Going home to a place of past racial struggles after the Great Migration
Carin Dankelman 6127010
First reader: Dr. D.G. Barthé Second Reader: Dr. M.S. Parry Master thesis American Studies University of Amsterdam 01/07/2016
Acknowledgements
In the process of writing this thesis, several people have come to my aid in ways that I’m very thankful for. Before proceeding, I want to acknowledge how important this help was for me, it was a great contribution to the way this thesis eventually turned out. First of all, I want to thank Dr. Manon Parry, for her help in the preparatory phase of this thesis, with demarcating the subject and sources. This provided me with a head start that made it easier for me to cope with setbacks later on in the process of writing. I’m also grateful for the help of my supervisor Dr. Darryl Barthé, who helped me to find the right direction and sources in the extensive field of ‘racism in America’. Finally, I want to thank my parents, who were always there for advice, provided me with a critical note throughout my academic career, and helped me to see solutions instead of problems.
Table of Content
Introduction 1
1. Racism 11
1.1 Racism defined and analyzed 11
1.2 Origins of Southern racism 13
1.3 Lynching 15
1.4 Riots 18
1.5 Jim Crow 19
1.6 The ‘New Slavery’ and economic opportunities for African Americans 20
1.7 Segregation in education 23
1.8 Voting 26
1.9 Changing Northern attitudes 28
2. Great Migration 30
2.1 Leaving the South 30
2.2 Different directions 31
2.3 Hostile attitudes 33
2.4 Racial tensions 34
2.5 Residential segregation 35
2.6 Racism also present in the North, but of a different kind 38
3. Change 41
3.1 Major Changes 41
3.2 A State of Confusion 42
3.3 External factors 44
3.4 New protestors and new forms of political protests 46
3.6 Changes in institutionalized violence 48
3.7 Changes in economic prospects 49
3.8 Change did come 50
4. Return 52
4.1 Different reasons to return 52
4.2 Primary sources return migrants 53
4.2.1 Earnest Smith 54
4.2.1.1 Disillusionment with the North 54
4.2.1.2 Racism 54 4.2.1.3 Economic prospects 55 4.2.1.4 Home 56 4.2.2 George Irwin 56 4.2.2.1 Racism 56 4.2.2.2 Economic prospects 56 4.2.3 Elijah Davis 57
4.2.3.1 Disillusionment with the North 57
4.2.3.2 Racism 57
4.2.4 Morgan Freeman 57
4.2.4.1 Disillusionment with the North 57
4.2.4.2 Racism 58
4.2.4.3 Climate 59
4.2.4.4 Making Changes 60
4.2.4.5 ‘Home’ and returning to one’s roots 60
4.2.4.6 Family 61
4.2.5 Maya Angelou 61
4.2.5.1 Disillusionment with the North 61
4.2.5.2 Racism 61
4.2.5.3 ‘Home’ and returning to one’s roots 62
4.2.6 Johnnie Mae Maberry 62
4.2.6.1 Disillusionment with the North 62
4.2.6.2 Climate 63
4.2.7 Eula Grant 63
4.2.7.1 Disillusionment with the North 63
4.2.7.2 Making Changes 64
4.2.8 Earl Henry Hydrick 64
4.2.8.1 Racism 64
4.2.8.2 Family and returning to your roots 65
4.2.8.3 Making Changes 65
4.2.9 Dolphus Weary 66
4.2.9.1 Racism 66
4.2.9.2 Religion 67
4.2.9.3 Making Changes 67
4.3 Different yet similar results 68
Conclusion 69 Bibliography 74 Appendix 84 Table 1 84 Table 2 86 Image 1 87
L.A. proved too much for the man (Too much for the man, he couldn't make it) So he's leaving a life he's come to know, ooh
(He said he's going) He said he's going back to find
(Going back to find) Ooh, what's left of his world The world he left behind not so long ago
He's leaving (Leaving)
On that midnight train to Georgia, yeah (Leaving on the midnight train)
Said he's going back (Going back to find)
To a simpler place and time, oh yes he is
(Whenever he takes that ride, guess who's gonna be right by his side) I'll be with him
(I know you will)
On that midnight train to Georgia
Excerpt from the song “Midnight Train to Georgia” – Gladys Knight and the Pips (1973)
The song, “Midnight Train to Georgia” performed by Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1973, presents a clear image of the psyche of the African American return migrant during that period.1 The Great Migration or the exodus of almost six million African Americans from the North-American South, which started in 1915, was clearly coming to an end in 1970. The South was the nation’s fastest growing region during the 1970s.2 Between 1975 and 1989, the net migration of African Americans to the South from the rest of the country was as large as 637,000.3 African Americans, who took the huge step of leaving their homes to find a new place to call home in the North and the West, were slowly coming back. From 1968 onward, growing numbers of African Americans returned to their Southern roots. They returned to the South, a place that was most unkind to them in the recent past.
The hostile attitude aimed at African Americans, derived from racist views in the South, is exactly the element of the return migration I will take a closer look at. Before embarking on an analysis of the leading literature concerning the Great Migration and return migration, it is important to first state the aim of this thesis. When one perceives how crucial the element of racism was for their departure from the South, one would think that this 1 F.J, Griffin, Who set you flowin’?”: The African American Migration narrative (New York 1995), 142, 143.
2 L. H. Long and K. A. Hansen, ‘Trends in Return Migration to the South’ Demography12. (1975) 601-614, 601.
element of racism directed at migrants upon their return to the South has been widely
researched. However, this is not the case. Scholars seem to take other points of departure for their research on the return migration.
This thesis provides an analysis of primary accounts from return migrants during the period of 1968 to 2010. The primary accounts that I will use are written interviews, memoirs, articles and personal narratives of African American return migrants. By analyzing these primary accounts, I will attempt to find an answer to the following question: What role did racism play in the return migration of African Americans to the American South during the period of 1968-2010? In order to answer this question, the following sub-questions must be answered:
1. How do I define racism in this thesis and was there a different kind of racism in the American South than in other parts of America?
2. What was the Southern racial climate like in the twentieth and 21st century, and where did this climate originate from?
3. What role did this Southern racial climate play in African American’s decision to move to the North?
4. How did African Americans experience living in their new homes in North?
5. What kind of changes in the Southern racial climate occurred starting in the 1960s? 6. What was the attitude of Southern whites during this period regarding these changes? 7. How did racism experienced by return migrants come forward in their primary accounts? 8. Were there other factors that played a role in their return and how important was this role?
The provisional hypothesis is that racism did play a major role in the black return migrants decision to move back South. The expectation is that in addition to a better racial climate in the South, the disappointing racial climate in the North was important in their decision process to move back. Other factors, however, also played a role in this process. It’s interesting to take a look at the hierarchy these factors are ordered in, because this teaches us something about what drove these migrants to return.
