The Warmth of Other Suns (95 page)

10
“In certain plants”:
Ibid., p. 33.

T
HE
T
HINGS
T
HEY
L
EFT
B
EHIND

11
There were no Chinaberry:
Clifton Taulbert,
The Last Train North
(Tulsa, Okla.: Council Oaks Books, 1992), pp. 43–44.

12
had toiled:
It is not known precisely why there was a two-and-a-half-year delay in getting word to the slaves in Texas. One theory was that a messenger bearing the news of freedom was murdered on his way to Texas. Another was that slave masters deliberately withheld the news to keep their unpaid labor for as long as they could. Another was that there simply weren’t enough Union troops in Texas to enforce the Proclamation, which was dated January 1, 1863. The announcement read by the Union troops in the form of General Order no. 3 was as follows: “
The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer
” (available at
www.juneteenth.com
). Also see “An Obscure Texas Celebration Makes Its Way Across the U.S.,”
The New York Times
, June 18, 2004.

13
“If I were half:”
Abraham Epstein,
The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh
(New York: Arno Press, 1969 reissue of 1918 original), p. 27.

14
Epstein found:
Ibid., p. 24.

T
RANSPLANTED IN
A
LIEN
S
OIL

15
Should I have come:
Richard Wright,
Black Boy
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 306–7.

16
A map:
Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy,
Anyplace but Here
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1945), p. 164.

17
Beloit, Wisconsin:
Morton Rubin, “Migration Patterns from a Rural Northeastern Mississippi Community,”
Social Forces
39, no. 1, Oct. 1, 1960–May 1961, pp. 59–66. See also Paul Geib, “From Mississippi to Milwaukee: A Case Study of the Southern Black Migration to Milwaukee, 1940–1970,
The Joural of Negro History
83, no. 4 (Autumn 1998): 229–48.

18
Gary:
The Jackson Family of singers, including Michael and Janet, probably the most famous natives of Gary, Indiana, had roots in the South like most other black people born in Gary in the past century. The singing group’s father, Joseph, was born in Fountain Hill, Arkansas, in 1929 and went to Chicago, just west of Gary, when he was eighteen. The group’s mother, the former Katherine Scruse, was born in Barbour County, Alabama, and brought to East Chicago, Indiana, by her parents when she was four. Joseph and Katherine met in the Chicago area and married in November 1949. Their nine surviving children were born in Gary.

19
But, as in the rest:
Joe William Trotter, Jr.,
Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915–1945
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 42.

20
“They are superior”:
Ibid., p. 55.

21
“only did the dirty work”:
Ibid., p. 47. 245
even those jobs:
Ibid., p. 152.

22
“never did”:
Ibid., p. 167.

23
The first blacks in Harlem:
James Riker,
Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals
(New York: New Harlem Publishing, 1904), p. 189; cited in Gilbert Osofsky,
Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890–1930
(New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 83.

24
The trouble began:
Iver Bernstein,
The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); cited in Leslie M. Harris,
In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1826–1863
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

25
By 1930:
Osofsky,
Harlem
, p. 130 on population, p. 139 on sleeping in shifts, p. 129 for Adam Clayton Powell quote.

26
“a growing menace”:
Harlem Magazine
, February 1914, p. 21; cited in Osofsky,
Harlem
, p. 107.

27
Panicked property owners:
Osofsky,
Harlem
, pp. 105–7.

28
White leaders tried:
The New York Age
, August 29 and November 14, 1912; January 9, 1913.

29
White leaders warned:
Osofsky,
Harlem
, p. 108.

30
“rent to colored”:
Ibid., p. 110.

31
NOTICE:
New York Urban League, “Twenty-four Hundred Negro Families in Harlem: An Interpretation of the Living Conditions of Small Wage Earners,” typescript, Schomburg Collection, 1927, p. 7; cited in Osofsky,
Harlem
, p. 110.

32
“The basic collapse”:
Osofsky,
Harlem
, p. 109.

33
“servants of the rich”:
Jervis Anderson,
This Was Harlem, 1900–1950
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Noonday Press, 1981), pp. 321–22.

34
It had a marble:
Ibid., pp. 308–9.

35
Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company:
John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman,
African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), pp. 58–65. William Nickerson, one of the founders of Golden State Mutual Life Insurance, left Houston, Texas, for Los Angeles in 1921 and attributed his migration to the fact that “things were happening in the state, one of which was the riot [Longview, Texas, in 1919 and perhaps Tulsa in 1921]. So becoming disgusted,” he said, “I decided to take my wife and eight children and move to California.” Four years later, he would become one of the founders of the largest black-owned insurance company in the state.

36
“I didn’t think”:
Jim Pinson, “City School Board Seat Won by Negro,”
The Atlanta Constitution
, May 15, 1953, p. 1.

