3 Looking for a Place to Make a Home: How Southern African American migrants constructed community in an unfamiliar Midwest

During the Great Migration, a period that lasted approximately from 1910 to the late 1970s, Southern African Americans left their roots and moved northward towards better job opportunities and a less oppressive system of racism. However, in states such as Indiana and Illinois, African Americans still faced discrimination and prejudice. Despite these hardships, African Americans remained in the Midwest, not because it was better than what they had come from, but because they had created a sustainable network of community that could weather the abhorrent racism they faced. In noting their efforts to create community within Indiana and Illinois, it highlights the tribulations of any ethnic minority that comes into and settles within an unfamiliar territory. It also showcases the hopes of pursuing a life away from adversity towards the proverbial American dream, which for many minorities only arrives after generations of struggle and injustice.

When looking at the Great Migration, economic and social motives are the main signifiers for the move from the South. In “The African American ‘Great Migration’ and Beyond” Tolnay states that in the rural south, “Plantation agriculture, and the sharecropping system on which it was built, relegated most rural blacks to a landless status …” while in the southern cities, “occupational segregation in southern towns and cities concentrated male workers into unskilled jobs and female workers into domestic service” (Tolnay). In contrast, cities like Indianapolis and Chicago could offer more employment in manufacturing industries such as meatpacking industries (Grossman, 84). These instances illustrate that, to these Americans, a dream of an economically viable life was not possible in their native towns and cities. The only way to achieve them would be to uproot themselves and reach for job prospects that would give them the possibility of at least touching upon that dream.

Additionally, the social motives to leave the south were the stifling Jim Crow laws and constant racial violence that oppressed African Americans. As noted by Tolany, “… in 10 southern states between 1910–1920 and 1920–1930…black out migration was significantly higher in counties that had experienced more black lynchings” (Tolany). Though racism and discrimination was not, and is not, easily escapable, these migrants sought out places where systemic bigotry had yet to take root in order to lessen the life experience of an African American citizen.

Consequently, the draw and subsequent cement that helped create and sustain the African American presence in the Midwest was the sense of community. This was crafted through religious organizations; much like what was seen in German immigrants in the Midwest (Vega, 22). In the Midwest, Black churches, often sustained through activities promoted by African American women, supported the population through philanthropic social services. For example, in Indiana, the Ladies Alliance born of the Corinthian Baptist Church, “sponsored lectures and demonstrations on such matters as health and they invited nationally known black leaders to present lectures on the importance of race pride and racial solidarity. Each Thanksgiving and Christmas Sister Reed and the members of the Ladies Alliance prepared and distributed food baskets to the black poor” (Hine). Religious affiliations for these migrants aided in their determination to make and sustain a home for themselves in an unfamiliar landscape. In joining these churches, southern migrants grasped onto a sense of African American community that didn’t just have spiritual and religious benefits, but social ones as well. Even in short fiction works such as “The Gospel of Moral ends”, which takes place in Chicago, it illustrates how some Baptists churches moved from the South to the Midwest and grew from the community and influence gained in Chicago. “Deep down wanderers brought the Mount with them from Mobile County, Alabama, or some such burning place…” (Pollack, Ojikutu, 33). These religious networks offered social service and community benefits that, despite any hardship that still plagued them, allowed Southern migrants a space of their own to grow and become a part of the Midwest within the familiar frameworks and structures that they were accustomed to back home.

Furthermore, another draw and staying force within the Midwest was a cultural newspaper. Again, similar to German immigrants utilizing their language and the press to create cultural ties to home (Vega, 51), so too did African Americans construct cultural ties that surpassed regions and lured southern migrants to make a home in the Midwest. In Illinois the Chicago Defender played a major role in the Great Migration, becoming the authority on Black pride and racial issues. The founder, Robert S. Abbot, was a native southerner from Georgia who had moved to Illinois in 1905 (Grossman 85). His newspaper not only reported on the violent lynchings and racism in the South, but advocated for migration to the North. “ Once it endorsed the migration, the Defender proved a strong stimulus to the movement as it included vivid North-South contrasts, advertisements for newly available jobs, exciting images of city life, and reports of ‘migration fever’”(Grossman 90). Founded by a southerner, the Defender played its role in drawing forth and creating community by illustrating a different life in the Midwest. It linked the experience of Black Americans together and advocated for cultural pride and justice against the tyranny of racists; just like its namesake it offered a guardian-like quality for Southern migrants searching for a new home against the hostile attitudes and discriminatory actions of White Americans.