It is important to further delve into this largely neglected topic of racism for return migrants to the South because of the following reasons. If there is a component of such a great event in American history as the return migration -left underexposed- it is worth doing
research about. If this thesis will prove that racism did play a major role in the return
migrants’ decision to move back, this would say a lot of the sacrifices one is willing to make to move back home. Also, the theme of racism directed at African Americans, which is not merely connected to the American South, is highly relevant now. With the current race riots,
police brutality and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, America is being confronted with its racist past. Because of the fact that racism, even today, still is a major issue in American everyday life, it is worth looking at if racism plays an equally important role in choosing where one lives.
Some choices were necessary to narrow down the area of research and make it more specific. This resulted in a focus on the migration and experiences of African Americans to the North, rather than to include the West too. Although the West is not fully excluded in this research, I chose the North over the West because most examples found in primary sources concerned the North. Also when stating things like ‘the South is a racist place’, these statements are obviously subject to changing times.
Before I go on to answer the sub and main question(s), it is necessary to provide historical background information, issues concerning the topic and an outline of what has already been written. At the beginning of the twentieth century, an astounding number of 95 percent of all African Americans lived in the Southern states of America.4 However, by 1970, this number was diminished by almost 50 percent. There are multiple causes mentioned for the ‘push’ factors for this migration; for instance the Cotton’s Boll Weevil infestation in the South or the Southern economies’ decline. Simultaneously, the ‘pull’ factors of the North and West attracted these African Americans by for instance industrial jobs, higher wages and a supposedly better racial climate. Scholars widely agree that one of the main causes of the Great Migration was the racist treatment of African Americans.
The need to leave the South because of the threatening circumstances caused by racism and segregation in the social, political and work-sphere, is something that becomes particularly evident in Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. During the 1950s, violence in the South directed at African Americans had become an accepted part of everyday life. This becomes evident in the following quote from Florida’s governor’s special investigator, Jefferson Elliot, he stated that there had been so many mob executions in one county that it “never had a negro live long enough to go to trial”.5 George Swanson Starling, a participant of the Great Migration and one of the main characters of Wilkerson’s book, told Wilkerson that it would be nearly impossible for him or any black boy in that era to grow up without the fear of being lynched. There was always the fear of, as the author James R. McGovern mentioned 4 M.M. Morehouse, ‘“Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places”: Stories of African Diaspora Relocation to the South’ African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter 12 (2009) 1-21, 4.
5 I. Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York 2010) 62.
“one might be accused of something and suddenly find himself in a circle of tormentors with no one to help him”. The phenomenon of people who fled this atmosphere of fear wanting to return to this place voluntarily seems rather unexpected.
Their return seems even more surprising when considering the enormous measures the migrants had to take to even get out of the South. During the Great Migration, African Americans were leaving the South in such great numbers, the politicians who controlled the South had to do something about it. The South had erected some of the highest barriers for the migration of people leaving one place to trade it in for another in America. That meant that by the time people made their way out of the South, they were willing to do pretty much
anything to prevent a possible return to the South and admit defeat. When the story of the Great Migration is told in this manner, it seems as if African-Americans were passive victims of America’s white Southern society. Multiple scholars however, like Wilkerson and Joe William Trotter Jr., discuss the need to acknowledge the agency of these black return
migrants.6 This also goes for the return migration movement. People felt they had the right to move back to ‘their’ South and come to reclaim what was actually theirs.
Even upon an occasional visit for a wedding or a funeral, the migrants took great pride in taking food, money and their finest clothes back to the South to let their friends and
relatives know they were thriving up in the North or West. One of Wilkerson’s interviewees, George Swanson Starling, returned to the South, as did many original migrants.7 The manner in which people spoke about returning to the South reminded Starling of how people used to talk during the Great Migration. The people and their children who left the South decades ago, couldn’t help but be lured by the prospects of a changed South. However, some African Americans also saw returning as a sign of defeat. George Swanson Starling argued that during the 1990s, there was an unspoken fear among migrants to the North that, no matter how much better conditions were in the South, going home is like moving backward, a retreat.
This struggle to start anew, then coming back and showing your defeat seems like a remarkable move. To come back to a place where you have been mistreated in many ways, makes one think about what motivated these migrants to return to their place of birth. Even though some scholars, like Tolnay for instance, claimed that the return migration movement has been hardly researched, this is certainly not the case.8 Scholars seem to broadly agree on 6 J. W. Trotter Jr, The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender (Bloomington and Indianapolis 1991) ix.
7 Wilkerson, The Warmth of other Suns, 162, 486.
8 S. E. Tolnay, ‘The African American "Great Migration" and Beyond’ Annual Review of Sociology 29 (June 2003) 209-232, 223.
as to ‘why’ this reversal migration took place; for many of them it is their main approach. There are some differences in regard to what they believed was the most crucial factor for the Return Migration as opposed to others.
Scholars who have reported and did research on the return migration divide the reasons for the migrants’ return into a few leading causes. Kevin McHugh believes the main reason for the migrants’ return was due to the better economic conditions and opportunities in the South.9 Another possible cause was given by Lemann and Griffin, who stated that African Americans returned because of a disillusionment with the North, due to problems with
housing, drugs, criminality and availability of jobs.10 Wilkerson mentioned that racism was also present in the North in many ways like in the areas of housing segregation and job opportunities, which motivated African American to move again. Gregory also mentioned improved political and social conditions for African Americans due to the civil rights movement as a reason for return.11
In his article in USA Today, Larry Copeland claimed that one of the reasons for the migrants’ return was the warm climate of the South.12 Cromartie and Stack ascribed the return migration to a connection to the South as ‘home’.13 They discussed this aspect tied to return migrants as well as to people not originally from the South who were visitors or had family living there. Stack strongly believed return migration was mainly taking place because of kinship bonds and family ties. People were returning ‘home’ to their aging parents or wanted to live there when they retired.14 Griffin also mentioned that return was needed for a necessary spiritual and cultural pilgrimage.15 A journey of immersion seemed necessary to combat the psychic violence inflicted on black people in the urban North according to Griffin.
9 K. E. McHugh, ‘Black Migration Reversal in the United States’ Geographical Review 77 (April, 1987) 171-182.
10 Griffin, Who set you Flowin?, 163, and N. Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and how it changed America (New York: Vintage Books, 1992).
11 J. N. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005) 323.
12 USA Today, L. Copeland, Blacks Return to Southern Roots, (June, 2011),
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-06-30-black-south-census-migration_n.htm, accessed on January 22nd, 2016.
13 J. Cromartie and C. B. Stack, ‘Reinterpretation of Black Return and Nonreturn Migration to the South 1975-1980’ Geographical Review79 (July 1989) 297-310.
14 C. B. Stack, Call to Home: African Americans reclaim the rural South (New York 1996). 15 Griffin, Who set you Flowin?, 163.
