Vol. 79/No. 29 August 17, 2015
W.E.B. Du Bois Speaks: Speeches and Addresses 1890-1919 is one Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for August. Du Bois was a prominent leader of the struggle for Black rights in the first half of the 20th century. He spoke frequently on the causes and significance of the great migration. From 1910 to 1920 alone more than half a million African-Americans left the South for northern cities. In 1918, Du Bois incorporated the main points of his speeches in an article entitled, “The Economics of the Negro Problem,” published in the American Labor Year Book. The following portion is extracted from that article. Copyright © 1970 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
BY W.E.B. DU BOIS
Since 1910, the most significant economic development among Negroes has been a large migration from the South. This has been estimated to have involved at least 250,000 and is still going on.
As to the reasons of the migration, undoubtedly the immediate cause was economic, and the movement began because of floods in middle Alabama and Mississippi and because the latest devastation of the boll weevil came in these same districts.
A second economic cause was the cutting off of immigration from Europe to the North and consequently widespread demand for common labor. The U.S. Department of Labor writes: “A representative of this department has made an investigation in regard thereto, but a report has not been printed for general distribution. It may be stated, however, that most of the help imported from the South has been employed by railroad companies, packinghouses, foundries, factories, automobile plants in northern states as far west as Nebraska. At the present time, the U.S. Employment Service is not cooperating in the direction of Negro help to the North.”
The third reason has been outbreaks of mob violence in northern and southwestern Georgia and in western South Carolina.
These have been the three immediate causes, but back of them is, undoubtedly, the general dissatisfaction with the conditions in the South.
A colored man of Sumter, S.C., says: “The immediate occasion of the migration is, of course, the opportunity in the North, now at last open to us, for industrial betterment. The real causes are the conditions which we have had to bear because there was no escape.”
These conditions he sums up as the destruction of the Negro’s political rights, the curtailment of his civil rights, the lack of the protection of life, liberty and property, low wages, the Jim Crow car, residential and labor segregation laws and poor educational facilities.
The full economic result of this migration and its extent in the future cannot be forecast at the present writing, but the chances are that the demand for labor caused by the European war will result in a large rearrangement of Negro laborers and accelerate all tendencies in the distribution of that labor along lines already noted.
Figures like these are beginning to place the so-called Negro problem beyond the realm of mere opinion and prejudice. Here we see a social evolution working itself out before our eyes. The mass of the freedmen are changing rapidly the economic basis of their social development. They have not given up their close connection with the soil, but they are changing its character tremendously, so that today a fourth of them are peasant proprietors. They are forcing themselves into the trades despite the long opposition of white labor unions. As small businessmen, purveying principally to their own group, they are gaining a foothold in trade. As more or less skilled employees, they form a considerable part of our transportation system and they are rapidly developing a professional class which serves its own group and also serves the nation at large. …
Severe floods and the cotton boll weevil reduced Negro tenants in many parts of the lower South to great distress during the winter following the declaration of war. They sold their cotton at a low figure or had none to sell. When the price of cotton rose, the plantation owners reaped the benefit and immediately began plans for the next season, calculating on labor at an unusually low price.
Meantime, a great foreign immigration of common laborers was cut off by the war, and there arose in the North an unusual demand for common labor. The Negroes began to migrate. In eighteen months 250,000 left the South and moved into the North. They were chiefly attracted by wages which were from 50 to 200 percent above what they had been used to receiving. And they saw also a chance to escape the lynching and discrimination of the South.
Every effort was made by the South to retain them. They were arrested wholesale, labor agents were taxed $500 to $1,000 or more for licenses, and the daily press of the South began to take on a more conciliatory tone. A slow rise in wages has begun. The migration of Negroes, however, continues, since the demand continues. It is probable that not for a generation after the close of the war will there be any great immigration to the United States from Europe. In that case, the American Negro will have a chance to establish himself in large numbers in the North. We may look for migration of two or even three million.
To offset this, the labor unions have used every effort. The argument was that these blacks kept down the rate of wages. Undoubtedly they did keep wages from rising as high as they otherwise would have, but if Negroes had been received into the unions and trained into the philosophy of the labor cause (which for obvious reasons most of them did not know), they would have made as staunch union men as any. They are not working for low wages because they prefer to, but because they have to. Nine-tenths of the unions, however, are closed absolutely against them, either by constitutional provision or by action of the local unions. …
Thus, in his effort to escape industrial slavery, murder, riot and unbelievable cruelty have met the Negro — and this not at the hands of the employers but at the hands of his fellow laborers who have in reality common cause with him.