Migration Paper

Migration paper

The Great migration has said to have been started when WWI came into action and European Migration had come to a slow end. Factories now needed more people than ever to run these places twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. These new hours were required to help build items for the war in Europe at the time. The presence of immigration restriction had caused businesses in the North to recruit African Americans in the south. The Chicago Defender had been one of the main sources that helped aid people to find jobs in the North. With the lure in of getting paid more through factory work than agriculture, African Americans were more than happy to leave the south and venture off into the north. The high price of housing did not affect their decision to leave; they believed their salaries would take care of everything. The idea of starting off in a new job with an equal workplace and living place was ideal for any African American family. While this proved to be a positive on their agenda, another race felt differently about them leaving.

White Southerners were angry that African Americans were leaving the south because their plantation jobs were getting harder to fill due to opportunities in the North. The southerners had opposed the idea of labor agents giving African Americans choices of new jobs, so the agents were often harassed and abused by some Southerners. In the document by W.E.B Du Bois, The migration of African Americans (Black protest, pg46-50) the A.M.E Minister's

Alliance of Birmingham states that there are seven causes for the migration from the north to south. "Prejudice, disfranchisement, Jim Crow laws, lynching, bad treatment on the farms, the boll weevil, the floods of 1916." It goes on to state how some white southerners feel about them leaving to the north. In the document, a woman explains that," That which a regard for common justice, fair play, human rights could not accomplish, a fear for our bank account is doing, and we are asking: why is the African American dissatisfied? What can we do to keep him in the south? We can't afford to let him go, he means too much for us-financially." Southerners knew that if they lost their workers, they would be the ones hurt overall. In another document by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Luring Labor North (Black protest pgs. 59-60), it explained how migration posed a threat to Southerners businesses. "The result is naturally demoralizing labor circles, and many planters and manufacturers will not have enough men to supply their needs or take off their crops."

The migration process was rather complex in how they told people about new opportunities. Some ways were word of mouth, through letters, periodicals, and most importantly, The Chicago Defender. While many focused on African Americans moving toward the North, there were still some that lived in the south that remained there. Some plantation owners had to compromise their contracts to keep employees like giving them the benefit of working with an agreement to work on less land. Many African American families had decided to move from rural to urban city settings as well in both the north and the south. Although the African American community was strengthening and getting a voice, not all African Americans approved of the migration.

Some African Americans felt that the new amount of jobs offered was unimpressive. The African American communities were creating institutions for one another at that time, but with the loss of many people to the North, it jeopardized those institutions that the African Americans fought hard for. Church leaders began to be concerned that the community was being undermined. In the third document by the Southwestern Christian Advocate, Read this before you move north, (Black Protest pgs72-74) it details ideas from both northerners and southerners about how each race related to one another, how opportunities were not really great, and the status of African Americans were no better than the south in living communities. The number one problem with the migration was the fact that these people were lured into a fantasy world where a job would await them and they could build a family and live in a nice community. The truth to that was nowhere near to that life according to the document. African Americans would go with hope to the North and end up living in "temporary camps, having no provisions made for them, housing facilities being inadequate and no immediate employment." It also entailed that the labor agents were not always genuine people; they had to meet a quota of how many people they can get into the north. The idea of making more money and creating a name for oneself had taken over and set the migration into full swing, causing so many to move to the north in false hope.

There were many positive attributes with coming to the north for African Americans. The first was higher wages. In the south, African Americans were paid much less and treated far worse. The idea of being free and having money had spread all over the south to African Americans. In the South, the housing was normally through plantation owners and the work done on plantations required more stamina than working on a factory line for a little more money.

There were also cons to moving to the north, the lodging was terrible. The dwellings were Crowded, they were not a sufficient living standard. One big problem faced with a better paying job was the rent