Ghettoization in the North

By: Carole Marks

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Ghettoization in the North

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States experienced urbanization and industrial expansion at a dizzying rate, an expansion that left in its wake millions of exploited workers, black and white, foreign and native-born. African Americans, as Joe Trotter has pointed out, “faced greater restrictions on where they could work, live, play, travel, lodge and eat; educate their children; receive medical treatment; bury their dead; and gain fair treatment in courts of law.”

Coming to the Promised Land was not easy. Migrants were attracted by the lure of good jobs and good wages, but employment was often the first area of disappointment. Many of those who followed skilled crafts in the South were barred from them in the North by company policy, union regulations, or craft tradition in which there was no union. Wage disparities, too, were frequent. Charles Wesley found that “unskilled foundry workers in Alabama received $2.50 for a ten-hour day. The same workers in Illinois sometimes received $3.20 for a ten-hour day, sometimes $4.25 per nine-hour day.” The result was that southern workers at times unwittingly worked for less, and northern workers were disadvantaged by those who worked for less (a typical complaint of domestic workers concerning migrant labor).

African Americans did not enter a homogeneous labor market. Rather, they entered at the bottom of a delicately mixed ethnic employment queue already sustained by low wages and vulnerable workers. Between 1871 and 1915, over 25 million Europeans—able-bodied, hardworking, and cheap—migrated to the United States. With them, American manufacture was thrust onto the stage of international competition.

By 1910, foreign-born employees made up a quarter of the nation's workforce, and in many industries close to the industrial center, the foreign-born were a clear majority. For example, 48 percent of the workers in coal mines were foreign-born, as were 67 percent in iron mines, 76 percent in clothing factories, 76 percent in slaughter and packing houses, and 53 percent in steel mills. Earnings data from the Immigration Commission suggest that immigration status was clearly reflected in weekly earnings. Native-born whites of native-born parents averaged $14.37 weekly, native-born whites of foreign-born parents $13.91, and foreign-born $11.92. Such disparities cannot be explained by skill level alone, particularly in light of the increasingly interchangeable nature of manufactory workers.

Slowing the Flood

Native-born workers were unsettled by what seemed to be an unending stream of “strange customs, odd dress, peculiar languages and alien religions.” The call to limit immigration began as early as 1850, and by 1900 it grew to a crescendo. Along with economic uncertainty was a belief that what made America great was its Anglo-Saxon roots and race superiority. Newcomers were judged to be defective on both counts.

The labor movement, which had struggled for years to organize foreign and native white workers, was overwhelmed by the sudden influx of southern black labor. Employers were quite simply able to operate as if the movement did not exist. From the beginning, they tried with varying success to discipline organized workers by breaking their strikes by hiring “scabs,” cheaper newcomers willing to cross picket lines. To protect themselves, unions welcomed the new labor. Employers found at last, with black labor, a force that local unions were unwilling to absorb. American race prejudice, Sterling Spero and Abram Harris point out, was too big an obstacle to overcome.

Most African American migrants found their way into manufacturing industries, with a 40 percent increase over levels established in 1910. Increases were most dramatic in food-packing houses in Chicago, and in steel in Chicago; Gary, Indiana; and Pittsburgh. Packinghouses employed only sixty-seven blacks in 1910 but nearly three thousand in 1920. In steel, black representation increased from 6 percent in 1910 to 17 percent in 1920. Detroit automotive plants first hired blacks in 1910, and their numbers reached twenty-five thousand by 1929. According to the historian Allan Spear, blacks entering at the bottom of the job hierarchy followed a path similar to that of Poles and Czechs who had entered at that point in the 1880s. By the 1920s, some Poles and Czechs had moved into supervisory and even managerial positions. Yet, suggests Spear, there were in the 1920s indications that for blacks “the ladder of advancement would have slippery rungs.”

While actual wages varied by city, industry, and level of required skill, the average migrant earned about $25 for a forty-eight- to sixty-hour work week. Bricklayers and plasterers in Chicago could make as much as $30 for a forty-hour week, and Pullman porters as much as $35. In contrast to wages, prices rose sharply throughout the migration period. A loaf of bread that cost 5 cents in 1914 cost over 11 cents in 1920. Coffee went from 30 cents a pound to 47 cents; sugar, from 38 cents for five pounds to 97 cents; and a dozen eggs from 35 cents to 68 cents. In 1919, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that “$43 was the weekly income necessary to maintain an acceptable standard of living for a family of five. Obviously, on the migrant's salary alone, most families could not achieve this standard.”

Women in Industry

The low wages black workers received in the North meant that women as well as men had to work. Unlike the men, many women found that the only work available was in someone else's kitchen. The war created some openings in industry for women, but the opportunities were more restricted and did not last. Women did, however, seek to transform their domestic work by demanding day work over more restricting live-in service. It was clear to all that women's contributions were crucial to their families' survival by providing not only income but also food.

