Black People : THE GREAT BLACK MIGRATION(S)

Isaiah

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Jun 8, 2004
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I don't know whether this topic has been addressed in depth at this forum, so if I sound like I don't know what time it is, please don't hesitate to tell me so.

This particular subject has such far-reaching ramifications, and all-encompassing impact on American society and culture over the last 100 years, that it easily competes with the Civil Rights Movement for the single most important socio-political event in the country's history. For one, it took place over a 100 year period, roughly 1870 to 1970, when, historians say, African Americans began their exodus out of the rural south to the urban north. This exodus started as a trickle, then, to places in the midwest, such as the state of Kansas, and turned into full-blown mass exodus during, and after, the WWI and WWII periods, when more than 6 million African Americans left the south for the north...

It is interesting to note each angle in this exodus for it's historical importance, how it changed America and it's culture, and how it changed African Americans cultural sensibilities and perspectives, as mainly rural people moving into an urban environment. For example, we've rarely considered the implications had African Americans stayed on those farms down south, rather than migrating out to Chicago, for example, the birthplace of Gospel music and the Urban Blues sound we call Soul... We've never considered whether there'd ever have been a Harlem Renaissance or Motown Records, or a Nation of Islam had our people stayed down south on those plantations...

Yes, African Americans in the rural south brought a tremendous wealth of riches in culture with them when they came north, but would it have morphed, as it did, had it not been for the migration? In turn, African Americans in the north created their own cultural contributions, such as Rhythm & Blues and HipHop, which are forms which the entire world, now, sings... They world, now, attempts to appropriate the once hated Black Lexicon which our parents brought with them from the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Georgia... Ebonics, we could say endearingly, has become a plague upon the earth(smile!)

But, seriously, the historians all seem to agree that it was those World Wars that triggered the mass migrations of African Americans out of the south... African American men returning home from wars in which they had fought for democracy in far-flung places, and received the plaudits of the world, saw no such democracy in the place of their birth. The great Bluesman, Big Bill Broonzy says, that when he got off the train in Mississippi, in his uniform with Sargeant's stripes on his sleeves, he was greeted by angry white men, who told him to go get in his overalls, as he "wont be needing no uniform where you're gonna be workin'..." That's all 6-foot 5-inches, and 250 pounds of man being treated as a boy, and Big Bill, along with millions of other Black Men, had decided he would tolerate it no longer... It was Big Bill Broonzy who wrote the song, Goin' To Chicago, an anthem for literally millions of AfroSippians, from the 1920's onward into the 1970's...

Twenty Five years later, brothers Medgar and Charles Evers would return home to Mississippi from fighting in WWII, and find themselves unable to even register to vote, but their service to this country gave them a sense of their place in this world, and they decided they would organize African Americans, and fight this Jim Crow system until it was finally torn down... This scenario was played out all over the south, as returning veterans actually opted to stay and fight the system, rather than take flight to the north... For even in the north, African Americans still faced defacto Jim Crow, and white violence, as in the Red Summer of 1919, and subsequent major riots in New York and Detroit in the 1940's...

I don't mean to write an entire history here, as I am neither qualified, nor have the time, but I feel it is important to teach our children and grandchildren this history, and how we have impacted on this society in such an all-encompassing way... It is not enough to talk about George Washington Carver, Charles Drew, and Granville T. Woods, as scientists and inventors who've made contributions to the world... My parents and your parents, simple people with warm southern twangs and smiles and customs, also made their impact on this society... It was these Black Folk, the Local People, historian John Dittmer called them, who got organized, and fought Jim Crow down south, who deserve as much credit as Elijah McCoy, because they changed the fabric of this country... We must not only teach our children, but ourselves, because the vast majority of African Americans in New York, California, Illinois, and Michigan may know that mama and papa came here from south, but they don't understand the larger impact of that trip for all of the generations that have followed...

We need to understand those implications, and White folks need to understand those implications, because a whole lot of them seem to think they were "down" with our cultural inventions and conventions from jump, and how this could be true under statutory segregation, mandated by the highest court in the land, escapes logical understanding... So, in understanding OurStory, we can cut these folks off at that pass where they re-write and revise history to their satisfaction(smile!) Be Back with some websites of note to continue this discussion - and thank you for your patience if you've read this long-winded piece!!!(smile!)

Isaiah
 
Isaiah said:
I don't know whether this topic has been addressed in depth at this forum, so if I sound like I don't know what time it is, please don't hesitate to tell me so.

