans to move north, showing pictures of the best schools, parks and houses in Chicago next to pictures of the worst conditions in the South.
The Chicago Defender took on an advisory role to the southern migrants, by providing details on how to behave in the Northern cities. For Example:
"Be clean... Water is cheap... Avoid loud talking, and boisterous laughter on the streetcars and in public places... In the south they don't care how they dress; here they make it a practice to look as well in the week as they do on Sunday."
As more African Americans decided to move north, they relied on the newspaper for assistance. Migrants wrote hundreds of letters to the Defender seeking information about jobs, housing, education and transportation. Here is an example of one such letter (the letter is kept in its original form and mechanics to maintain its authenticity):
Dear Sir:
Please gave me some infamation about coming north I can do any kind of work from a truck gardin to farming I would like to leave here and I can't make no money to leave I ust make enough to live one please let me here from you at once I want to get where I can put my children in school. (National Geographic)
The Chicago Pullman Porters distributed the Chicago Defender to southern migrants but the paper was eventually banned from mail distribution in many southern States which enforced harsh penalties towards anyone found distributing or reading the paper.