Knock at the Door of Opportunity: Black Migration to Chicago, 1900-1919

8. The Reuniting of a People: A Tale of Two Black Belts

217 8. The Reuniting of a People: A Tale of Two Black Belts The world’s war has proved a blessing to us. The shutting down of immigration, due to the war, has created a demand for our labor . . . [and since] we need an opportunity to earn our bread and to protect our homes as other men . . . our only hope is to leave that country [the South] at once for a better land. —“World’s Great War a Mighty Blessing,” Chicago Defender, August 5, 1916 Chicago, the metropolis of the West, remembered in the South since the World’s Fair as a far-away city of hope from which come all great things . . . attracted all types of men, brought them in, encouraged them, and cared for them because it needed them. —Emmett J. Scott, Negro Migration during the War The years since the first impact of the migration of the black peasantry have served to bridge the cultural gap between the migrant and his fellow citizens. The degree of difference each day grows less. —E. Franklin Frazier, Opportunity, September 1929 The opening phase of the massive three-year migration of half a million African Americans from the South to the North gained official recognition through federal records and newspaper accounts by 1916. For Chicago in particular and in historical perspective, the migratory process raises the question of how well or how poorly the city’s extant population of 58,056 African Americans and the flood of 51,538 newcomers interacted during the 218 The Reuniting of a People war years and immediately afterward.1 The extent to which the populations of these two movements either clashed, existed oblivious to one another, disturbed the status quo, or, as argued here, melded represents the focal point of comprehensive historical examinations. The latter course of action most logically explains the relationship, serving as one of the necessary conditions that allowed for the attainment of the “Dream of the Black Metropolis” in the next decade.2 Appropriately placing the Great Migration in a usable historical perspective requires consideration of past, contemporary, and future intragroup relations to reach clarification of the question. In and of itself the Great Migration constitutes an important story worth telling; however, in full historical context and treated as a major stimulus to change over time, it rises to become a highly momentous event. Inside the Black Community As noted earlier, the contemporary character of the African American community as seen through its humanity as well as through its environmental dimensions differs in actuality from that offered in the academic imagination several generations in the future. Contemporarily, the collective mind-set exhibited within the ranks of the 58,056 African Americans already living in the city before 1916 partly contributed to the melding of the two populations .3 Their attitudes, values, and behavior combined with recognition of a shared cultural heritage to produce a unified people aptly expressed in their highly recognized racial consciousness. For the most part, they laid claim to a satisfactory level of acculturation and adjustment to city living equal to the experience of the generation of the Great Fire of 1871 and the World’s Fair of 1893, the so-called Old Settlers. This latter group, to reiterate, were numbered among the approximately 15,000 persons who resided in Chicago in census year 1890. The increase in this black residential universe to 44,000 souls by 1900 came about because of the magnetism of the 1893 World’s Fair, anticipated employment opportunities, the threat of a racial massacre in New Orleans in 1900, and the general attractiveness that the popular image of Chicago impressed on the African American psyche. While the sociological perspective allowed examination of a group in a limited and partial segment of time, it seemingly supported the presumption that the migrants primarily were met with hostility as well as forbearance as they tried to build bridges of mutual respect and amicability. This view embraced, in fact, the point of view of the Old Settler element toward amalgamation of the migrants. In fairness it should be considered merely one among several explanations. In reality it was more indicative of an awareness of a The Reuniting of a People 219 trend involving constant migration that seemed unstoppable.4 One positive consequence seemed to be the possibility of the assimilation of the newcomers into the resident black population. This prompted the Chicago Tribune to report...