"For the advancement of the race" The Great Migrations to Houston, Texas, 1914-1941

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 435-478

  Pruitt, Bernadette ^a  

^a SAM HOUSTON STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Accommodation activism; African Americans; Black urban history; Great Migrations; Industrialization; Louisiana; Texas

Indexed keywords

AFRICAN AMERICAN; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; IMMIGRANT POPULATION; MIGRATION DETERMINANT;

HOUSTON; NORTH AMERICA; TEXAS; UNITED STATES; WESTERN HEMISPHERE; WORLD;

EID: 18844362368     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0096144204274394     Document Type: Article

References (477)

1. Milton Larkin, interview by Louis Marchiafava, tape recording, January 5, 1988, Milton Larkin Collection, 252:1, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas (hereafter, cited as Milton Larkin MSS);
2. and Lorenzo Thomas, "Milt Larkin: Houston Jazz Bandleader," paper presented at the Texas State Historical Association Annual Meeting, Austin, March 5, 1998, 6-24.
3. The phrase "for the advancement of the race" can be found in the work of Stephanie Shaw. The phrase emphasizes the goal or motive of performing a specific task or a series of tasks. The ultimate goal, of course, is racial progression. The first portion of my dissertation title, "For the Advancement of the Race: African-American Migration and Community Building in Houston, 1914-1945," also comes from the work of Shaw. See Stephanie J. Shaw, "Black Club Women and the Creation of the National Association of Colored Women," in "We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible": A Reader in Black Women's History, Darlene Clark Hine, Wilma King, and Linda Reed, eds. (New York: Carlson, 1995),433-42;
4. and Stephanie J. Shaw, What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do: Black Professional Women Workers during the Jim Crow Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 196), 167.
5. The phrase territory bands defines those regional bands and orchestras that mostly performed regionally without the recognition and fame of the beloved mainstream groups, for example the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Duke Ellington Orchestra, Louis Armstrong Orchestra, and Count Basie Orchestra. While territory bands rarely received the national media coverage of the more internationally recognized groups, they did nevertheless maintain noteworthy and exemplary reputations for their innovative and supreme musical styles, vocalists, leadership, and sidemen. While Larkin never recorded a single album in his lifetime (1910-1996) and largely performed in Chicago and Houston, he retained a reputation around the world as a superior, first-rate musician and orchestra leader. See Milton Larkin interview, Milton Larkin MSS; Lorenzo Thomas, "Milt Larkin", 6-26;
6. Rick Mitchell, "Houston Jazz Legend Larkin Dies at 85," Houston Chronicle August 31, 1996;
7. Roger R. Wood, Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 82, 85;
8. Dave Oliphant, "Jazz," in The New Handbook of Texas (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1995), 918-21;
9. Alan Govenar, "Blues," in New Handbook of Texas, 606-8;
10. Glen Alwyn, "Fight, Flight, or Blues: Mance Lipscomb, Musician, Farmer, Storyteller, Philosopher, Legend, Gatekeeper of the Centuries," 1995, Lipscomb-Alwyn Collection, 2.325:A112, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, Texas (hereafter cited as Lipscomb-Alwyn MSS);
11. and Illinois Jacquet, interview by Louis Marchiafava and Charles Stephenson, tape recording, Houston, Texas, June 1, 1990, Illinois Jacquet Collection, 403:1, folder 2, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas (hereafter cited as Illinois Jacquet MSS).
12. Historian W. D. Wright, in the work entitled Black History and Black Identity, makes a compelling case for the use of "Black" instead of "black" when defining people of African descent in the United States. According to Wright, middle-class and professional African Americans themselves have in recent years urged society to capitalize the first letter in the word Black when describing African Americans. This designates ethnicity, while black defines race and color. Wright also argues that this designation must and should be determined by African Americans and not others. Other scholars, notably Darlene Clark Hine, have in recent years used the word Black as a proper noun in their writings. I have, therefore, decided to adopt Black over black when defining the race and ethnicity of people of African descent. To avoid controversy, I have also decided to use White when defining people of European descent, Brown when referring to people of Latin America, and so forth. See W. D. Wright, Black History and Black Identity: A Call for a New Historiography (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001), 1-21;
13. and Darlene Clark Hine et al., Black Women in America, 2 vols. (New York: MacMillan, 1994). The article's timeline, 1914-1941, denotes the first phases of the Great Migrations to Houston from the opening of the Houston Ship Channel in 1914, which precipitated further industrial/ commercial development in the city (railroad construction at the turn of the century actually kicked off Houston's industrial revolution) to the heyday of Black migration to Houston before World War II, in the 1920s, and finally the slow years of migration during the Great Depression to the United States' entry into World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
