Negro Migration during the WarScott, Emmett J. (Emmett Jay)
History
Negro Migration during the War
Scott, Emmett J. (Emmett Jay)
African Americans; Migration, Internal -- United States; World War, 1914-1918 -- Economic aspects -- United States
Another frequent complaint was directed against the accommodations
for travel. It generally happens that the cars are crowded because the
amount of space allotted is insufficient, and negroes as a class are
denied accommodation in sleeping and dining cars. Usually there is but
one toilet for both sexes and the waiting rooms at stations are cut
off, unclean and insanitary. Then there are numerous petty offenses,
which in themselves appear trifling, but which are spoken of as being
on the whole considerably annoying. White men are permitted to come
into the negroes' part of the coach and entertain the conductor,
newsboy and flagman, all of whom usually make their headquarters
there. The drunkards, the insane and other undesirables are forced
into this comparment among negro women who have to listen to oaths
and vulgar utterances. In stopping at some points, the trains halt the
negro car in muddy and abominably disagreeable places; the rudeness
and incivility of the public servants are ever apparent, and at the
stations the negroes must wait at a separate window until every white
passenger has purchased a ticket before he is waited on, although he
may be delayed long enough to miss the train.
Both whites and negroes in mentioning the reasons for the movement
generally give lynching as one of the most important causes and state
that the fear of the mob has greatly accelerated the exodus. Negroes
in Florida gave as their reason for going north the horrible lynchings
in Tennessee. The white press in Georgia maintained that lynchings
were driving the negroes in large numbers from that State. A
careful study of the movement, however, shows that bad treatment by
representatives of the law caused almost as many negroes to leave the
South as lynchings, for, whereas lynchings were more or less sporadic,
persecutions and mistreatment by representatives of the law were
trials which all negroes had continually to bear and from which they
were anxious to escape.[28]
Many of these causes then have their origin on the one hand in the
attitude which the South assumes toward the negro as expressed in law
and public opinion, and on the other hand in the feeling of the negro
toward the South because of the treatment given him. A negro educator
of Mississippi sought to explain the situation, saying:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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