Blues Empress in Black Chattanooga: Bessie Smith and the Emerging Urban South

2. "The Freest Town on the Map": Black Migration to New South Chattanooga

2 “The Freest Town on the Map” Black Migration to New South Chattanooga Hold that engine, let sweet mama get on board, Hold that engine, let sweet mama get on board, ’Cause my home ain’t here, it’s a long way down the road. Come back, choo-choo, mama’s gonna find a berth, Come back, choo-choo, mama’s gonna find a berth. Goin’ to Dixieland, it’s the grandest place on earth. —Bessie Smith, “Dixie Flyer Blues” In the aftermath of Reconstruction in the 1880s, the South attempted to reconfigure itself politically, economically, and socially in the wake of the removal of federal troops from the region. For Chattanooga, specifically, the 1880s saw a boom in its population and the development of industry. The city’s population had doubled since 1870, and Chattanooga became one of Tennessee’s larger cities, its residents numbering nearly thirteen thousand .1 As early as 1868 the city’s residents had encouraged northerners and southerners to “come to Chattanooga,” and by 1880 the city was well on its way to transforming itself into one of the premier cities of Tennessee and the southeastern United States. The businessman and former mayor John T. Wilder predicted that the city would be the “freest town on the map.”2 While the new decade brought the promise of prosperity for Chattanooga and other southern cities like Atlanta and Memphis, the era did not hold this same promise for the significant portion of the South’s residents who were African American. Blacks, who largely resided in rural areas, bore the brunt of Reconstruction’s aftermath. The removal of federal troops meant the end of overt federal protection for the few legal rights freedpersons had amassed 36 blues empress in black chattanooga with the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.3 The return of southern Democratic rule ended many African American forays into local, state, and federal politics. Slavery was over, yet the sharecropping system still robbed former slaves of their economic freedoms and the right to control the product of their labors. Furthermore, racial violence erupted throughout the South, as white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia sought to restore control over the newly freed African American population through fear and physical intimidation. This violence, combined with the lack of economic and civil freedoms, prompted many southern blacks to attempt to escape their plight through migration North and West. Many African Americans who chose to migrate within the South pushed toward the growing urban southern centers. Chattanooga, a newly emerging industrial center of the Southeast, became one of the destinations for transformation and renewal. The Chattanooga black community was greatly altered as a result of the wave of migration between 1880 and 1910. Migration redefined the social dynamics of the black community and allowed African Americans to become integral players in shaping the Chattanooga urban landscape. This environment drew black families like Bessie Smith’s and hundreds of others to the city. The city landscape also created the conditions that fostered the rise of a blues culture, for the increase in the black population coincided with official implementation of Jim Crow segregation conditions. Overview of Chattanooga in 1880 Although Chattanooga had begun to rebuild itself in the decade after the devastating Civil War, and black Chattanoogans had built the foundations of an independent community, the city did not experience a vast measure of expansion until the 1870s came to a close. When Adolph S. Ochs, the founder of the Chattanooga Times and the future owner of the New York Times, initially entered the city as a young man in 1878, he remarked that Chattanooga was a frontier town of “nothing but the most miserable dirt roads . . . and only a crude ferry operated by an old mule on a treadmill bridged the river.”4 Yet after surviving a disastrous flood in 1867, a national economic panic in 1873, a devastating fire in 1877, and a crippling bout of yellow fever in 1878, the city residents built new industries and rebuilt a railroad and river-transportation system that gave the city “the most ample connections with all points of the country.”5 By 1880, local residents hungered for a more modern image, a new start in the wake of Civil War turmoil, and the opportunity to be a city of the New South. “the freest town on...