Some scholars like Frey focused on what kind of groups migrated and if the areas they migrated to and from influenced the migration stream.16 For instance, if they were higher educated with a higher socio-economic status and if more black than white Americans
migrated. Stack and Cromartie focused on if they migrated to a rural or urban area and Leman discussed how old they were and if they were retiring.17 Another interesting concept that scholars like Bennett Jr., Hunt and others introduce, is the ‘New South’, the South as the new Promised Land as opposed to the North as a utopia.18
Regarding these widely differing views regarding the return migration, one would think that some of the scholars would strongly disagree. However, no one really discards the factors other scholars mention. Rather, they combined and mentioned these different factors but arranged them in a different hierarchy. Even though there seems to be an agreement that all these different factors played a role in the return migration, the reasons that different scholars believed to be crucial for the migrants’ return are conflicting. This overall agreement whilst at the same time conflicting arguments could be due to something Tolnay remarked regarding doing research on return migration. He stated there are a number of daunting challenges and complexities involved in the study of return migration to the South.19 The available data are not ideal; most quantitative research is based on census data and has inquired about individuals’ residences in the recent past. These data do not capture all return migration and include little information to describe the pre-migration characteristics of return migration. This argument is valid; almost half of the available research on return migration focused on census data.
Another element that makes this study complex is the possibility that the
circumstances leading to return migration probably changed substantially over time. The third factor obstructing the study is that return migrants were motivated by widely differing factors. It is true that the research concerning the return migration covers a broad territory and was influenced by many different factors. However, when reading the texts on return migration, one element that was hardly present in the academic works caught my attention. This element was racism directed at African American return migrants in the South. The omission of this 16W.H. Frey, ‘The New Great Migration: Black Americans’ Return to the South, 1965–2000’ Unknown (May 2004) 1-19.
17 J. Cromartie and C. B. Stack,‘Reinterpretation of Black Return and Nonreturn Migration to the South 1975-1980’ Geographical Review79 (July 1989) 297-310, and N. Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and how it changed America (New York 1992).
18L. L. Hunt et al. ‘Who Is Headed South? U.S. Migration Trends in Black and White, 1970-2000’ Social Forces 87 (September 2008) 95-119, and L. Bennett Jr, ‘Old Illusions and New Souths’ Ebony Magazine XXVI (August 1971) 35-40.
element is demonstrated in the song ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ included at the beginning of this chapter. Griffin also pointed out the omission of this element of racial oppression in this song about the return to the South.20 Griffin stated that the content of the song makes claims for a South as a simpler place without acknowledging the racism and the horror or the
Southern past. Griffin argued that mainstream American culture has a tendency to romanticize the South and return migration.
Several scholars discussed the connection of a changed racial climate in the South to return migrants. However, they discussed it as a subordinate rather than as a main research question. This thesis acknowledges the importance of racism in the South and gives this topic the prominent role it deserves. Scholars only mentioned this theme in a brief manner, for instance: “It was a new South also in terms of racial rules, civil rights protests, court
decisions, and federal laws were finally having a measurable effect.”21 After discussing this topic briefly, Gregory continued to discuss other topics regarding the Great Migration.
This statement was approached in a manner that is too simple for such a complex issue. If one made a similar argument about slavery, it would not hold up. For instance, one could say: slavery was abolished in 1865 in America, therefore there is no more slavery and social conditions will improve for black Americans. When one looks at indentured servitude and the sharecropping system, one sees that things are not as clear-cut as they may seem. Maybe these scholars were absolutely right, and the racial conditions did improve in such a manner that African Americans were willing to return South. However, more evidence should be collected before such a claim can be made. This thesis will take a closer look at the role that the presumed diminished racism played in the African American return migration.
From what angle and how exactly did scholars discuss the issue of racism in the South in general, and in the case of return migrants? In the article ‘Changes in the Segregation of Whites from African Americans during the 1980s: Small Steps Toward a More Integrated Society’, Frey and Farley discussed racial issues in the South.22 However, they only discussed it from the limited perspective in regard to ‘housing segregation’. Another example of this is Glaser who assessed the relationship between black population and white racial attitudes in the contemporary South.23 Adelman, Morett and Tolnay (looked at) the return migration of
20 Griffin, Who set you Flowin?, 143. 21 Gregory, ‘The Southern Diaspora’, 322.
22 R. Farley and W. H. Frey, ‘Changes in the Segregation of Whites from Blacks during the 1980s: Small Steps Toward a More Integrated Society’ American Sociological Review 59 (February 1994) 23-45.
southern black women in particular.24 Yet another example is conveyed in a brief mention by Frey: “improvements in the racial climate of the South over the past three decades helped create momentum to return.”25 Adelman et al. claimed that expanding employment opportunities in the Sunbelt, coupled with the demise of Jim Crow segregation, presented former Southerners with a stronger incentive to return to their native region.26
Gregory, as mentioned before, did explain why these racial changes took place and what they entailed.27 The focus of his book, however, was on the Great Migration and not on the return migration. Only a small portion of the book focused on return migrants and doesn’t necessarily focus on their psyche and experiences. Gregory included only one return
migrants’ narrative account; one that is not representative of the regular return migrant because this return migrant is older than fifty. This is almost twenty to thirty years older than most migrants usually are.28 Griffin also discussed racial changes that occurred in the South since the civil rights movement. Her focus, however, wasn’t on primary accounts and experiences of return migrants. She focuses on certain important pieces of fiction that
describe currents of African American migrations, including the return migration to the South. This doesn’t provide the reader with a complete enough image of racial attitudes in the South. To provide a fuller and more comprehensive image of the return migration movement to the South, it’s therefore necessary to delve deeper into available secondary sources, in addition to primary sources.
It is crucial to combine secondary literature with primary accounts in this thesis for several reasons. Including oral or written primary accounts will provide extra insights that secondary analyses cannot provide. Facts, data, and their analyses do not convey the experiences, psyche and the emotions of the return migrants. Numerous primary accounts from black return migrants to the South are available. However, if they are not included in research projects and secondary analyses, they don’t contribute to the historical discussion regarding migrations and their implications. It is important to gather as many primary accounts as possible on the return migration and see what kind of conclusions we can draw from them regarding migration patterns. I deal with a large volume of primary material in the 23 J. M. Glaser, ‘Back to the Black Belt: Racial Environment and White Racial Attitudes in the South’ The Journal of Politic 56 (February 1994) 21-41.
24 R.M. Adelman et al, ‘Homeward bound: the Return Migration of Southern Black Women, 1940 to 1990’ Sociological Spectrum 20 (November 2010) 433-463.
25 Frey, ‘Changes’, 11.
26 Adelman et al, ‘Homeward Bound’, 437. 27 Gregory, ‘The Southern Diaspora’, 322, 323. 28 Stack, Call to Home, 7.
form of oral histories. As such, there are significant structural complications involved in organizing the analysis of these sources. I meet this challenge by organizing these accounts thematically. The same goes for the ordering of the chapters that great part rely for a great part on secondary material. These chapters discuss (changes to) the racial climate during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Because it is difficult to clearly demonstrate the changes to certain elements of this climate whilst using a chronological approach, I chose to discuss them thematically.
