The Great Migration

One Way Ticket to a New Life

 I pick up my life and take it with me,
And I put it down in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo,
Scranton,
Any place that is North and East, and not Dixie.

One-Way Ticket I pick up my life and take it on the train,

To Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Seattle, Oakland, Salt
Lake,
Any place that is North and West, and not South.
Langston Hughes
I am fed up with Jim Crow laws,
People who are cruel and afraid,
Who lynch and run, who are scared of me
And me of them.

I pick up my life and take it away

On a one-way ticket;
Gone up North
Gone out West
Gone
The problems
Economic Social Legal

African Americans in the African Americans were Jim Crow laws in the
South had little chance of socially isolated. South did not provide
advancement. Many equal protection in
Restricted from use
worked as sharecroppers voting, access to
of public services
for White landowners. Poorly maintained, business opportunities,
Some worked as segregated schools education, political office,
housekeepers, field Rented housing in or career advancement.
workers, road one area of city or African Americans were
maintenance, and other on farms jailed for small offences.
low wage jobs.
Primary Resources: Maps, Letters, Photographs

Population Maps Letters Photographs

Demographics over Time Requests for Assistance Struggles for Rights

African American Population Mrs. J. H. Adams Black migrants fought for
1890 Mr. Cleveland fair wages and to protest
1900 Gaillard discrimination.
1910 --wrote to the Bethlehem Picketing mik
1920 Baptist Association in company
1930 Chicago, Illinois, which Picket Line at
1960
helped migrants find Mid-City Realty
housing and jobs.
Personal Stories through Primary Resources

Photographs Letters Public Records

Life in the North Migrant Stories Migrant Problems

Starting a business Letter from a Northern
Living in Tenement Migrant
Housing
Letter from a Southerner
Wishing to Move North
Minutes from the
Committee on
Urban Conditions,
First Meeting,
founded in 1910;
begins the National
Urban League
Personal Impressions in Art, Poetry, and Essays

Art Poetry Leading Intellectuals

Life in the North Voices of the Streets Opinions of Garvey,

Randolph, and W.E.B.
Antagonism Poems of Langston
DuBois
The Negro: A Source Hughes
of Labor Intellectuals
Ballad of a Landlord
Migration Gained in
Momentum Theme for English B
Poor Housing
Leaving by the
Hundreds
Lynching
Ballad of the Landlord by Langston Hughes
Landlord, landlord,
My roof has sprung a leak.
Don't you 'member I told you about it
Way last week?
Landlord, landlord,
These steps is broken down.
When you come up yourself
It's a wonder you don't fall down.
Ten Bucks you say I owe you?
Ten Bucks you say is due?
Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'l pay you
Till you fix this house up new.
What? You gonna get eviction orders?
You gonna cut off my heat?
You gonna take my furniture and
Throw it in the street?
Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.
Talk on-till you get through.
You ain't gonna be able to say a word
If I land my fist on you.
Police! Police!
Come and get this man!
He's trying to ruin the government
And overturn the land!
Copper's whistle!
Patrol bell!
Arrest.
Precinct Station.
Iron cell.
Headlines in press:
MAN THREATENS LANDLORD
TENANT HELD NO BAIL
JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL!
From THE LANGSTON HUGHES READER, p. 101, 1957.
Background

1877: Start of the Jim Crow laws
1878: 20,000 African American
move to Kansas
1881: Jim Crow laws segregate
railroad cars
1870: 15th Amendment: African
American men get right to vote
1916: Black-owned Chicago Defender
reports on the growing number of
African Americans from the South
The Pennsylvania Railroad company
sends thousands of Southern blacks to
North to work on the railroads
1918: WWI ends
1919: The Red Summer- 75 lynchings of
African Americans and 27 riots across US
1921: The Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 "A
Black Holocaust in America"
1928: Oscar S. DePriest ends the Great
Migration--lack of Northern jobs

1870s 1905-15 1916 1917 1918-28

1905: Chicago Defender founded
1909: National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People founded
in New York (NAACP)
1910: Chicago has 44,000 African
American residents. Detroit has 6,000.
1915: Henry Ford sent Scouting Agents to
recruit mainly African Americans
1915: Start of the Great Migration
1918
1917: America enters WWI
May 15th: The Defender promotes May 15th, 1917 as
the date for the Great Northern Drive.
Hostility between black population and whites causes
Race Riots in East St. Louis, Illinois
1917: Marcus Garvey founds the United Negro
Improvement Association
 Impact
Political: Migration to the urban North
established African Americans as a
prime element of the new Democratic
Party coalition that began to unite in the
late 1920s and swept Franklin D.
Roosevelt to power in 1933.
Social: Discrimination against African
Americans even in the North helped to
fuel the growing consensus that
inequality was unacceptable and that
Blacks, with the help of sympathetic
whites, must work together to end Jim
Crow segregation.
Cultural: African American music,
literature and art impacted the identity
of American art forever through the
Harlem Renaissance.