18. Opportunity
in the South
[Female voice] Is it possible in terms of the list of pulls and
pushes that southern cities don't, are not particularly vital,
or vibrant right. I mean that there are fewer of them, that is
as people moving from them, finding that you know agriculture
is failing, boll weevils are destroying crops, so that they moved
to the urban center in the South; I mean, could those cities absorb
a new labor force? You know, offer them _____.
To some extent, especially women. There are still opportunities
for women in southern cities and the black populations in southern
cities grow considerably during this period. But one of the things
that helps us to understand motivation for migration north is
knowing
that many rural, black southerners moved to nearby cities. So
if you think about it; you have to ask why did black southerns
think it was time to move to northern cities?
I don't know how many of
you
have
moved, but moving
a long distance is a big deal. Even now, when you have telephones
and are hooked up to the Internet and all these things, it's
still
a big deal to move a long way. So try to imagine, it's 1916,
your family doesn't have a car, they don't have a telephone,
you probably
don't have a radio and you're moving from Mississippi to Chicago;
that's a big deal. So, if you have this alternative of moving
to a southern city what it tells you is that there must have
been some very compelling reasons to make this longer move,
especially
since there were jobs available in southern cities.
What this is saying is, even though we know that the availability
of jobs in northern cities made the Great Migration
possible,
when people of few means are actually making the decision, I'm
going to go there instead of there, to some extent they're making
that decision based upon racial issues, race relations, better
education, thinking of things like that.
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