In Morehouse’s article, Kim Lacy Rogers, past president of the Oral History Association, advocated the use of oral history because it can gather evidence that is rarely available in contemporary written records. She also stated that oral history documents mass mobilization at an individual level. This is particularly helpful when documenting something as major as the return migration movement.It allows the people who tell the story to place themselves into the experience of the civil rights movement and to describe, without quantitative confines, the terrain of their changing consciousness. Rogers also stated that:
Often, they describe experiences that led them to reinterpret social reality in ways that
affirmed their own histories and perceptions rather than those of the dominant political culture. Thus oral history connects the individual to the collective experience…when people felt themselves participants in History itself, [that] evoke[d] extraordinarily powerful narratives.29 Morehouse mentioned it is important to take the opportunity to document the migrants’ reasons for returning, to collect their rich individual stories, and to pull together a picture of family and community life that makes the individual decision-making migrant an agent in the migration process.
In order to find an answer to the main question: What role did racism play in the return migration of African Americans to the American South during the period of 1968-2010? this thesis will be structured as follows. In the first chapter, I will describe how I define racism in this thesis and why Southern racism is different. After this, I will present the reasons and origin of this difference. In this first chapter, the South’s racial climate of the twentieth and 21st century and its origins will also be discussed. In the second chapter I will take a look at how African Americans experienced living in the North and the West. In the third chapter, the changes that occurred in the Southern racial climate from the 1960s will be discussed. The discussion of Southern whites’ attitude during this period regarding these changes is also included in this chapter. In the fourth and final chapter, the primary sources of return migrants will be analyzed. In this chapter, I will take a look at how racism experienced by return 29 Morehouse, ‘Smiling Faces, Beautiful places’, 14, 15.
migrants came forward in the primary accounts. In this chapter, I will also discuss if other factors also played a role in their return and the importance of this role.In the conclusion I will summarize the findings of this research and provide some suggestions for further research.
1. Racism
“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.” ― Toni Morrison30
In this quote, writer Toni Morrison portrayed the United States as a racist country with an intolerant society towards non-whites with a white supremacist tendency. Exactly because of this racist attitude, African Americans left the South during the Great Migration.31 Before confirming this attitude, I will look into if and how these occurrences of racism took place in the South by providing examples of institutionalized racism directed at African Americans in the South from 1850 to 1970. These examples include the areas of voting, employment and economic advancement, educational segregation and individual violence, including lynching and other acts of violence. To do research on this extensive period is necessary in order to find the roots of Southern racial attitudes, to provide a portrait of the unfair treatment of African Americans in all parts of society due to racism, to demonstrate the atmosphere of terror and fear. This combination caused African Americans to leave the South for the North and West. In this chapter, I will delve into the (origin of) differences between racism in the South as opposed to racism in the North and the West of America. Beforehand, it is crucial to discuss how racism is defined and analyzed in this thesis.
1.1 Racism defined and analyzed
Racism is a word that has become deeply embedded in current day society, although it only came into common usage roughly 85 years ago.32 It derived from the time when a new term was needed in the 1930s to describe Hitler’s hateful theories regarding Jews and other non-Aryans. A person, as well as a system can be racist.33 A racist believes that members of different races are inherently inferior or superior to one another. A workplace, institution or society, can be a racist system because it practices and perpetuates discriminatory or
oppressive treatment of people on the basis of their racial identity.
30 Goodreads, Toni Morrison quotes from 2013, accessed on May 10, 2016. http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3534.Toni_Morrison
31 I. Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York 2010).
32 G.M. Fredrickson, White Supremacy (New York 1981) 5.
33 C. Hoyt Jr., ‘The Pedagogy of the Meaning of Racism: Reconciling a Discordant Discourse’ Social Work 57 (2012) 225–234, 226.
Before proceeding, it’s crucial to demarcate the definition and the area of analysis regarding racism in this thesis. The original definition of racism provided by Hoyt Jr. stated that it is the belief that all members of a purported race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or other races.Racism is a particular form of prejudice defined by preconceived erroneous beliefs about race and members of racial groups. The base of this definition seems satisfying, but one important element is missing; the element of institutionalized racism in a system. With racism in the American South directed at African Americans, it is useful to add Wellman’s interpretation to the original version. Wellman stated that racism is not simply bigotry or prejudice, but a defense of racial privilege and thus a form of oppression. Racism can be a system involving cultural messages and institutional policies and practices as well as the beliefs and actions of individuals.34
One quote by Muir demonstrates how extensive the field of racism is. Muir stated the following: “Racism resembles a gun. While mean racists use it to coerce or kill, kind racists help keep it loaded by supporting the underlying racial concepts”.35 Not only the people who publicly and actively participate in the system of racism are guilty, but also people who keep the system in place. A combination of the definitions Hoyt, Wellman and Muir provided will be used as the area of analysis of the accounts of return migrants.
Due to the broad definition and demarcation of the word racism in this thesis, the field of analysis is broad as well. It includes verbal or hidden institutional discrimination, as well as racism that results in (physical or other) violence. Other forms of violence were present in the fields of poverty, education, profession and voting. Mahatma Gandhi once said: “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”36Because poverty harms the social order, it is appropriate to count it as a form of violence, despite the general absence of vigorous force in the actions by which it is caused.37 The same applies to the other areas. For instance, discrimination in profession limits one’s access to resources, thus harms the social order, and is therefore a form of violence.
34 Hoyt, ‘The Pedagogy of the Meaning of Racism’, 225, 229. 35 Ibidem, 231.
36Goodreads, Mahatma Ghandi: ‘Poverty is the worst kind of violence’, accessed on March 7, 2016. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/16271-poverty-is-the-worst-form-of-violence
37 S. Lee, ‘Is Poverty Violence?’ In: Deane Curtin and Robert Litke, ‘Institutional Violence’, (Amsterdam, Atlanta GA 1999) 5-12, 5.
