Black People : THE GREAT BLACK MIGRATION(S)

Isaiah said:
No HipHip, Mr. Blak!(smile!)

Firstly, there were NO such thing as Black Ghettoes before this migration of over 7-million African Americans between 1870 and 1970... I provided some of the numbers of the population dispersal and explosion into northern cities during the first half of the 20th century to give an example of how quickly we peopled the northern half of the United States... The ghettoes were created in Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and New York because of 2 reasons... In Chicago and Detroit, for example, restrictive legal real estate covenants, which kept White persons who were moving out of their neighborhoods from selling their homes to Blacks, and simple White Flight, as happened in New York City...

In Detroit and Chicago, African Americans, though hemmed in on the South and North Sides of their cities, built strong business classes, where as in NYC, no strong business class of AFrican Americans ever developed - though the city was wide open for us to move as we pleased... So, segregation actually worked out to some extent, for brothers and sisters in Detroit and Chicago, where large businesses were actually built(Motown and Johnson Publishing)...


Peace!
Isaiah

I learned thru my studies about the creation of the modern ghettos in NYC....it made me furious to see how it went down. Blacks were already in ghetto areas that had blacks of varying wealth...and some owned houses and such. But Robert Moses tore down those old neighbourhoods (where the life of the community was on the street) and threw up the high rise hell's that many blacks and latinos in NYC now live in. That man had too much power and shifted people around like a game of sim city.....of course, everyone copies what NYC does so that spread accross america....at least the north east and mid west. It is a sad history.

What do you see as the benefits of having left the south?

When I think of the last place in North America I would ever live and that any black should want to live....the south gets in my head. I see it as backwards and stagnated.....a state of mind that perfection in the black community was attained within one generation or two after abolishon of slavery. Surely it wsnt all good for such a migration to happen? Much like the immigrants of today spreading accross the planet, blacks fled cause of push and pull factors....pull of jobs was one I know and push from racism. Why doesnt anyone speak of the good? Improvement does not always mean everything turns out right...look at immigrants who leave war torn countries and come to the US or Canada to end up in rat infested apartment complexes in neighbourhoods filled with drugs and violence.
 
What do you see as the benefits of having left the south?

When I think of the last place in North America I would ever live and that any black should want to live....the south gets in my head. I see it as backwards and stagnated.....a state of mind that perfection in the black community was attained within one generation or two after abolishon of slavery. Surely it wsnt all good for such a migration to happen? Much like the immigrants of today spreading accross the planet, blacks fled cause of push and pull factors....pull of jobs was one I know and push from racism. Why doesnt anyone speak of the good? Improvement does not always mean everything turns out right...look at immigrants who leave war torn countries and come to the US or Canada to end up in rat infested apartment complexes in neighbourhoods filled with drugs and violence.[/QUOTE]
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Well, one of the benefits of leaving the south was wages were much higher for those who could get a job in a factory or on the assembly line in New York, Detroit, or Chicago... That's why folk left in the beginning of this migration north... The Chicago Defender and other Black Media(newspapers), along with the prodding news along the grapevine in Black America, motivated our parents and grandparents to take the trip north...

Education in the urban north was better, and less subject to interruption than in the rural south, where both my mother and father received like, max, third grade educations because they grew up on farms and plantations where there hands were needed... Of course, this lack of education limited a lot of African Americans to the same menial positions in the north as they'd performed in the south - albeit at slighltly higher wages... As the cost of living in the North was probably higher, though, it really didn't make much of a difference financially...

The real big difference was in the level of social freedom, of movement, less open harrassment, humiliation, suffering, and wanton cruelty and death... In the north, African Americans probably found that the White man was no less racist, prejudiced, or violent, but more likely to let that violence be meted out by, say, the police department(smile!) With the exception of those infamous race riots that took place during and following the world wars, Blacks faced little violence from whites because of our proximity with them being limited to interactions with the Police and shop keepers... White flight saw to that... Like Malcolm X once said, once we moved in, they moved out, thus the creation of our urban ghettoes...

But, Mr. Blak, don't get it twisted, brother... If African Americans had been allowed to earn decent wages, and been left to our own devices without white man's interference in our lives, few of them would've moved out of the south... There'd have been no Great Black Migration, and I and my siblings would've grown up down in the Carolinas... There's little doubt of that in my mind, as my mother and father loved their families, and loved the south - despite the terrrible humiliations many endured down there... They sent us south damned near every year in the summers, as did every African American family who could afford to do so... I was reading somewhere that this is actually African tradition, to have the young commune with their elders, their families, as much as is possible, and my moms and pops sure believed in that tradition(smile!)

The south, now, as a matter of fact, finds those African Americans retiring, and going back home... Their children are moving with them, or just going there to make a life for themselves where they can... They are better educated than were their parents... They are professionals, and they are far more conscious of their standing on the planet... White man wouldn't dare attempt what he did back in the day, as he knows that war was one he lost convincingly... Besides all that, Mr. Blak, be advised that the south has always been a warmer much friendlier place than the urban north... Folk who had nothing would invite you in to eat their last morsel... They wave and smile at you, and don't have to know you to do that... That was the value system in my own household when I was a little boy...

(In 1988, I remember that I took my wife to the Bahamas with a group of New York friends of ours, and while down there I met a group of Blacks and Whites who had traveled there from Raleigh, North Carolina... Well, I got engaged with these folk at a salad bar, and my lady and I wound up spending most of our week down there chillin' with the Black and White Carolininans... They exhibited the same warmth and sunny disposition I loved about my family in the south)

The old way, the terrible caste system that existed down there, is over... Does racism and white supremacy continue to exist - yep, of course they do, but less out in the open... The same is true here in NYC, too, though...(smile!) But even in 1965 Malcolm X told us to stop talking about the south... He said as long as we're south of the canadian border, "you south!" Nuff Said...

Peace!
Isaiah
 
DreamFunk said:
...nice thread Isiah....and check out this music map, I think it's quite relevant to the topic (early music trends followed migratory trends):

http://www.uwec.edu/Geography/Ivogeler/w188/south/south34.gif

...and another nice map (the brown areas represent counties were Afroamericans made up more than 50% of the population):

http://www.uwec.edu/Geography/Ivogeler/w188/south/south35.gif
.

Brother DreamFunk, very interesting!(smile!) That music migration got me thrown off a particular website when I sought to explain the musical explosions of the '50's and '60's Chicago and Detroit style... These white folks were acting as if that music wafted on the air from out of nowhere, like it came down Lake Superior in a canoe, or something...(smile!)

You see, when you have X-ed certain people out of the telling or YOUR version of history, and you are the dominant population, you damage them, but you damage yourself, as well... What's interesting about this migration is how much music and musical styles it spawned... That's HOW African Americans changed this country, and this world - by showing it in no uncertain terms, that we not only had a culture, but it was irrepressibly powerful and transcendent...

Peace!
Isaiah
 

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