14. In recent years, scholars have tackled the controversial question of African immigration to the Americas prior to the Spanish invasion. For more on this subject, see Ivan Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (New York: Random House, 1976). Coerced migration continued for enslaved Africans and African Americans forcibly living in the colonial and antebellum periods. Often, in the nineteenth century, free Blacks trekked from one rural region of the country to another; other free Blacks left rural areas for urban centers in both the South and North. The Underground Railroad also characterized a distinct migration phenomenon for Blacks. Following slavery, rural-to-rural and rural-to-urban migration patterns among emancipated slaves developed quickly throughout the South. For comprehensive studies on these aspects of Black history,
15. see John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss's classic text, From Slavery to Freedom, 8th ed., 2 vols. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2000);
16. Joe William Trotter Jr., The African-American Experience, 2 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001);
17. and Darlene Clark Hine et al., African-American Odyssey, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003). For the most comprehensive study on an important aspect of post-Emancipation migrations that predates the Great Black Migrations,
18. see Nell I. Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (1976; reprint, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996). For general overviews of post-Civil War African American migrations in the United States,
19. see Carter G. Woodson, A Century of Migration (1918; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1970);
20. Peter Gottlieb, "Rethinking the Great Migration: A Perspective from Pittsburgh," in The Great Migration in Historical Perspective, Joe William Trotter Jr., ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991): 68-82;
21. and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, "In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience to Launch in 2004," Africana Heritage: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture 4, no. 1 (2004): 1, 8-9.
22. According to recent urban history scholars like Gottlieb, African American migration in the twentieth century not only explains the Black experience in the United States but also adds to the migration stories of people since the eighteenth century. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England, rural and small-town people have abandoned their farms and artisan professions for industrial employment. Whether escaping depressed farm conditions or displaced by industrialization and urbanization, peasants and craft-people moved to cities. Once in their new surroundings, they faced serious dilemmas: they lived in hazardous unsanitary conditions, their new jobs paid poorly for dangerous work, and their families and communities faced constant discrimination. Therefore, like displaced Germans, Irish, Scandinavians, Dutch, Scots-Irish, and English in the early seventeenth through nineteenth centuries; Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and eastern European peasants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; impoverished and/ or ambitious Puerto Ricans (internal migrants), Nigerians, Iranians, Syrians, Hondurans, El Salvadorians, Haitians, and Jamaicans of the late twentieth century; and Whites moving from the Deep South, Appalachians, or east Texas Cotton Belt into northern, western, and southern industrial centers, African Americans moved into urban-industrial settings throughout the United States. For comprehensive studies on U.S. immigrants, see Alan M. Kraut, The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921, 2nd ed. (Arlington Heights, III.: Harlan Davidson, 2001);
23. Rodolfo Acuna, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 5th ed. (New York: Longman, 2004), 135-306;
24. Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993);
25. Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, updated and rev. ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998);
26. Elliot Robert Barkan, And Still They Came: Immigrants and American Society, 1920-1990s (Arlington Heights, III.: Harlan Davidson, 1997), 1-6;
27. and Carl A. Brasseaux, ed., A Refuge for All Ages: Immigration in Louisiana History, vol. 10 of The Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History, Glenn R. Conrad, ed. (Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana), 1996.
28. For a comprehensive study that discusses rural-to-urban migrations within the United States, see Raymond Mohl, ed., The Making of Urban America (Wilmington: Delaware Scholarly Publications, 1988);
29. and Blaine A. Brownell and David Goldfield, eds., The Growth of Urban Civilization in the South (New York: National University Publication, 1977).
30. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899; reprint with a new introduction by Elijah Anderson, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996);