This particular subject has such far-reaching ramifications, and all-encompassing impact on American society and culture over the last 100 years, that it easily competes with the Civil Rights Movement for the single most important socio-political event in the country's history. For one, it took place over a 100 year period, roughly 1870 to 1970, when, historians say, African Americans began their exodus out of the rural south to the urban north. This exodus started as a trickle, then, to places in the midwest, such as the state of Kansas, and turned into full-blown mass exodus during, and after, the WWI and WWII periods, when more than 6 million African Americans left the south for the north...

It is interesting to note each angle in this exodus for it's historical importance, how it changed America and it's culture, and how it changed African Americans cultural sensibilities and perspectives, as mainly rural people moving into an urban environment. For example, we've rarely considered the implications had African Americans stayed on those farms down south, rather than migrating out to Chicago, for example, the birthplace of Gospel music and the Urban Blues sound we call Soul... We've never considered whether there'd ever have been a Harlem Renaissance or Motown Records, or a Nation of Islam had our people stayed down south on those plantations...

Yes, African Americans in the rural south brought a tremendous wealth of riches in culture with them when they came north, but would it have morphed, as it did, had it not been for the migration? In turn, African Americans in the north created their own cultural contributions, such as Rhythm & Blues and HipHop, which are forms which the entire world, now, sings... They world, now, attempts to appropriate the once hated Black Lexicon which our parents brought with them from the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Georgia... Ebonics, we could say endearingly, has become a plague upon the earth(smile!)

But, seriously, the historians all seem to agree that it was those World Wars that triggered the mass migrations of African Americans out of the south... African American men returning home from wars in which they had fought for democracy in far-flung places, and received the plaudits of the world, saw no such democracy in the place of their birth. The great Bluesman, Big Bill Broonzy says, that when he got off the train in Mississippi, in his uniform with Sargeant's stripes on his sleeves, he was greeted by angry white men, who told him to go get in his overalls, as he "wont be needing no uniform where you're gonna be workin'..." That's all 6-foot 5-inches, and 250 pounds of man being treated as a boy, and Big Bill, along with millions of other Black Men, had decided he would tolerate it no longer... It was Big Bill Broonzy who wrote the song, Goin' To Chicago, an anthem for literally millions of AfroSippians, from the 1920's onward into the 1970's...

Twenty Five years later, brothers Medgar and Charles Evers would return home to Mississippi from fighting in WWII, and find themselves unable to even register to vote, but their service to this country gave them a sense of their place in this world, and they decided they would organize African Americans, and fight this Jim Crow system until it was finally torn down... This scenario was played out all over the south, as returning veterans actually opted to stay and fight the system, rather than take flight to the north... For even in the north, African Americans still faced defacto Jim Crow, and white violence, as in the Red Summer of 1919, and subsequent major riots in New York and Detroit in the 1940's...

I don't mean to write an entire history here, as I am neither qualified, nor have the time, but I feel it is important to teach our children and grandchildren this history, and how we have impacted on this society in such an all-encompassing way... It is not enough to talk about George Washington Carver, Charles Drew, and Granville T. Woods, as scientists and inventors who've made contributions to the world... My parents and your parents, simple people with warm southern twangs and smiles and customs, also made their impact on this society... It was these Black Folk, the Local People, historian John Dittmer called them, who got organized, and fought Jim Crow down south, who deserve as much credit as Elijah McCoy, because they changed the fabric of this country... We must not only teach our children, but ourselves, because the vast majority of African Americans in New York, California, Illinois, and Michigan may know that mama and papa came here from south, but they don't understand the larger impact of that trip for all of the generations that have followed...

We need to understand those implications, and White folks need to understand those implications, because a whole lot of them seem to think they were "down" with our cultural inventions and conventions from jump, and how this could be true under statutory segregation, mandated by the highest court in the land, escapes logical understanding... So, in understanding OurStory, we can cut these folks off at that pass where they re-write and revise history to their satisfaction(smile!) Be Back with some websites of note to continue this discussion - and thank you for your patience if you've read this long-winded piece!!!(smile!)

Isaiah


You on Time Brotha! As a brotha from the South, the good ol' Bible Belt, I loved it.

Blackbird
 
Excellent thread Brother Isaiah, thank you for bringing this to our attention. I personally believe that African Americans have woven a beautiful and rich history in America in spite of our brutal and demoralizing beginnings here. What we were able to do with so little is evident in your article. But as I reflect on this migration, and our evolution as a result of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, I sit here wondering what we have lost or given up in the transition from south to north. Being from the south myself, I see some of the differences in the mindset and behavior of southern Blacks versus northern Blacks--particularly post-integration and desegregation. The GREAT migration meaning we moved en masse but was it as great as we had hoped it would be?

Peace,
Queenie :spinstar:
 

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