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Carnegie Endowment for International Peace DIVISION OF ECONOMICS AND HISTORY JOHN BATES CLARK, DIRECTOR PRELIMINARY ECONOMIC STUDIES OF THE WAR EDITED BY DAVID KINLEY Professor of Political Economy, University of Illinois Member of Committee of Research of the Endowment No. 16 NEGRO MIGRATION DURING THE WAR BY EMMETT J. SCOTT Secretary-Treasurer, Howard University, Washington, D.C. N E W Y O R K OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 W est 32hd S m n LONDON. TORONTO. MELBOURNE. AND BOMBAY 1920 Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis COPYRIGHT 1920 BY THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE 2 Jackson P lace, W ashington, D. C. Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis EDITOR’S PREFACE I think that no one more capable than Dr. Emmett J. Scott could have been found to present to the public a study on the subject of this monograph. The topic is one of great public importance, and the author is equipped for its treatment both by his wide knowledge of the subject and his sympathy with the viewpoint of his race. The problem of negro labor, its diffusion and its adaptation to more numerous kinds of work, are problems not only of great public importance but of great difficulty. Whatever views one may hold on the general subject of race relations between the negroes and the whites in this country, there is no question that we can not reach safe conclusions without a full knowledge of the facts as they appear to both of the interested parties. For that reason this presentation by Dr. Scott is a welcome ad­ dition to our information on the subject. Sympathetically read it w ill. help the whites to understand better the negro viewpoint, and will help the negroes to appreciate perhaps more fully the difficulties which appear from the white viewpoint. This is a field in which Tennyson’s words are pre­ eminently true, that “ Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.” Yet we can not hope ever to attain the necessary wisdom ex­ cepting by an increasing fulness of knowledge. Therefore I commend this study to every one who is interested in the ques­ tion for dispassionate reading and consideration. D a v i d K i n l e y . hi Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FOREWORD In the preparation of this study I have had the encouragement and support o f Dr. Robert R. Moton, Principal of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Alabama, who generously placed at my disposal the facilities o f the Institute’s Division of Records and Research, directed by Mr. Monroe N. Work, the editor o f the Negro Year Book. Mr. Work has cooperated with me in the most thoroughgoing manner. I have also had the support o f the National League on Urban Conditions and particularly o f the Chicago branch o f which Dr. Robert E. Park is President an d'of which Mr. T. Arnold Hill is Secre­ tary. Mr. Hill placed at my disposal his first assistant, Mr. Charles S. Johnson, graduate' student o f the University of Chicago, to whom I am greatly indebted. I must also make acknowledgment o f my indebtedness to Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Incorporated, Washington, D. C., for placing at my disposal the facilities o f his organization. The work o f investigation was divided up by assigning Mr. Work to Alabama, Georgia and Florida; Mr. Johnson to Mis­ sissippi and to centers in Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, while the eastern centers were assigned to Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, Trenton, New Jersey, a former editor o f the New York Age, and a publicist and investigator o f well known ability. It is upon the reports submitted by these investigators that this study rests. I can not speak too warmly o f the en­ thusiastic and painstaking care with which these men have labored to secure the essential facts with regard to the migration o f the negro people from the South. E m m e t t J. S c o t t . W ash in gto n, D . C., June 5,1919. Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis CONTENTS CHAPTER FAGB I Introduction.................................................................. 3 II Causes of the M igration.............................. i ............ 13 III Stimulation of the M ovem ent.................................. 26 IV The Spread o f the M ovem ent.................................. 38 V The Call of the Self-Sufficient N orth ........................ 49 V I The Draining o f the Black B e lt................................ 59 V II Efforts to Check the M ovem ent................................ 72 V III Effects o f the Movement on the S ou th ................. 86 IX The Situation in St. L o u is ......................................... * 95 X Chicago and Its E n viron s......................................... 102 X I The Situation at Points in the Middle West ...... 119 X II The Situation at Points in the E a s t....................... 134 X III Remedies for Relief by National Organizations .. 143 XIV Public Opinion Regarding the Migration............... 152 Bibliography................................................................. 175 Index .................................... ........................................ 185 Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis NEGRO MIGRATION DURING THE WAR Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis C H A P T E R I Introduction Within the brief period o f three years following the outbreak of the great war in Europe, more than four hundred thousand negroes suddenly moved north. In extent this movement is without parallel in American history, for it swept on thousands o f the blacks from remote regions o f the South, depopulated entire communities, drew upon the negro inhabitants o f practi­ cally every city o f the South, and spread from Florida to the western limits o f Texas. In character it was not without prece­ dent. In fact, it bears such a significant resemblance to the migration to Kansas in 1879 and the one to Arkansas and Texas in 1888 and 1889 that this o f 1916-1917 may be regarded as the same movement with intervals o f a number o f years. Strange as it might seem the migration of 1879 first attracted general notice when the accusation was brought that it was a political scheme to transplant thousands o f negro voters from their disfranchisement in the South to States where their votes might swell the Republican majority. Just here may be found a striking analogy to one o f the current charges brought against the movement nearly forty years later. The congressional in­ quiry which is responsible for the discovery o f the fundamental causes of the movement was occasioned by this charge and suc­ ceeded in proving its baselessness.1 The real causes o f the migration o f 1879 were not far to seek. The economic cause was the agricultural depression in the lower Mississippi Valley. But by far the most potent factor in effecting the movement was the treatment received by negroes at the hands o f the South. More specifically, as expressed by the leaders o f the movement and refugees themselves, they were a long series o f oppression, injustice and violence extending over 1 Congressional Record, 46th Cong., 2d sess., vol. X, p. 104. 3 Digitized for FRASER http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 4 NEGRO MIGRATION DURING THE WAR a period o f fifteen years; the convict system by which the courts are permitted to inflict heavy fines for trivial offenses and the sheriff to hire the convicts to planters on the basis o f peonage; denial o f political rights; long continued persecution for political reasons; a system o f cheating by landlords and storekeepers which rendered it impossible for tenants to make a living, and the inadequacy o f school facilities.1 Sworn public documents show that nearly 3,500 persons, most o f whom were negroes, were killed between 1866 and 1879, and their murderers were never brought to trial or even arrested. Several massacres of negroes occurred in the parishes o f Louisiana. Henry Adams, traveling throughout the State and taking note o f crime com­ mitted against negroes, said that 683 colored men were whipped, maimed or murdered within eleven years.* In the year 1879, therefore, thousands o f negroes from Mis­ sissippi, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee and North Caro­ lina moved to Kansas. Henry Adams o f Shreveport, Louisiana, an uneducated negro but a man o f extraordinary talent, organ­ ized that year a colonization council. He had been a soldier in the United States Army until 1869 when he returned to his home in Louisiana and found the condition o f negroes in­ tolerable. Together with a number o f other negroes he first formed a committee which in his own words was intended to “ look into affairs and see the true condition o f our race, to see whether it was possible we could stay under a people who held us in bondage or not.” This committee grew to the enor­ mous size o f five hundred members. One hundred and fifty of these members were scattered throughout the South to live and work among the negroes and report their observations.

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