1.2 Origins of Southern racism
How and why is racism directed at African Americans in the South different from racism in other parts of America? The subordination of African Americans is an old
phenomenon. Throughout history, they were victims of prejudice and discrimination. Major social changes during the twentieth century influenced the social position of African
Americans and their relationship with whites, but have not changed it fundamentally.38 Racism was internalized in every aspect of a white Southerners upbringing. Margaret Jones Bolsteri, who grew up in Desha County, Arkansas as a white girl during the 1930s, stated the following about racism in the South:
Racism permeated every aspect of our lives, from little black Sambo…in the first stories read to us, to the warning that drinking coffee before the age of sixteen would turn you black. It was part of the air everyone breathed.39
The South is more rooted in the past than any other part of the country.40 Quispel’s book ‘Hardnekkig Wantrouwen’ demonstrated this deeply rooted connection of the South to its past. He mentioned that the connection to a particular kind of racism directed at African Americans in the South can be traced back to the institution of slavery and the hostilities between the North and South during the Civil War.41
Southern slavery acquired an extremely racist defense that was carried to extremes.42 According to whites, slaves stolen from colonized African tribal areas were uncivilized; they needed to be educated on social norms and values. After slavery ended, this strong
paternalistic stream of thought remained a core attitude regarding the treatment of African Americans. The superior white race was obligated to teach the inferior black race the knowledge of citizenship.43 White Southerners viewed African Americans as a race with a history of four thousand years of barbarism, as opposed to how they viewed their own race, which was deeply grounded in civilization, law and government.
This attitude obliged African Americans in turn to an attitude of implicit obedience, deference, loyalty and hard work. According to whites, African Americans had a better 38 C. Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen (Amsterdam 2002) 7.
39 J. Sokol, There goes my everything, 6.
40 H. Arendt, ‘Reflections on Little Rock’ Dissent 6 (1959) 45-56, 47. 41 Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen, 16.
42 D. L. Grant, The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia (Athens and London 1993) 43.
43 G. G. Johnson, ‘Southern Paternalism toward Negroes after Emancipation’ The Journal of
position because they didn’t have to shoulder all the responsibilities. The white Southern ideal was that a planter should be like a father and the slaves and later sharecroppers like his children; dependent, carefree, and grateful.44 One of the big planters in Clarksdale; Roy Flowers, used to give his sharecroppers silver dollars at Christmas, which he ironically had stolen from them at the settle. Southern paternalism automatically forced the newly freed black race into a position with limited possibilities of advancement or professional
participation in the social and political sphere. Ebony magazine journalist Lerone Benett Jr. ascribed this relation between the black and white Southerner to a deeply embedded
colonialism.45 Benett stated that this relationship was based on exploitation, inequality and contempt, perpetuated by force and cultural repression.
When slavery ended, white Southerners were reluctant to let go of their view of how society should be ordered in racial terms. They had a nostalgic image of slavery when African Americans adhered to the childlike ‘Sambo’ image. Whites missed the times of submissive, obedient, loyal African Americans with a paternalistic bond between slave and slave-owner.46
This nostalgic kind of racism was connected mainly to the rich, white upper class. Poor whites had a different image regarding African Americans. Often they were in direct competition with African Americans in order to make money.47 This made their racist
attitudes often fiercer than those of the rich ex-slaveholders, and kept them motivated to keep African Americans in their subordinate places. Even though the origin and level of fierceness of racism seemed connected to class, at the end of the nineteenth century, all whites seemed to be of the opinion that blacks were not worthy of a prominent place in society.
The other form of Southern racism as opposed to the racism in the North had its roots in certain values deeply connected to Southern culture. In the South, honor and respect were always prominent values. An attack on those values could be avenged in a duel with social equals. With others however, this could lead to abuse or even murder. One of the most important Southern codes of honor was defending a white woman. Historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage stated: “The defense of white feminine virtue, especially against sexual aggression by black men, was at the heart of southern honor.” 48 Whites thought that African Americans were unable to contain themselves sexually and were therefore a great danger to a white 44 Lemann, The Promised Land, 24, 25.
45 L. Bennett, Jr., ‘System, Internal colonialism structures black white relations in America’ Ebony Magazine XVII (1972) 33-42, 34.
46 Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen, 50. 47 Ibidem, 52.
woman and their virtue. Writer David Cohn expressed this line of thought well with the words: “The Negro…is sexually completely free and untrammeled…Sexual desire is an imperative need, raw and crude and strong. It is to be satisfied when and wherever it arises.”49
Every black man knew he had to prevent being alone with a white woman, because accusations of rape were rarely put to trial. Even children were not allowed to mingle. When Calvin Hernton was a little boy playing with a white girl, his grandma dragged him inside yelling: “Do you want to git me kilt, git all the colored folks slaughtered?”50 Unspoken Southern social rules, for example that African Americans were not allowed to look straight into a white person’s eyes or to shake a white person’s hand made it difficult for African Americans to function in society without affirming prejudices about their inferior status held by whites.51
Because of a deeply rooted fear of racial mixing in the South it was believed that “just one drop of negro blood makes a negro.”52 Defending the honor of Southern women
frequently resulted in acts of violence and lynching. In 1897, Politician Rebecca Latimer Felton, stated that: “If it needs lynching to protect women’s dearest possession from the ravening human beasts, then I say lynch, a thousand times a week, if necessary.”53 The alleged rape of a white woman by a black man was the source of frequent lynching, but even a wink or the rumor of winking to a white woman could result in violence.
1.3 Lynching
In February of 1893 in Paris, Texas, the three-year-old Myrtle Vance was raped in a horrific way. More than 2000 people were searching for the alleged black rapist Henry Smith for over four days. When he was found, he was tortured in front of a crowd of thousands and eventually burnt alive. This lynching was not exceptional. Racist organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camelia and the White Brotherhood left a trail of violence throughout the South in the late nineteenth century.54 One in ten black
49 Lemann, The Promised Land, 26, 27. For more on Southern honor, please see B. Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York 1982). For more on racism’s connection to sex, please see C. Hernton, Sex and Racism in America (New York 1980).
50 Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen, 53, 54. 51 Ibidem, 53.
52 K.A. Davis, ‘Racial Designation in Louisiana: One Drop of Black Blood Makes a Negro’ Hastings. Const. LQ (1975) 199.
53 Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen, 35.
54 Ibidem, 15, 18, For more on lynching in the South, please see W.F. Brundage, Lynching in the New South; Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 (Urbana and Chicago 1993).
representatives between the years of 1867-1868 was a victim of violence. Between 1890 and 1950, 4730 people were lynched in the South.
Despite an anti-lynching law implemented in 1893 in Georgia and several other states, lynching became a widespread phenomenon in which a large part of society participated.55 In table 1, data concerning lynching statistics from 1882-1962 shows the extensive difference in lynching statistics in the Southern states as opposed to the Western and Northern states of America. Georgia and Mississippi, for instance, show the highest number of black lynching with 492 cases in the first and 539 in the latter. This demonstrates a great contrast with one lynching in New York and six in Pennsylvania. The Southern states note 3267 lynchings of the total 3446 lynchings in all American states, almost 95%. This added to the atmosphere of fear and terror in this period of time which led African Americans to migrate to other states.