Being forced into the marketplace after migration separated black women from their white counterparts, not so much in absolute fact as in intensity. In Chicago in the 1920s, some 21 percent of native white women with jobs worked in manufacturing. When those employed in domestic service are added to this figure, the combined total is 31 percent. For the foreign-born white population, 35 percent of working women worked in manufacturing. When those employed in domestic service are added, the combined total is 69 percent. Of the African American population, some 21 percent worked in manufacturing. When those employed in domestic service are added, the combined total is over 85 percent.

With the competition for employment came a competition for space. Where would all the newcomers live? Before the migration, small black settlements were often dispersed throughout areas of the cities where black people lived in clusters of relative obscurity and invisibility. After migration, previous areas of settlement disappeared and were replaced by larger and larger communities. As Spear points out, in Chicago, with the migration “white hostility almost closed the housing market and created a physical ghetto.”

Building the Ghetto

Racially segregated neighborhoods spread throughout the North. Dramatic increases were seen in Philadelphia, Boston, and Cleveland. In Chicago, after migration, well over two-thirds of the black population lived in areas that were over 75 percent black; two-thirds of the black population of Manhattan lived in Harlem. In 1910, fewer than six thousand of Detroit's population were African Americans. By 1925, the black population had grown to over eighty thousand. Most lived in Black Bottom, an overcrowded east side area with 7 percent of the population squeezed into just 1 percent of the housing.

Across the country, African American segregation was unprecedented. Whites fled areas where black migrants concentrated, “as if from a plague,” James Weldon Johnson commented. The apparatus of urban government as well as bankers, realtors, and merchants was marshaled to facilitate black exclusion, under a general assumption that separation was best for all.

Urban housing was often dilapidated and uninhabitable. In Pittsburgh, “about half of all migrant families lived in one-room apartments and only a little better than 10 percent in three rooms.” A health officer in Newark reported that “houses are rented out as housekeeping apartments irrespective of the fact that there are no facilities for such purposes. Kitchen ranges, lavatories, baths and toilets are either altogether absent or inadequate.” On a single day in Chicago in 1917, real estate brokers had “over six hundred black families applying for housing, with only fifty–three units available.” A profitable practice for landlords was to divide larger units, without alteration, and with no decrease in rent.

Pressures on families were enormous, and family breakup, uncommon in the South, would become more frequent. On their own while their parents worked, children were left without supervision or recreation. One report noted that they “shared their rooms and even their beds not just with family members but also with lodgers” and that they had no place to play other than in the streets.

Segregation, poverty, and overcrowding compounded preexisting problems of poor health. Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland had outbreaks of smallpox, all especially severe in migrant areas. Tuberculosis was common, as were pneumonia and venereal disease. Working by the day for long hours, with poor ventilation, and insufficient rest and food, migrants were especially susceptible.

Twice as many blacks as whites required hospital care in Philadelphia and “sickness was more prevalent among blacks than among Germans, Irish or Native Americans.” Further, blacks met with discriminatory treatment in many hospitals, exacerbating their conditions. The black death rate was consistently higher than the white.

Children were even worse off than their parents. According to Florett Henri, a “staggering” number died before the age of ten. More than one-quarter of these children never reached their first birthday, an infant death rate twice that of white infants. Infant mortality was highest in the summer months in the overcrowded areas where, as the NAACP board member Mary White Ovington pointed out, “the babies die like flies.”

Blacks were overrepresented not only in rates of ill health and mortality but also in crime statistics. In Chicago, from August 1916 to August 1917, black prisoners increased from 9 percent to 57 percent of the total, and white prisoners declined by 50 percent. A local commission concluded, “The large number is due to the large Negro migration from the South, including many who have bad records in their former homes; to lack of proper housing and recreation; to ignorance of northern customs and laws; and to a cumbersome probation system.” Most, however, “were locked up on minor charges.”

Many cases were dismissed without charges, suggesting the high degree of suspicion with which migrants were regarded. Some were arrested for gambling on the street, being drunk and disorderly, or violating minor city ordinances. These cases would probably have been dismissed with a fine, but migrants had little money, and so many ended up in jail. The combination of desperate circumstances, migrant status, and racial stigma led many others in the community to conclude that this was a population prone to lawlessness.

Red Summer

Racial antagonism exploded into violent conflict in East Saint Louis in 1917, soon spreading into over twenty-six race riots in what came to be called the Red Summer of 1919. The East Saint Louis riot was the only one to result from conflict in the workplace, but fear of competition from African Americans was probably behind all of them. Trouble began in East Saint Louis when the labor force of an aluminum plant went on strike, and the company hired black workers to replace it. A labor union delegation called on the mayor and asked that further migration of blacks to East Saint Louis be stopped. As the delegation left the meeting, it was told that a Negro had accidentally shot a white man during a holdup. In a few minutes, the rumor spread that the shooting was intentional and involved an insulted white woman, then young white girls. Mobs quickly formed and roamed the streets threatening and beating any blacks they could find. Local police stood by and did nothing. The mayor refused to ask for reinforcements or help in restoring order.