31. and Kimberly Phillips, Alabama North: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-1945 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
32. For a recent discussion on the diverging historiographical schools on twentieth-century Black migration in the United States, see Joe William Trotter Jr., ed., "Introduction. Black Migration in Historical Perspective: A Review of the Literature," in The Great Migration in Historical Perspective (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1991);
33. Joe William Trotter Jr., Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-1945 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988);
34. and Joe William Trotter Jr., Earl Lewis, and Tera Hunter, "Introduction: Connecting African American Urban History, Social Science Research, and Policy Debates," in The African American Urban Experience: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present (New York: Palegrave-Macmillan, 2004). This study uses the terms Black Migration, Great Migration, Great Migrations, and Great Black Migrations interchangeably when referring to the migration of rural and urban Blacks to urban and industrial centers throughout the nation.
35. For the use and evolution of the term Great Migration before its use in the late twentieth century, see U.S. Department of Labor, Division of Negro Economics, Negro Migration, 1916-1917 (1919; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969);
36. and Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944; reprint with author's preface to the twentieth anniversary ed., New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 183.
37. For discussions on the use of the term, its definition, and migration figures, see Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, 1890-1930, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971), ix, 17-19, 128-35;
38. Allan Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), vii-x, 11-12, 129-31;
39. Trotter, "Black Migration in Historical Perspective," 1;
40. Alferteen Harrison, ed., Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), vii-viii;
41. Richard W. Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915-45 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 27;
42. Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth Century Norfolk (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 30;
43. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, "In Motion," 1, 8-9;
44. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Presents: In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience, "The Great Migration," (online February 27, 2005), http:// www.inmotionaame.org/;
45. and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Presents: In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience, "The Second Great Migration," (online February 27, 2005), http:/ /www.inmotionaame.org/.
46. Trotter, "Black Migration in Historical Perspective," 15-17; 22;
47. Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 22;
48. Earl Lewis, "Expectations, Economic Opportunities, and Life in the Industrial Age: Black Migration to Norfolk, Virginia, 1910-1945," in The Great Migration in Historical Perspective, Joe William Trotter Jr., ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 30.
49. For a general description of rural-to-urban and small-town-to-city migration to Houston in the early decades of the twentieth century, see Bernadette Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race: African-American Migration and Community Building in Houston, 1914-1945" (Ph.D. diss., University of Houston, 2001);
50. Howard O. Beeth and Cary D. Wintz, "Economic and Social Development in Black Houston during the Era of Segregation," in Black Dixie: Afro-Texan History and Culture in Houston, Howard O. Beeth and Cary D. Wintz, eds. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992), 88-89;
51. Trotter et al., "Introduction: Connecting African American Urban History, 1-20;
52. Acuna, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 148-202;
53. and Arnoldo De León, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: Mexican Americans in Houston, 2nd ed. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003), 3-56.
54. Trotter, "Black Migration in Historical Perspective," 15-17; 22;
55. Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 22;
56. and Lewis, "Expectations, Economic Opportunities, and Life," 30.
57. For works that discuss the Great Migrations within the South, see George A. Devlin, South Carolina and Black Migration, 1865-1940 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989);
58. George W. Wright, Life behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985);
59. I. A. Newby, Black Carolinians: A History of Blacks in South Carolina from 1868 to 1968 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973);
60. Brasseaux, Refuge for All Ages;
61. Kenneth W. Goings and Gerald L. Smith, "'Unhidden' Transcripts: Memphis and African American Agency, 1865-1920," in The New African American Urban History, Kenneth W. Goings and Raymond A. Mohl, eds. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995), 142-66;
62. Tera Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997);
