On the Move: Stories of African American Migration and Mobility: Great Migration
Great Migration
Because of slavery, much of the African-American population was based in the Southern states after the Civil War. Prompted by news of labor shortages in industrialized Northern cities like Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia or African-American settlements in Western territories like Boley, Oklahoma; Nicodemus, Kansas; or Allensworth, California, many boarded trains to start new lives. African Americans brought their food, music, and traditions with them to these new places. This mass internal migration happened in waves, in the 1880's, the 1920's, and the 1940's, and is cumulatively called the Great Migration
"These people know only three places to go: Heaven, Hell and Baltimore... Baltimore-or Washington or New York or Newark , was surely the land of milk and honey, the Promised Land” - Dwayne E. Walls, The Chickenbone Special
Some 1.5 million people moved north between 1916 and 1930 during the Great Migration when the war industry offered industrial jobs to African Americans.
- In Motion: The African American Migration Experience Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Exhibition materials
Helen Laura Ruth's scrapbook, 1940
This travel journal, created by Helen Laura Ruth, highlights many aspects of interstate train travel including the prevalence of African American porters. Ruth took the photograph of Otto Whitting, an African American porter working for the Pullman Company, shown here. Pullman porters were exclusively African American because of the availability of cheap Black labor after the Civil War and the desire to give white passengers an “upper class” experience. Although the wages were low, and the role played into negative stereotypes, these jobs provided a platform for African Americans to unionize and improve the quality of life for their families.
Helen Laura Ruth Scrapbooks and Student Essay, 1913, 1940, and undated (05428)
Wilmington to Weldon Railroad ticket, 1879 & Atlantic Coast Line ticket
These late 19th and early 20th century North Carolina railroad tickets are symbolic of the often-overlooked migration and travel of African Americans within the state and the region. These moves reflected a move from rural to urban environments in pursuit of better opportunities for education and work. The Wilmington and Weldon Railroad company was eventually absorbed by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad company and included stops in cities heavily populated with African Americans, like Wilmington, Rocky Mount, and New Bern.
Southern Historical Collection Miscellaneous Papers (00517)
McLean Family Papers, 1911-2003 (05599)
"Ragtime Texas" Henry Thomas by Call Number: FC-1451Publication Date: 1974The life and music of Henry Thomas reflect an important element of African American migration – the transmission of tradition and culture. Thomas was born in Big Sandy, Texas in 1874 to recently emancipated parents. He left home as a teenager and made money playing his guitar in train stations along the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railways. He eventually made his way to Chicago where he made a few recordings that are highly sought after today, although he ultimately died in obscurity. Thomas’s blend of country, blues, and gospel influenced a generation of musicians including Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and Taj Mahal. From the Southern Folklife Collection
Negro exodus : report by Call Number: E185.89.E4 F6Publication Date: 1879Fletcher’s report specifically highlights “Exodusters,” Black migrants who moved from the Deep South to African American communities in the Midwest, namely Kansas. The possibility of building a homogenous community, free from racial terror was enough to propel African Americans west with just the items that they could carry on a train. The Exodusters Movement in 1879 was the first major migration of Black people after the Civil War. An estimated 40,000 people settled in Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. From the North Carolina Collection.
Additional resources
- The Chickenbone Special by Call Number: C326 W21cISBN: 0151171602Publication Date: 1971-01-01When Donnie Gibson told his parents he was "taking a ride" the next Saturday, they well know what he meant; no one had to tell them that the "ride" was North, for Donnie was about to repeat a pattern that has become tragically common in 20th century America. Every year, at graduation time in late June, thousands of people - most of them young and poor and black - bid good-by to their loved ones and head for the cities of the North. Boarding buses and trains (such as the "Chickenbone Special") in places like Kingstree, South Carolina, and Sanford, Florida, they are part of the largest movement of human beings in history, a migratory flood that began in the 1920s and has since poured upwards of a million people a year into the city ghettos. This is their story.
In Motion by Call Number: E185 .D625 2004ISBN: 0792273850Publication Date: 2005-01-01African Americans, more than any other populations in the Americas, have been shaped by migrations. Their culture and history are the products of black peoples' various movements, coerced and voluntary, that started, in the Western Hemisphere, five hundred years ago.
Theirs is the story of men and women forced out of Africa; of enslaved people moved from the coastal southeast to the Deep South; of fugitives walking to freedom across the country and beyond; of colonists leaving their land to settle on foreign shores; of southerners migrating west and north; and of immigrants arriving from the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade has created an enduring image of black people as transported commodities, and is usually considered the single element in the construction of the African Diaspora, it is centuries of additional migrations that have given shape to the nation we know today, a nation different from that forged solely by the dreadful transportation of the Africans against their will. And it is this vast array of migrations that truly defines the African American experience.
Always on the move, resourceful, and creative, men and women of African origin have been risk-takers in an exploitative and hostile environment. Their survival skills, efficient networks, and dynamic culture have enabled them to thrive and spread, and to be at the very core of the settling and development of the Americas. Their migrations have changed not only their world, and the fabric of the African Diaspora but also their nation and the Western Hemisphere.- "The Exodus of 1879," The Journal of Negro History by Call Number: E185 .J86 v.21 (1936)Publication Date: 1936
Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945 by Call Number: HD8039.R362 U63 2001ISBN: 0807826146Publication Date: 2001-06-18Between World War I and World War II, African Americans' quest for civil rights took on a more aggressive character as a new group of black activists challenged the politics of civility traditionally embraced by old-guard leaders in favor of a more forceful protest strategy. Beth Tompkins Bates traces the rise of this new protest politics--which was grounded in making demands and backing them up with collective action--by focusing on the struggle of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) to form a union in Chicago, headquarters of the Pullman Company. Bates shows how the BSCP overcame initial opposition from most of Chicago's black leaders by linking its union message with the broader social movement for racial equality. As members of BSCP protest networks mobilized the black community around the quest for manhood rights and economic freedom, they broke down resistance to organized labor even as they expanded the boundaries of citizenship to include equal economic opportunity. By the mid-1930s, BSCP protest networks gained platforms at the national level, fusing Brotherhood activities first with those of the National Negro Congress and later with the March on Washington Movement. Lessons learned during this era guided the next generation of activists, who carried the black freedom struggle forward after World War II.