In 1919, the New Orleans State published an article titled ‘John Hartfield will be lynched by Ellisville Mob at five o’clock this afternoon’.56 This article announced in detail the fate of Hartfield, who allegedly assaulted an Ellisville, Mississippi woman. Governor Bilbo stated that “he was powerless to prevent it.” Thousands traveled to Ellisville to attend the ‘event’, lynching was perceived as entertainment. An ad from 1922 by the NAACP in support of Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill titled: The Shame of America”, pictured in Image 1, attacks the presupposition of rape.57 It stated that of the 3436 people murdered by mobs in our country, only 571, or less than 17 percent, were even accused of rape. Mentioning that 83 women were also lynched, the ad questions: ‘Do lynchers maintain that they were lynched for ‘the usual crime’? This ad clearly demonstrates that whites abused the excuse of protecting a Southern woman’s honor, in order to carry out their racist practices. In 1933, over four hundred lynchings occurred but only five people were convicted. In the same year, Richard Marshall was lynched in Georgia just as ‘an example’.58An African American veteran, on his way home from the Second World War in 1945, got his eyes stabbed out by whites because he used a ‘whites only’ bathroom when no other was available.59.
55 Grant, The Way It Was in the South, 331.
56 ‘John Hartfield will be lynched by Ellisville mob at 5 o’clock this afternoon’ New Orleans States, reprinted from Jackson Daily News, 24 (1918) 1.
57 New York Times, ‘The Shame of America’, accessed June 19th, 2016, Reprinted at http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6786.
58 Grant, The Way It Was in the South, 331.
Proposals on legislative changes regarding lynching were rejected on the basis of Southern women’s virtue.60 In 1947, Senator Bilbo stated: “There is no one who can today point the finger of suspicion in any matter of the bloods which flows through the veins of the white sons and daughters of the South. Bilbo stated about the people who proposed to
eradicate lynching: “…upon your garments…will be the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie.”61 Most black men, however, were not lynched for committing a crime. Most would be put to death when put on trial for a crime, regardless if they were guilty. These trials had taken on a form of so-called ‘legalized lynching’. Sometimes a man was sentenced to death within 24-hours of his trial. This was necessary to create and maintain an atmosphere of terror and fear, to make sure African Americans would stay put on the social ladder. In 1947, a journalist asked a man who participated in a lynching, if the lynching victim actually committed the alleged crime. He responded with:
No that was really irrelevant, no particular crime was avenged. The negro population was being warned never to forget that the colored man in the South is still a slave, that between him and the white man there can be no law, no claim to justice.62
In 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, originally from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, when he reportedly said “bye Baby’ to a white woman.63 Three days later Till’s mutilated body was found. Relatives of the white woman responsible for Till’s death were acquitted of the crime in only 57 minutes.64
Ebony Magazine photographer Clotye Murdock Larsson, an African American Southerner herself, shared her recollection of the moment of the acquittal. “Standing there in that Southern courthouse, I suddenly remembered how, as a schoolchild, I had recited the pledge to the flag of the United States… ‘and to the democracy for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’ Now staring at the American flag in the courtroom, I wondered what it was doing there.”65 When Larsson and Jet photographer David Jackson, both black, visited the town of Hamlet to cover the story in September 1955, they encountered a hostile attitude. After the local sheriff greeted them with a “’Mawnin’ niggers”, 60 Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen, 57, 58.
61 P.A. Klinkner and R. M. Smith. The unsteady march. The rise and decline of racial equality in America (Chicago and London 1999) 133.
62 Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen, 39, 58.
63 C. Jones, Emmett Till’s nephew in: H. Hampton and S. Fayer, Voices of freedom, an oral history of the Civil Rights movement from the 1950s through the 1980’s (Reading 1990) 3.
64 C. M. Larsson, ‘Land of the Till Murder revisited’ Ebony Magazine XLI (1986) 53-58, 56. 65 Larsson, ‘Till Murder’, 56.
Larsson stated: “Again, we got the message, we were behind enemy lines now. We had no rights that a White man was bound to respect. Our press cards were no guarantee of safety. Not even a member of the U.S. Congress could expect a courteous welcome, not if he happened to be both Northern and Black.” A scoffing white deputy greeted Congressman Charles Diggs by calling out: “A nigger congressman? It ain’t possible. It ain’t even legal!”66
One of the perpetrators of the Till Murder, J.W. Milam, even admitted to a journalist that he was guilty of the crime and that he felt no remorse. He had to make an example of Till, to let African Americans know they had to stay in their place. Emmett Till, who grew up in Chicago, in the North, had no idea that whistling at a white woman might lead to his death. This makes it even more interesting to investigate why people who were aware of these rules of conduct, returned to the South later in life.67 Till’s case shocked the nation and was covered widely throughout the media. On his mother’s request, the photo of Till’s severely mutilated head was published, she said she “wanted all the world to witness the atrocity.”68 Several scholars even suggest that Till’s lynching was one of the catalysts of the civil rights movement, equally important as Rosa Parks’ bus’ ride more than a decade later.69After the 1950s, lynching turned into an anomaly.70 Before the 1960s, lynching was only sporadically tried at court and rarely were the perpetrators punished. This demonstrates the agreement and cooperative character of Southern society, the police and the American government regarding racial violence.
1.4 Riots
Besides lynching, numerous collective racial riots added to the violent racial climate of the beginning of the twentieth and during the 21st century. Although many riots occurred in that period, the following are two of the most violent and controversial riots in the South. Gruelling racist political campaigns in combination with long-lasting racial tensions and anti-black propaganda ultimately resulted in a race riot in Atlanta on September 22, 1906. To avenge alleged rapes, an estimated 25 random black citizens were killed and hundreds were
66 Larsson, ‘Till Murder’, 54, 56.
67 Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen, 58.
68 ‘Nation Horrified by murder of Kidnaped Chicago Youth’ Jet VIII (September 1955) 6-9, 9. 69C. Hudson-Weems, ‘Resurrecting Emmett Till: The Catalyst of the Modern Civil Rights
Movement’ Journal of Black Studies29 (November 1998) 179-188, and also F.C. Harris, ‘It takes a tragedy to arouse them: Collective memory and collective action during the civil rights movement.’ Social movement studies 5 (2006) 19-43.
injured in the riot, which lasted several days. In the summer of 1919, also knows as the ‘Red Summer’, twenty-six other race riots took place.71
A similar riot to that of Atlanta, sparked by suspicion of a shared elevator by a white woman and a black man, took place in May 1921 in the city of Tulsa. The thriving black community of Tulsa, also known as black Wall Street, came under attack.72 The riot, which was carried out by the KKK, city officials and other white sympathizers, left almost 300 people dead and 600 businesses lost.73
1.5 Jim Crow
Racist practices were also deeply embedded in the Southern legal system. The start of the Jim Crow era in the South in 1887 led to numerous laws regarding segregation. These laws influenced all facets of life, from African Americans having to use the back door of every facility to segregated railcars. During this period, African Americans were born
segregated, went to segregated schools, enjoyed segregated entertainment, got sick and died in segregated facilities, and were buried in separate cemeteries.74
The legal foundation was cemented in the court case Plessy vs. Ferguson (1892). This court case challenged the segregation of African Americans and whites in trains, Judge Brown observed that if “one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plane.”75 Southerners justified Jim Crow laws in two ways: they claimed that segregation was an organic component of Southern culture, entitled to 71 L. Bennett, Jr., ‘From Booker T. To Martin L.: protest has increased in militancy and
effectiveness’ Ebony Magazine XVIII (1962) 152-159, 155. For more on race riots in the South, please see J.Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since
Emancipation (New York and Oxford, 1984), and S. Olzak, S. Shanahan and E. H. McEneaney, ‘Poverty, Segregation, and Race Riots: 1960 to 1993’ American Sociological Review 61 (August 1996) 590-613, and M. Bauerlein, Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (San Francisco 2001), and also E.M. Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917 (Urbanan, Chicago and London 1982).