Though life in the Midwest was often advertised as a better alternative to the Jim Crow South, Midwestern White people still held prejudices against the African American community. In Midwestern cities migrant African Americans were routinely discriminated against for housing, education, and work. In the early 20th century in Gary, Indiana, a newspaper stated, “ fifty Blacks had been run out of the city within two days,…Chief Martin is determined that the city shall be cleared of worthless Negro who refuses to work…” (Betten, Mohl, 54). In Chicago White citizens, “forcefully and violently resisted Black “encroachments”…Bombs were used to frighten away Blacks, most of whom were thought to be illiterate sharecroppers from the rural south” (Fleisher, 769). The violent aspects of American life that Southern migrants were attempting to escape were just as present within these new Midwestern landscapes.

Specifically, in Chicago, one of the most devastating riots left 38 people dead due to mounting racial tensions spurred on by the drowning of an African American adolescent caused by White individuals; no arrests of the White citizens were made (“Chicago Race Riot of 1919”). The migrants who settled in the Midwest protested the racism and injustice that afflicted their new homes and communities. Through the works of local organizations sponsored or constructed through church and from the loud support of African American owned businesses, such as newspapers, African Americans were strong enough in their numbers and support for one another to push back against the continued abuses. Noted in Indianapolis, specifically, “representatives of the black community, most often institutions or organizational leaders, would beseech white officials to address an area of concern…If their appeals failed, as they so frequently did, then those same representatives sought legislative or court remedies” (Pierce, 109).

 While discrimination and violence persisted in the Midwest just as it did in the South, Southern African Americans continued to arrive. These migrants believed that who they were and who they could be was stronger than the vitriolic racism they faced. As a result of their continued efforts to make a comfortable life for themselves, they eventually became Midwesterners who could claim the region as their home as well.

Works Cited

Betten, Neil, and Raymond A. Mohl. “The Evolution of Racism in an Industrial City, 1906-1940: A Case Study of Gary, Indiana.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 59, no. 1, 1974, pp. 51–64. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2717140. Accessed 17 Apr. 2020.

Encyclopedia Britannica. “Chicago Race Riot of 1919”. Encyclopedia Britannica. 2015. https://www.britannica.com/event/Chicago-Race-Riot-of-1919

  Fleisher, Mark S. “Historical Roots of Chicago’s Contemporary Violence: An Interpretation of Chicago’s Early Sociologists’ Texts on Black Assimilation.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 50, no. 8, Nov. 2019, pp. 767–786, doi:10.1177/0021934719883358.  https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1177/0021934719883358

Grossman, James R. “Blowing the Trumpet: The ‘Chicago Defender’ and Black Migration during World War I.” Illinois Historical Journal, vol. 78, no. 2, 1985, pp. 82–96. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40191833. Accessed 17 Apr. 2020.

Hine, Darlene C. When the Truth Is Told : A History of Black Women’s Culture and Community in Indiana, 1875-1950. National Council of Negro Women, Indianapolis Section, 1981. https://lit-alexanderstreet-com.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/blww/view/1001066585

Pierce, Richard B. Polite Protest : The Political Economy of Race in Indianapolis, 1920-1970. Indiana University Press, 2005. https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/eds/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzE2NDEyNl9fQU41?sid=79313b33-ce8d-4609-8bdd-012c05926a07@sdc-v-sessmgr03&vid=0&format=EB&rid=1

Pollack, Neil. Chicago Noir. Akashic Book. 2005. Kindle eBook

Tolnay, Stewart E. “The African American Great Migration and Beyond”.  Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 29, 2003, pp. 209-232. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100009#_i3

Vega, Sujey. Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest. NYU Press, 2015. Project MUSE https://muse-jhu-edu.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/book/42366/