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

1. The Fabric of Society

21 1. The Fabric of Society Seeing the door of hope closed to me and to my people, and my hands tied to give millions, I vowed to God that I would take advantage of my disadvantages, and, if ever the opportunity presented itself, I would give largely of my hard-earned means, which were from the sweat of my brow, to the first call that came that was interdenominational , which would help to fully develop the boy and man to fit him, not only for the service of himself, but for his country as well. —$1,000 YMCA donor James Tilgham, 1912 I don’t want anybody to give anything that is unearned, but if a person measures up, she should be accorded equal respect. —Joanna C. Snowden on the occasion of her seventy-fifth birthday in 1939 African Americans held a precarious position as a racial minority in a racially conscious society. An enormous physical mass of millions of persons, along with corresponding social and mental frameworks, made Chicago what it was and was perceived to be. As a seeming land of hope and opportunity for all newcomers, it partially fulfilled Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s description of offering social equality to its first, frontier generations. Whether its twentieth-century milieu would continue its tradition and allow for economic equality of opportunity appeared conjectural, given its labor conflicts and rigid class lines separating haves and have-nots. Despite formidable impediments and in contradiction to popular belief, the character of interracial interaction was informed to a great extent through the dynamics of 22 The Fabric of Society internal race relations, the subject of which is under exploration. Embodying an ethos contemporarily labeled as belonging to New Negro thinking, African Americans courageously turned disadvantage into advantage as they willingly accepted the challenge to openly compete with whites for jobs, housing, and an independent political voice. Moreover, with Progressive Era Chicago also laboring under a national cloak of racial hypocrisy, which hid its more nefarious traits of prejudice, discrimination, and segregation, a critical mass of African Americans tipped the city’s demographic equilibrium and produced a race riot. Both as a result of and as a stimulus to the conflict, an energized, self-confident black population was determined to carve a niche of its own making and in this manner paved the way for the future actualization of the Black Metropolis. The Phenomenon Chicago’s general population in census year 1900 soared to 1,698,575 persons with an African American component that accounted for 30,150 residents. Virtually invisible, African Americans represented not quite 2 percent of the metropolis’s total constituency, which, consistent with the racial animosity of the period toward blacks, suited the sentiments of the majority population. Chicago as a magnet of promise and hope would,however,continue to witness a constant influx of African American newcomers through the years. Within six years, Richard R. Wright Jr. estimated (slightly incorrectly, as it turned out) that this black aggregate numbered approximately 46,000 persons and represented an enormous 65 percent increase in population in the span of half a decade.There was a huge increase underway, nonetheless, resulting in a substantiated U.S.census total in 1910 of 44,103 black persons out of a citywide total of 2,185,283 souls.This phenomenal movement of people proved startling to Wright,who had developed a national perspective on migration by this time, thinking that “in all probability,more Negroes are coming to this city than any other city in the country.”1 Part of a national trend, it was welcomed wholeheartedly by neither blacks nor whites, neither in the north nor in the south.2 The dynamics of the fabric of society in black Chicago at the turn of the century were best appreciated through an exploration of its nonstatistical demographics and dominant social profiles. Writing in 1905, Fannie Barrier Williams characterized the essence of this phenomenon as “efforts for self-help and self-advancement [built upon] a determination that is altogether creditable.”3 In its expanding mass, it had assumed the strength of a strong current, having generated enough force through internal dynamics to constitute more recognition than that of a trickle. This factor of acting independently in pursuit of predetermined goals was a distinguishing force in The Fabric of Society 23 black Chicago history. Wright moreover posited that its uniqueness was in its being...