Document Based Questions The Great Migration Historical Context: In the 1930 s the Great Migration of Blacks from the South to the North occurred. Part of this migration led to the forming of the Rapp Road Community in the Pine Bush. Task: In a well constructed essay use the following documents and your knowledge of social studies, to describe if the Great Migration helped to improve the conditions for African Americans in America. Part A: Short Answer The documents in Part A relate information about occupations in the 1930 s. Examine each document carefully, and then answer the question(s) that follow. The answers to these questions will help you in Part B. Part B: Essay Task Using your understanding of the documents in Part A, the answers to the questions on the documents and your knowledge of Social Studies, write a well developed essay that includes an introduction, support paragraphs and conclusion. In your essay discuss whether the Great Migration helped to improve the conditions for African Americans in America.
Part A: Read every document and answer all questions. Document #1 The Great Migration This document is an excerpt from Jennifer Lemak s Dissertation, Southern Life, Northern City: The History of Albany s Rapp Road Community (2004) 1. What economic reasons led African Americans to move from the South to the North. Document #2 Sharecropping This document is an excerpt from Jennifer Lemak s Dissertation, Southern Life, Northern City: The History of Albany s Rapp Road Community (2004) 1. How did sharecropping stop African Americans from improving the conditions of their life? Document # 3 Occupations Charts created from Jennifer Lemak s Dissertation Southern Life, Northern City: The History of Albany s Rapp Road Community (2004) 1. What types (level) of jobs did African Americans have in the 1930 s? Document #4 Reality of Life in the South This document is an excerpt from Jennifer Lemak s Dissertation, Southern Life, Northern City: The History of Albany s Rapp Road Community (2004) 1. List three reasons why the North was a better place for African Americans to live?
Part B: Essay Task Using your understanding of the documents in Part A, the answers to the questions on the documents and your knowledge of Social Studies, write a well developed essay that includes an introduction, support paragraphs and conclusion. In your essay discuss whether the Great Migration helped to improve the conditions for African Americans in America
Document #1 The Great Migration Several economic factors contributed to the Great Migration. Before World War I began in 1914, few African Americans were economically prosperous. The majority of northern blacks were manual laborers, domestic servants, or both. In the South, most blacks were sharecropping farmers, manual laborers, and domestic servants. This changed with the start of WWI. The flow of European immigrants to the United States was halted. As a result, there were fewer immigrants to fill lower level manufacturing jobs, so northern manufacturers dropped their race biases and hired African Americans for the first time. It is estimated that 400,000 African Americans took manufacturing jobs in northern cities before the end of World War I. A second factor contributing to migration was that wages in the North were higher than the agriculturally based wages in the South. When word of this traveled south, many blacks made the decision to leave. A third economic factor contributing to the Great Migration was the series of economic setbacks prior to World War I that hit southern farmers hard. All of this destruction resulted in poor crop returns for farmers. As a result, landowners tightened credit making it even more difficult for black sharecroppers to break even. When banks began to fold and loans became impossible to secure, farm owners were forced to sell their land at low prices. This put tenants in an even worse situation of limited advances of food and clothing, while increasing the already high interest rates they paid.
Document #2 Sharecropping According to Girlie Ferguson, whose parents were sharecroppers in Shubuta, life during the early twentieth century was hard for most blacks. Farming was a low paying difficult occupation. Farmers worked long labor intensive days in extreme heat and hoped for a good crop return. School aged children worked on farms to help their families. As a result, black children attended school only six months out of the year in Mississippi. Furthermore, sharecroppers and tenant farmers often had to deal with dishonest landlords Sharecropping was a landlord tenant relationship in which the tenant cultivated the owner's land and received a percentage of the profits, in either money or crops. Often the tenants had to buy or rent seeds, equipment, and animals from the landowners. The result was that the sharecropper constantly owed money to the landowner. Fred Thomas, a long time Shubuta, Mississippi resident spoke about his experience sharecrop farming between 1930 and 1932. They [migrants moving from Shubuta to Albany] just counted on it was better time up there than it was here. It had been rough... I was working for four bits a day...fifty cents a day...working forking the field and with the plow. I also worked in the sawmill.... and the railroad laying track and ties, spike them down.... I didn't go north because I had a family. I was living out on Mag Stanley's [a large plantation owned by the Maggie Stanley]...we were farming down there and we had never been nowhere, so we just stayed around. I think I left there [the Stanley plantation] in [19]32. I was treated all right.... I would be there plowing with Miss Maggie and they wouldn't be able to buy me feed. We would plow mules in the day and turn them out at night.... It had been just so rough down here, just so rough. After I stayed there two years and didn't make no money, I left. At the end of the year I would never clear nothing out of my cotton crops.... I wouldn't owe her [Maggie Stanley] anything, but she came and got all my cotton and paid for what I had got. I ain't owing her when I left, not a thing in the world... After I got on my own I started making money. 1
Document # 3 Occupations Table 1 Top 5 Occupations for African American Heads of Household* Occupation Percent Laborer 26.7 Porter 15.0 Maid/housekeeper 5.3 Chauffeur 2.5 Cook 2.3 No employment 11.1 Table 2 Top 5 Industries where African American Heads of Household worked* Industry Percent Railroad 18.0 Private Family 9.8 Construction 6.3 Garage 5.0 Building 4.8 Table 3 Working Wives Occupation Percent None 76.3 Cleaning/housekeeping 10.1 Cooking 4.4 Laundry 2.2 Maid at a hotel 1.6 Dressmaker 0.9 * According to the 1930 United States Census
Document #4 Reality of Life in the South The political schema in the South prior to World War I had not changed much since post Civil War Reconstruction. Jim Crow laws, like the black codes and the slave codes, were legally mandated laws designed to replace the social controls of slavery, and thus insured racial segregation between 1877 and the 1950s. These laws maintained that blacks and whites were not social equals. Blacks suffered with inferior schools, libraries, hospitals, law enforcement, and public accommodations. To make matters worse, blacks were not recognized by the judicial system. If they were found guilty of a petty crime, they could be put into a chain gain and forced to work. Dogs and guns hunted down black sharecroppers, who left their plantation before their debt was paid or harvest gathered. i In his book about the Great Migration, Peter Gottlieb stated, The real slavery of buying and selling blacks before the Civil War gave way to the semi slavery of peonage, convict lease labor, and the exchanging of black tenants debts among white landowners. Furthermore, blacks had few options at the voting polls. Many blacks did not vote because they had to pass difficult literacy tests, pay a large poll tax, own property, or were threatened with violence. Worse than these intimidations, many felt that their vote would not make any difference. Eddie McDonald, an African American migrant from Mississippi, said that he remembers having to look at a jar of jelly beans and be able to know how many there were before they would let blacks vote. Not having a voice in government was one of the reasons McDonald migrated to Chicago, Illinois. Disenfranchised southern African Americans had no political recourses to change the politics and laws that kept them poverty stricken. As a result, many looked to the North as a political and economic arena they could participate in and benefit
from. Upon arrival in the North, many new migrants immediately registered to vote. In some instances the large number of blacks voting as a block swayed an election for a candidate. For example, in Chicago's 1915 mayoral election, William Hale Thompson won because the majority of African Americans voted for him. Cultural factors in the South best illustrate why such a large number of African Americans moved north. Blacks were considered and treated like second class citizens in the South. Segregation and oppression were widespread, and southern society would not allow African Americans to succeed. Working hard as an employee was unlikely to bring advancement. Historian James Grossman found that, most black southerners were well aware of the Dixie limit beyond which no black could advance. Signs of black prosperity could attract white retaliation and violence.