Black Migration from the South to the North
James Baldwin stated in Fifth Avenue Uptown, "I once tried to describe to a very well known American intellectual the conditions among Negroes in the South. My recital disturbed him and made him indignant; and he asked me in perfect innocence, "Why don't all the Negroes in the South move North?" I tried to explain what has happened, unfailingly, whenever a significant body of Negroes move North. They do not escape Jim Crow [legal segregation]; they merely encounter another, not-less-deadly variety. They do not move to Chicago, they move to the South Side: they do not move to New York, they move to Harlem. The pressure within the ghetto causes the ghetto walls to expand, and this expansion is always violent..... One day, to everyone's astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up. Before the dust has settled or the blood congealed, editorials, speeches, and civil-rights commissions are loud in the land, demanding to know what happened. What happened is that Negroes want to be treated like men." Throughout the 20th century, African-Americans migrated from the plantations of the South, to the industrialized cities of the North. The reasons for the migration are plenty, and the consequences of
the move brought many changes to the city. Since blacks are seldom in demand for jobs for which education is necessary, it is not surprising that they failed to improve their opportunities by staying in school longer. They tend to leave school usually by the tenth grade, if they even go to school, and wander the streets, form gangs and get into trouble. Many blame the situation on the illiteracy and the relative unemployment ability of the southern black migrant. Those who came to the cities in the 1940's had little schooling. During 1949 and 1950, the highest migration to Chicago, was of adults who had four years of education. These southern blacks place this model on their children, and they in turn go out and independently experience the same failures, in the same areas, and for much the same reasons as his father. In previous generations, the Italian immigrants' failure to get an education blocked their way to economic opportunities and also led to a disproportionate rate of crime among their youth and later, among adults. The black man had made the least advance in the growing sector of the economy because of the lack of education, as well as racial tensions. The blacks moved North because of the lack of jobs and to escape the racial tensions of the South. Many blacks encountered another similar situation, but of less deadly variety. They are forced into the ghettos of the cities because of the economic and residential mobility, which denied blacks to live elsewhere. This caused the walls of the ghettos to expand and many changes were brought about to the city because of this expansion. When the twenties came to an end, black population in the city had grown substantially. In New York City, practically all the older white residents had moved away, the Russian-Jewish and the Italian sections of Harlem, founded a short generation earlier, were rapidly be depopulated. Between 1920 and 1930, 118,792 white people left Harlem while 87,417 blacks moved in. The white population had declined 18% while the blacks increased 106%. The economic and residential mobility permitted white people in the city but largely denied blacks. Most blacks were "jammed together" in Harlem, even those who could afford to live elsewhere, had little possibility to escape. In the case of earlier European immigrants, there was a possibility of escape, with improvement in economic status, in the second generation, to more desirable sections of the city. In the case of blacks, the factors of race and certain definite racial attitudes favorable to segregation interposed difficulties to breaking physical restrictions in residence areas. The history of race riots reflects the not only the expanded aspirations of the blacks, but also the techniques that have been used to maintain his inferior social position. Social tensions generated by discrimination, prejudice, and poverty offer essential explanations of blacks mass rioting in the urban centers of the Northern cities. The history of race relations has been grounded in a system of law enforcement that has denied to blacks due process and equal protection. This has weakened the legitimacy of the agents of law enforcement, especially in the lowest black income areas. There were two main categories of racial riots throughout history. First is the communal riot, which were an interracial clash, and an economically based struggle at the boundaries of the expanding black neighborhoods. This was essentially a matter of turf, whites didn't want blacks on their turf. One example of this type of rioting was the riots of East St. Louis in 1917, when the whites blamed the blacks for the murders of two police detectives. They then killed many blacks and invaded their homes. During World War II, communal riots began to give way to large-scale outbursts within the black community. These riots represented a form of collective behavior against the age
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Approximate Word count = 2643
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)
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