Order was briefly restored when the National Guard was brought in, but violence started again when the Guard was withdrawn by the governor. After skirmishes at the local plant between white pickets and black workers, some white protesters drove through the main black neighborhood firing their guns into homes. The next day streetcars were stopped, “and blacks, without regard to age or sex, were pulled off and stoned and clubbed.” Rioters set fire to black homes and “refugees fled half naked” through the streets searching for safety. There were forty-eight dead, hundreds injured, and more than three hundred buildings destroyed.

Ironically, northern ghettoization did not at first bring despair. Influenced by success stories of those who had already made the journey, African American families sent their fathers and sons to the rail yards of Pennsylvania, the steel mills of Pittsburgh, and the packinghouses of Chicago; their daughters followed. The new life was expensive, tiring, and lacking in the comforts and supports of home. But it was a beginning. Migrants had come too far to fail. Organizations like the Chicago Urban League took great pains to educate newcomers on decorum in public. Old-time residents feared a backlash on the whole community from any indiscretions of the migrants. Forget your southern ways, they urged. The Chicago Defender published a list of twenty-six don'ts.

Everywhere these migrants settled, hope seemed to come with them, and this hope produced vibrant communities during what Trotter has called the “formative years” in the creation of the black ghetto. Black churches were not just religious institutions. They became training grounds for young leaders, jobs programs, welfare agencies, and a lifeline for the community. In lieu of public support, African Americans set up their own facilities to aid families in need. Pride in self-help became a common theme. Pride in the race was also evident. Harlem, the “capital of the black world,” was home to many people of the African diaspora from the American South, from Caribbean islands, and from Africa itself. Movements to reclaim the African heritage and bring unity had great popular appeal.

Under these circumstances, black-owned businesses flourished. By 1920, there were about seventy thousand black-owned businesses in the United States. Madam C. J. Walker and her company encouraged women to be independent. And there was a dramatic increase in professional employment—doctors, lawyers, realtors, and preachers. Before the migration, black business centered on grocery stores, barbershops, gravedigging, saloons, hotels, catering, and building and loan associations. With the migration came tailoring and pressing, coal and ice, employment agencies, moving companies, and pool halls. Smaller businesses also emerged, such as those of truck farmers, peddlers, butchers, and junk dealers.

In Chicago, the most notable breakthrough was in the insurance field. Four companies were founded after the war. Black-owned banks were also established. They filled a desperate need, especially for home-buyers and businesses that could not secure loans from white banks. They were plagued, however, “with poor capitalization, too many long-term speculative real estate loans and too few short-term loans.”

The poet Langston Hughes, living with his father in Mexico, wanted to go to Columbia University only because it was near Harlem. The blues singer Alberta Hunter, still in her teens, was desperate to leave Tennessee for Chicago. At the train station, a stranger to everyone, she asked a black porter to direct her to the South Side. As Maggie Comer explained, “To hear people talk about Chicago, as I had heard my sister talk when I was still in Memphis, you'd think that money was dropping off trees.”

Black migrants responded by forming communities that were composed of many of the same people from the southern areas they'd left behind. Researchers commented that one would find blocks of people from the same general area of Georgia, Alabama, or Mississippi. “The territory [in Philadelphia] to which most of the Greenwood [South Carolina] refugees came,” explains the historian Alan Ballard, “was bounded by Girard Avenue on the south, Susquehanna Avenue on the north, and between Tenth Street on the east and Twelfth Street on the west.”

Migrants were eager to register to vote upon coming north. Having received for so long such a small share for their public tax dollar, they now sought representation. In Chicago's second ward, the largest black ward in the city, “72 percent of the eligible voters were registered in 1920 as compared with 66 percent for the city as a whole.”

Black politicians found that the overcrowded migrant districts provided them with a political power base that could not be easily undermined. Chicago was one of the first cities to experience black political power. The Republican mayor William Hale Thompson regularly campaigned in black wards, promising good jobs and fair treatment. “A showman,” according to William Tuttle, “he wooed his black audiences by denouncing his political foes as ‘crackers’ and by praising heroes of the black race.”

A number of black politicians rose to prominence during this era, partly as a result of Thompson's influence. Perhaps the most outstanding was Oscar DePriest, in 1904 elected as the first black alderman, and in 1915 the first to serve on the city council. He was made floor leader by Thompson. In 1928, DePriest became the first African American of the twentieth century to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, a defining victory in African American political history.

In 1922, Mordecai Johnson, the future president of Howard University and its first African American president, gave a commencement address at Harvard College Divinity School. In it he said,

"Since their emancipation from slavery the masses of American Negroes have lived by the strength of a simple but deeply moving faith. They have believed in the love and providence of a just and holy God: they have believed in the principles of democracy and in the righteous purpose of the Federal Government; and they have believed in the disposition of the American people as a whole and in the long run to be fair in all their dealings (quoted in the Crisis, August 1922)."

This was the optimism of the age. It was an optimism that would sustain the group through the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the 1950s.

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