The Great Migration
An interesting story of the movement of black people from the South during the early part of the 20th Century. Of note is that many of the people interviewed don't seem to see the racism and segregation they faced in the North as being nearly as bad as in the South.

... They poured into East Side [Cleveland, Ohio] neighborhoods already jam-packed with families and found little room to move. Segregation forces rose like walls around the newcomers. A segregated black community emerged. Whites fled from its edges, establishing the housing patterns of the modern city.

... The influx of poor, uneducated blacks from the Deep South alarmed even the black establishment, said CSU Professor Regennia Williams, who did her doctoral thesis on the Great Migration. The white community all but panicked. Racism took hold, and new, unspoken rules emerged. Traditionally, Cleveland's immigrant groups clustered for self-support and then moved up and out. By the second and third generation, many had assimilated into the larger community. "But the blacks seem to be trapped," said Williams, recalling the era. "It's the racism that seems to endure when for other groups, ethnicity melts away." Restrictive covenants, redlining and insular white ethnic communities kept the black community confined to a crowded swatch of Cleveland's East Side. Newspapers called it the Negro Ghetto. Its heart was the neighborhood known as Central. Housing was scarce and often miserable. Central High School crowded 40 or more students into classrooms. Elementary students attended school in double shifts. The segregation and racism dismayed the migrants but did not crush them -- they had endured it before. In many ways, life in Cleveland was better than in Alabama or Georgia.

... Prominent black politicians and businessmen lived alongside steelworkers and housekeepers. Homes were divided into small apartments with shared bathrooms and kitchens.

... "Our people had their own businesses," said Lula Newton, who moved here from Tennessee in 1947.

I have been struggling since reading this article to figure out what to say about it--the segregation and the racism of the North appear different from that in the South only in the fact that it was not reduced to legislative fiat--the rules were "unspoken." The conditions in segregated Birmingham of the 1940s were the same as described for Cleveland--blacks had their own schools, stores, doctors, theaters, neighborhoods--the only difference seemed to be that workers received better pay. I'm sure they did, but then again, the percentage difference between whites and blacks was probably about equal to that of their Southern kin.

Was, or is, the mere absence of institutionalized racism sufficient to allow everyone to be comfortable with it? "Well, we may have been racist and allowed segregation, but at least everyone could drink from the same fountain, and we paid better, and we had the good sense not to write it down." I don't know, but I believe that this is one of those things like the Emancipation Proclamation--perception being much more powerful and influential than reality. We still struggle with it today--the image of "Bombingham" and of snarling police dogs and fire hoses are the only things many will allow themselves to believe about the South of today. It is different here today, and I believe people who examine us honestly would say it is better.

As the saying goes, don't believe everything you read in the papers.
posted by Terry at 8:40:00 AM