72 ‘New battle now in progress. Whites advancing into ‘Little Africa;’ Negro Death list is about 15’ Tulsa World XV (June 1921) 1.
73 Tulsa Historical Society & Museum, ‘1921 Tulsa Race Riot’, accessed on March 12, 2016. http://tulsahistory.org/learn/online-exhibits/the-tulsa-race-riot/
74 For more on Jim Crow, please see R. Farley and W. Allen, The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America (Chapel Hill 2005), and H. Fireside, Seperate and Unequal: Homer Plesse and the
Supreme Court Decision that Legalized Racism (New York 2004), and C. van Woodward, The strange career of Jim Crow (New York 1966), and B.W. Doyle, The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South: A Study in Social Control (Port Washington 1937), and W.H. Chafe, R. Gavins and R. Korstad, Remembering Jim Crow (New York 2001), and also S. Kennedy, Jim Crow Guide to the U.S.A. (Westport 1959).
75 Legal Information Institute, ‘Plessy vs. Ferguson’, accessed on June 16, 2016.
respect as a traditional way of dealing with complex, difficult matters of race that outsiders would understand imperfectly or not at all. White Southerners also suggested that segregation was essentially just and operated in the best interest of both races.76
The extent to which the Jim Crow laws impacted the life of African Americans in the twentieth century is demonstrated by simple elements of life. For example: the segregation of parks in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1911, no parks were available for African Americans in Atlanta, in 1926 African Americans could only use three of the city’s 24 parks. By 1940, all Grant parks except for the zoo were forbidden for African Americans to enter. African Americans were arrested when they entered white parks. In 1947, an African American man was arrested for refusing to sit in the rear of the bus.77New Jim Crow laws were added as late as 1950.78 In Georgia most of these laws remained through the 1970s, even though most of the laws were overturned during the Civil Rights period of the 1960s. The city of Macon did not take down its symbol of park segregation until as late as the year of 1986. Jim Crow was the most important reason for the inhumane racial conditions in the South that African Americans had to live in. Jim Crow laws provided white Southerners with a legal foundation on which to build and legitimize their racist views.
1.6 The ‘New Slavery’ and economic opportunities for African Americans
The notion that whites refused to let go of the institution of slavery was particularly evident in politics around 1865. When slaves were freed, President Andrew Johnson’s
amnesty of 1865 gave land back to its former owners and gave blacks until the end of the year to leave.79 In the nineteenth century agricultural Southern society, African Americans without land lacking realistic alternatives were driven into a state of dependence, subservience and poverty. White Southern society tried to benefit from this situation by finding ways around the abolition of slavery by the use of so-called ‘black codes’, unfair systems of sharecropping and indentured servitude. A law installed in most Southern states made it mandatory to prove one’s employment.80 In a time of mass unemployment amongst Southern men, this law almost exclusively targeted black men. In 1908, Shelby County, Alabama, 22-year old Green
Cottenham was arrested for this offense. Because he was unable to pay a fine, he was 76 Sokol, There goes my everything, 181.
77 W.H. Johnson, ‘Negro arrested for violating Jim Crow Law’Mount Airy News unknown (1947) 1. 78 Grant, The Way It Was in the South, 218, 221.
79 Ibidem, 94.
80 D.A. Blackman, Slavery by another name, the re-enslavement of black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York 2008) 17.
sentenced to a year of hard labor, instead of the initial 30-day sentence. Many African Americans died due to the inhumane conditions and assaults in these labor camps, solely for being unemployed.
This new system of labor, the sharecropping system and other gang-labor tenant-systems are examples of conditions that Grant called ‘the New Slavery’. The ‘new slaves’ were not owned, but did have to pay off huge debts.81 Douglas A. Blackman, the Atlanta Chief of The Wall Street Journal also ascribed to this notion in his book ‘Slavery by another name’.82 These systems had a strong connection to the South’s agricultural system or to
certain laws that were implemented only in the South. Although the sharecropping system initially gave African Americans a sense of empowerment, it eventually led them to a state of dependency to their labor lords. The pain and economic disadvantages that systems like sharecropping caused in the African American community didn’t spark whites to feel pity, rather a feeling of confirmation. The chaotic and devastating aspects of sharecropping were caused by incapacity in their eyes, which fully affirmed their beliefs regarding African American.83 These systems put blacks in a highly disadvantageous economic situation that kept them in an economic chokehold of dependency.
After 1910, land grew scarcer and therefore more expensive, which made it even harder for black laborers to move up from systems like sharecropping and tenant-farming systems as the crop lien system. In 1913, Georgia blacks paid over twice the interest rates whites paid. In 1930, only 13 percent of African American farmers were landowners and almost 60 percent was sharecropper or farmhand.84 Many African Americans fell victim to the racist economic systems of sharecropping and tenant-farming. In 1933, Roosevelt introduced the New Deal, which resulted in a reorganization of the agricultural sector.85 Landowners could divide the losses due to the production reduction equally amongst everyone, or let the black sharecroppers pay for this reduction. The majority chose the last option. This policy victimized many African Americans. When the National Recovery Administration (NRA) in 1933 forcefully increased the minimum wage in the tobacco industry that included many 81 Grant, The Way It Was in the South, 137.
82 D.A. Blackman, Slavery by another name, the re-enslavement of black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York 2008).
83 Lemann, The Promised Land, 24.
84 Grant, The Way It Was in the South, 40, 141, 142.
85 E. Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History (New York and London 2012) 797, 798. For more on the New Deal, please see: N. Natanson, The Black image in the New Deal: The Politics of FSA Photography (Knoxville 1992).