37
“For the first time”:
“Negro Is Victor in Atlanta Vote; Defeats White School Board Member, 22,259 to 13,936—Mayor Renominated,”
The New York Times
, May 15, 1953; “Atlanta Negro Is Elected to Board of Education,”
New York Herald Tribune
, May 15, 1953, p. 1.

D
IVISIONS

38
I walked to the elevator:
Richard Wright,
Black Boy
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 303.

39
“With few exceptions”:
Sadie Tanner Mossell, “The Standard of Living Among One Hundred Negro Migrant Families in Philadelphia,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
98 (November 1921): 216.

40
“The inarticulate and resigned masses”:
E. Franklin Frazier,
The Negro Family in Chicago, 1939
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), pp. 80, 84.

41
“a tangle of pathology”:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
The Negro Family: The Case for National Action
(Washington, D.C.: Office of Policy Planning and Research, United States Department of Labor, 1965), p. 23.

42
“the differential in payments”:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Crisis in Welfare,”
The Public Interest
, Winter 1968, pp. 3–29.

43
“It is the higher”:
Karl E. Taeuber and Alma F. Taeuber, “The Changing Character of Negro Migration,”
The American Journal of Sociology
70, no. 4 (January 1965): 429–41.

44
“As the distance”:
Everett S. Lee, “A Theory of Migration,”
Demography
3, no. 1 (1966): 57.

45
“Migrants who overcome”:
Ibid., pp. 55–56.

46
“The move to northern”:
J. Trent Alexander, “The Great Migration in Comparative Perspective: Interpreting the Urban Origins of Southern Black Migrants to Depression-Era Pittsburgh,”
Social Science History
, Fall 1998, pp. 358–60. Alexander’s analysis of census data found that, in 1940, only thirty-seven percent of black migrants to northern cities were from rural areas. Two-thirds were from towns with populations of 2,500 or more (p. 365).

47
“Most Negro migrants”:
Taeuber and Taeuber, “The Changing Character of Negro Migration,” pp. 430–32.

48
“averaged nearly two more years”:
Stewart E. Tolnay, “Educational Selection in the Migration of Southern Blacks, 1880–1990,”
Social Forces
, December 1998, pp. 492–97.

49
A 1965 study:
Frank T. Cherry, “Southern In-Migrant Negroes in North Lawndale, Chicago, 1949–1959: A Study of Internal Migration and Adjustment,” unpublished dissertation, University of Chicago, Department of Sociology, September 1965, p. 71.

50
“There is no support”:
Ibid., p. 98.

51
“were
not
of lower”:
Taeuber and Taeuber, “The Changing Character of Negro Migration,” pp. 429–41.

52
the 1965 census study:
Ibid., p. 439.

53
“resemble in educational levels”:
Ibid., pp. 436–39.

54
“Black men who have been”:
Larry H. Long and Lynne R. Heltman, “Migration and Income Differences Between Black and White Men in the North,”
The American Journal of Sociology
80, no. 6 (May 1975): 1396–97.

55
“more successfully avoided poverty”:
Larry H. Long and Kristin A. Hansen, “Selectivity of Black Return Migration to the South,”
Rural Sociology
42, no. 3 (Fall 1977): 318. Based on a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta, March 30–April 2, 1977.

56
“not willing to risk”:
Wen Lang Li and Sheron L. Randolph, “Return Migration and Status Attainment Among Southern Blacks,”
Rural Sociology
47, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 395.

57
It made them “especially goal oriented”:
Larry H. Long and Lynne R. Heltman, “Migration and Income Differences between Black and White Men in the North,”
The American Journal of Sociology
90, no. 6 (May 1975): 1406.

58
In San Francisco, for instance:
Charles S. Johnson, Herman H. Long, and Grace Jones,
The Negro Worker in San Francisco
(San Francisco: YWCA, the Race Relations Program of the American Missionary Association, and the Julius Rosenwald Fund, May 1944), pp. 15–23.

59
“more family-stable”:
Thomas C. Wilson, “Explaining Black Southern Migrant Advantage in Family Stability: The Role of Selective Migration,”
Social Forces
80, no. 2 (December 2001): 555–71.

60
“Colored pupils sometimes occupy”:
W. A. Daniel, “Schools,” in
Negro Problems in the Cities
, ed. T. J. Woofter (College Park, Md.: McGrath Publishing, 1928), p. 183.

61
“is literally forced”:
Ibid.

62
James Cleveland Owens:
William J. Baker,
Jesse Owens: An American Life
(New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 16.

63
The boy’s first day:
Ibid., p. 19.

64
It made headlines:
Larry Schwartz, “Owens Pierced a Myth,”
http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00016393.html
.

65
“I wasn’t invited”:
Susan Robinson, “A Day in Black History: Jesse Owens,”
www.gibbsmagazine.com/Jessie%20Owens.htm
.