DISRUPCIÓN DE LA BARRERA EPITELIAL

I want to talk about the first Northern urban generation of Negroes. I want to talk about the experiences of a misplaced generation, of a misplaced people in an extremely complex confused society. This is a story of their searching, their dreams, their sorrows,

their small and futile rebellions, and their endless battle to establish their own place in America‘s greatest metropolis—and in America itself. (Claude Brown in his foreword to

The mass movement of blacks out of the rural South into the industrial centers of the North represents a crucial moment in African American history. The southern travelers who ventured north to ―better their condition‖ had high hopes as they left behind a racially restricted environment with dim economic prospects in search of the ―Promised Land.‖ The section at hand will explore the migrants‘ expectations and dashed hopes as they relate to the economic structure which was created in urban African American communities as a result of the massive relocations. The two aspects which will be of particular interest in examining the economic conditions in urban black ghetto formation relate to racially skewed employment practices and housing restrictions during the Great Migration. In exploring these two aspects, the structuralist line of thought, which argues that economic adversity has hampered black progress and has thereby contributed to the development of impoverished black residential urban areas, shall be represented.

Most historians and sociologists agree with James Patterson that the migratory movement of black southerners ―to the North and the cities was the most significant change in modern American history‖ (80) portending enormous economic, political, and social upheavals that would transform the United States.

The conditions for the initial massive influx of black southerners into northern industries were created by World War I and its concomitant economic boom. Until then, immigrants from Europe had provided northern employers with a pool of labor that they considered preferable to American blacks. The outbreak of war in 1914, however, halted the flow of European immigrants and caused employers to consider previously unacceptable alternatives. The impetus for the second major movement ―pulling‖ African Americans into northern centers was provided by the labor shortage during World War II. Simultaneously,

technological advances in agriculture, most notably the invention of the mechanical cotton picker in 1943, provided a decisive ―push‖ factor for over a million African American displaced farm workers. Thus, given the economic restructuring in the first half of the

twentieth century, the Great Migration represented a rational response to a change in the labor market. While 80% of African Americans still lived in southern rural areas in 1870, the census of 1970 shows 80% of African Americans living in urban areas, nearly half of these outside the South.

Nevertheless, apart from the economic push and pull factors, race relations were just as decisive in persuading southern blacks to leave behind their familiar surroundings in search of

a more amiable racial environment. Many migrants interpreted their journey as the ―Second Emancipation‖ which led them out of Egypt into the Promised Land. Racially motivated physical abuse, random outbursts of violence, and the habitual mistreatment by law

enforcement officials played an important role in spreading the ―migration fever‖ across the South. Chicago Urban League workers found that after a lynching, ―colored people from that community [would] arrive in Chicago inside of two weeks‖ (Johnson qtd. in Grossman 16) and the Atlanta Constitution observed in December 1916 that ―the heaviest migration of Negroes has been from those counties in which there have been the worst outbreaks against Negroes‖ (Atlanta Constitution qtd. in Sernett 12). In 1916 the Houston Observer reflected on the racially precarious situation of blacks in the South and concluded that ―when such conditions are placed and forced upon a people and no protest is offered, you cannot blame a race of people for migrating‖ (Houston Observer qtd. in Grossman 18).

Yet, while northern race relations were decidedly less oppressive, racial tensions grew as blacks started to flock into northern railway stations by the thousands importing southern rural folkways which appeared crude and unrefined to northern city dwellers. ―The great black migration [therefore] made race a national issue in the second half of the century‖. Race relations became ―an integral part of the politics, the social thought, and the organization of ordinary life in the United States‖ (Leman 7).

Milton C. Sernett points out that the mass moment out of the South is ―important to

understanding the peril and promise of contemporary American society‖ (1). It represents the ―unfinished business‖ of the nation‘s ―original sin of slavery,‖ in the form of persistent black urban poverty in metropolitan cities.

The present chapter will explore this structuralist argument by considering the migrants‘ hopes and expectations which motivated them to embark on their journey. Ensuing sections will then analyze various chronological phases of the migration with regards to racially motivated housing and employment restrictions. The socio-historical analysis will conclude with a synthesis, juxtaposing the liberal structuralist and the conservative behaviorist

perspective in interpreting the significance of the Great Migration for the development of black urban ghettos. Finally, the chapter will end with a critical analysis of Claude Brown‘s autobiographical account, Manchild in the Promised Land, in the context of the liberal structuralist perspective.