African Americans, almost half of them were replaced by whites and were forced to work in another branch in which the NRA rules didn’t apply.86 A white Southerner even insisted “the NRA can only be made a success by making exceptions wherever it is applied to the status of Negroes.”87 African American workers even renamed the NRA as ‘Negro Removal
Administration’.88
Social and economic progress for African Americans was slow in the 1940s due to lack of opportunities, like receiving credit or running for a political position. Economic progress wasn’t only hard to achieve; it was dangerous as well. The ‘uppity nigger’ who was cheeky and felt better than whites due to for instance a better economic situation took a great risk. When writer Richard Wright’s uncle, an owner of a thriving saloon for black laborers refused to give up his business to whites after several warnings, he was shot to death.89
After the Second World War, which was highly beneficial for the South, a drastic change took place in the agricultural character of the South. Industrialization swept through the South changing the colonial character into a more modern one. Because of the massive outflow of people due to the Great Migration and loss of jobs due to mechanization, African American workers became more valuable for Southern farmers.90
The limits of economic progress for Southern African Americans also becomes evident when comparing African American and white teacher salaries per day in Georgia from 1911 to 1960. Figures for this overview can be found in Table 2.91 Until 1960, black teachers received about half of the salary white teachers received. Only in 1960, the salaries started to match each other, with 20.48 dollars per day for white teachers and 20.00 for black teachers. The low salaries weren’t the only element that held back African American
economic improvement. The only jobs available for African Americans usually entailed the ones whites didn’t want. Louis Robinson, who grew up in the 1930s in Mineral Wells, Texas, 86 Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen, 44.
87 J.O. Thomas, ‘Will the New Deal be a Square Deal for the Negro?’ Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life 11 (October 1933) 308.
88 A.F. Raper. ‘The Southern Negro and the NRA.’ The Georgia Historical Quarterly 64 (Summer 1980) 128-45, 128.
89 Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen, 54, 60.
90‘Will the suburbs beckon?’ Ebony magazine XXVI (1971) 112-113, 112, For more on the importance of black laborers in the South after the Second World War, please see W.F. Holmes, ‘Labor Agents and the Georgia Exodus’ South Atlantic Quarterly 79 (1980) 445-446, also D.L. Cohn, Where I Was Born and Raised (South Bend 1967), and also N. Lemann, The Promised Land (New York 1991).
91 J. J. Donohue III et al. The Schooling of Southern Blacks: The Roles of Legal Activism and Private Philanthropy, 1910–1960*’ The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (2002) 225-268, 230.
stated he as a black man only had the following prospects for a possible job: a waiter job at a hotel, teaching, being a minister or a janitor at the local post office.92 According to Robinson, there were no black doctors, morticians, lawyers or accountants in his town. This limited choice of job prospects due to racism severely crippled African Americans in their quest to improve economically.
1.7 Segregation in education
Another example of the clear limitations of progress for African Americans in the South can be demonstrated in the field of education. Education for African Americans was always perceived as something of subordinate importance by whites. For instance, at the end of the nineteenth century, the white author A.G. Haygood, published a book which had a somewhat positive stance towards African Americans, called: Our Brother the Negro.93
Despite the veil of tolerance Haygood seemed to have, he was a fierce opponent of the idea that black and white Americans should attend the same school. This sentiment was
representative for a lot of Southerners during the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century.94
After education became legal for African Americans, even when schools were still segregated, simple terror was one of its greatest obstacles. The KKK and other white citizens threatened and attacked African Americans that went to school at the end of the nineteenth century. This made attending school an act of political protest and diminished prospects of African Americans to improve their life. Because most African American teachers received little more than a third-grade or no education whatsoever, no training and low pay, education for African Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century was in a bad state.95 This started a decade-long cycle of poorly trained teachers, who in their turn taught students poorly who became teachers. In 1906, African American teacher pay averaged three cents per pupil per day, while white teachers received ten cents. In 1911, the quality of primary schooling 92 L. Robinson, ‘The return of a Native’ Ebony Magazine XXVI (August 1971) 120-125, 122. 93 Quispel, Hardnekkig Wantrouwen, 19, 20.
94 For more one African American education in the American South, please see E.F ‘Biennal Survey of Education in the U.S. Statistics of State School Systems, 1937-1938’ U.S. Office of Education Bulletin 2 (1940), and R.A. Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: an Economic History (Chicago 1990), and G.W. Nobli (ed), School Desegregation: Oral Histories toward Understanding the Effects of White Domination (Chapel Hill 2015), and R. Maples, The Legacy of Desegregation: The Struggle for Equality in Higher Education (New York 2014), and J.A Williamson-Lott, L. Darling-Hammond, and M. E. Hyler Emancipation and Reconstruction: African American Education, 1865–1919 (Oxford, 2012), and also B.J. Daugherity, "Keep on Keeping On": African Americans and the Implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in Virginia (Virginia 2008). 95 Grant, The Way it was in the South, 222, 234.
was much lower for Southern African Americans due to an additional twenty pupils in a black class.96 From 1900 to 1930, Southern African American children often didn’t have the
opportunity to attend (primary) school. School days were cut in half and often the children had to work instead of going to school. In Georgia, term lengths were also shorter by three of four weeks.97 Transportation to and from school was an issue for African American children who lived in the rural backlands of the South.
In 1938, the average American teacher salary was 1347 dollars and the average value of a school building and equipment per student was 274 dollars. For African Americans in Mississippi, these figures were 144 and eleven dollars. In 1939 in Mississippi, when the Great Migration had already started, whites kept an inferior black school system partly because they didn’t want the children of sharecroppers to acquire other jobs than sharecropping.98 In 1945, almost all African American grade school children attended segregated, all-black schools. An editor of Ebony magazine stated that problems of racism and segregation were especially bad in the South, because the majority of African American students were “forced to learn the fundamentals in raggedy school-houses with outdated, worn-out books.99
The Brown vs. Board of Education case of 1954 accounted for a huge change in the field of education for African Americans. This case made segregation in education
unconstitutional and implemented an immediate process of desegregation.100 The case sparked massive outrage amongst Southern whites who resisted desegregation bitterly, and sometimes with violence. Oliver Emmerich, editor of the McComb Enterprise Journal, mentioned in 1955 that due to the court case “the situation’s so bad in Mississippi right now that no white newspaper would dare suggest even token compliance with the Supreme Court decision.101 A poll in Virginia in 1956 showed that 92 percent of the citizens were totally opposed to school integration and 79 percent denied any obligation to accept the Supreme Court decision as binding.102
In September 1957, Little Rock High School admitted nine black children. Two days before school started, Governor Faubus sent National Guard troops to the school and
96J. J. Donohue III et al., ‘The Schooling of Southern Blacks: The Roles of Legal Activism and Private Philanthropy, 1910–1960*’The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (2002) 225-268, 229. 97
98 Lemann, The Promised Land, 18, 47.
99 ‘50 years of Black Education’, Ebony magazine L (1995) 69-76, 70, 71.
100 Legal Information Institute, ‘Brown vs. Board of Education’, accessed on June 16, 2016. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483
101 C.T. Rowan, ‘South of Freedom’ Ebony Magazine XXVI (August 1971) 134-139, 135. 102 Arendt, ‘Reflections on Little Rock’, 49.