63. and Robin D. G. Kelley, "We Are Not What We Seem: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," in New African American Urban History, 187-239.
64. This work is modeled after Earl Lewis's study on Norfolk, Virginia. See Lewis, "Expectations, Economic Opportunities, and Life"; and Lewis, In Their Own Interests. This article also draws from my dissertation;
65. see Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race." The estimated migration figure of 25,000 for the 1914-1941 period is predicated on census findings in net-intercensal age cohort tables. Net-intercensal figures allow researchers to trace census population growth by the use of age cohorts. The cohort tables, however, presented in this article illustrate that an estimated 25,000 African Americans ten years of age and older migrated to Houston between 1910 and 1940. The cohort tables do not include the children younger than ten years of age who may or may not have been migrants to the city (see Table 1). Earl Lewis, in his seminal study on Blacks in Norfolk, coined the use of age cohort tables to describe certain aspects of migration such as age of newcomers.
66. See Lewis, In Their Own Interests. While the use of age cohorts illustrates migration's significance to Houston's population increase, it conceals the fact that migration alone did not account for the city's population rise. Birthrates also contributed to Houston's demographic changes.
67. See Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Texas Births, 1930-1940 (Austin: Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics);
68. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1915 (1918; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1969), 205 (hereafter, cited as Negro Population in the U.S.);
69. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population: General Reports and Analytical Tables, vol. 2 of Fourteenth Census of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923), 354 (hereafter cited as Fourteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2);
70. and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population: Characteristics of the Population, vol. 2 of Sixteenth Census of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943), 1044 (hereafter cited as Sixteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2).
71. Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 7.
72. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 1-44;
73. Kelley, "We are Not What We Seem," 187-239;
74. Shaw, "Black Club Women," 433-42;
75. Craig Steven Wilder, In the Company of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York (New York: New York University Press, 2001), iv-viii;
76. Jacqueline Ann Rouse, "Out of the Shadow of Tuskegee: Margaret Murray Washington, Social Activism, and Race Vindication," Journal of Negro History 81 (1996): 31-46;
77. Ernest Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 3-26;
78. Darlene Clark Hine, Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas (1979; new ed. with essays by Darlene Clark Hine, Steven F. Lawson, and Merline Pitre, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 43-45;
79. Karen Kossie Chernyshev, "Black Educators and Political Activism: The Case of Lillian B. Horace," paper presented at the Texas State Historical Association Annual Meeting, March 5, 2004;
80. Amilcar Shabazz, "Sounding the Ram's Horn for Human Rights," in The Human Tradition in Texas, vol. 9 of The Human Tradition in America , Ty Cashion and Jesús F. De La Teja, eds. (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2001), 161-75;
81. Amilcar Shabazz, "Carter Wesley and the Making of Houston's Civic Culture before the Second Reconstruction," Huston Review of History and Culture 1 (Summer 2004): 2-12;
82. and Eric Amesen, Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 1-13.
83. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 1-44;
84. Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South, 3-26;
85. Hine, Black Victory, 43-45;
86. Mitchell, "Houston Jazz Legend Larkin Dies at 85,";
87. Wood, Down in Houston, 1-85;
88. Oliphant, "Jazz," 918-21;
89. Govenar, "Blues," 606-8;
90. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987), vxv-xix;
91. and James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990i), ix-xiii;
92. Kelley. "We are Not What We Seem," 187-239. Kelley's unforgettable piece also serves as an excellent resource for students interested in uncovering the extent of southern activism within the U.S. South prior to the modern-day civil rights movement.
93. Trotter, Great Migration in Historical Perspective;
94. Richard W. Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It;
95. Joe William Trotter Jr., Black Milwaukee;
96. James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989);
97. Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994);
98. Phillips, Alabama North;
99. Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996);
100. and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, To Place Our Deeds: The African-American Community in Richmond, California, 1910-1963 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
101. Richard W. Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It, xi-xiv;
102. Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color, 14-17;
103. Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage, 3-7;
104. and Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 1-44.
105. Milton Larkin MSS, 252:1;
106. Lorenzo Thomas, "Milt Larkin," 10-11;
107. Illinois Jacquet MSS, 403:1;
108. Lipscomb-Alwyn MSS, 2.325:A112;
109. Wood, Down in Houston, 3-70, 82, 85;
110. Oliphant, "Jazz," 918-21;
111. Govenar, "Blues," 606-8;
112. Garna L. Christian, "Texas Beginnings: Houston in the World of Jazz," Houston Review: History and Culture of the Gulf Coast 12, no. 2 (1990): 144-54;
113. Charles Stephenson, "Jazz Images: A Sampling from the Texas Jazz Archive," Houston Review: History and Culture of the Gulf Coast 12, no. 2 (1990): 157-66;
114. and Lorenzo Thomas, "Milt Larkin," 6-14.
115. "News from Texas Towns," Houston Informer, January 23, 1932;
116. and "News from Texas Towns," Houston Informer, June 10, 1933. On June 19, 1865, U.S. Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with several units and announced that all Texas slaves had been granted their freedom. Black Texans soon afterwards remembered this important milestone by naming it Juneteenth and designating it an annual holiday.
117. See Merline Pitre, Through Many Dangers, Toils, and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868-1900, 2nd rev. ed. (Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1997);
118. Howard O. Beeth and Cary D. Wintz, "Slavery and Freedom: Blacks in Nineteenth-Century Houston," in Black Dixie, 19-22;
119. Beeth and Wintz, "Economic and Social Developments in Black Houston during the Era of Segregation," in Black Dixie, 88-100;
120. Cyprian Davis, The History of Black Catholics in the United States (New York: Crossroads, 1990), 238-39;
121. Merline Pitre, In Struggle against Jim Crow: Lula B. White and the NAACP, 1900-1957 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 24-26;
122. Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South, 3-26;
123. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 1-44, 85-101;
124. Shaw, "Black Club Women," 433-42;
125. Wilder, In the Company of Black Men, iv-viii;
126. Rouse, "Out of the Shadow of Tuskegee," 31-46;
127. Hine, Black Victory, 43-45;
128. Kossie-Chernyshev, "Black Educators and Political Activism";
129. and William Cohen, At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861-1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1991), 201-300.
130. Houston's prosperous economy during and after World War I stimulated migration steams among Whites, East Asians, and Latinos as well. Like Blacks and Texas-born Mexicans, Whites usually migrated to the city from rural communities in Texas, especially those interior communities surrounding Houston. As they left behind their communities - in Fayette, Bastrop, Lee, Burleson, Washington, Grimes, Austin, and Colorado Counties, to name a few - the total population growth of interior cotton-economy-based, cotton-and-timber-economy-based (mixed), and timber-economy-based counties either slowly declined throughout time or only increased at miniscule levels. At the same time, Houston and the entire Upper Texas Gulf Coast (UTGC) industrial region - Brazoria, Harris (City of Houston), Chambers, Galveston (City of Galveston), Jefferson (Cities of Beaumont and Port Arthur), and Orange Counties - experienced population increases that outmatched those of interior communities that specialized in agriculture or lumbering. For the years 1910-1940, Houston's total population grew by 388 percent while the cotton region rose by only 10 percent and the cotton-timber region by only 26 percent. See Jesse O. Thomas, A Study of the Social Welfare Status of the Negro in Houston, Texas (Houston: Webster-Richardson, 1929), 7-27;
131. Fred R. von der Mehdan, The Ethnic Groups of Houston (Houston, Tex.: Rice University Press, 1984);
132. and Joseph A. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI, 1980), 19-23, 46-50, 83-85, 109-17.
133. The smallest of these triracial/ethnic migratory groups, Mexicans, would in time play a pivotal role in the city's labor market, overall economy, and modern-day civil rights movement after World War II. Two groups of Mexicans moved to the city in the first half of the twentieth century. A small but growing stream of migratory laborers left rural communities throughout South Texas and West Texas, and were part of the larger rural-to-urban migrations within the state at this time. The vast majority, however, fled Mexico, especially during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). Land reform measures that attempted to alter the policies of Mexican President Porfirio Díaz and the anticlerical provisions of the newly created Constitution of 1917 especially led to a "reign of terror" and dislocated tens of thousands of middle-class and working-class individuals and families. Equally important, Mexico's industrial revolution of the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under the leadership of President Díaz also dislocated families and pushed workers into northern Mexico and Texas. The Mexican communities of Houston, nevertheless, were quite small prior to World War II. Both the Mexican and Texas industrial revolutions attracted and encouraged northern migration streams from northern and central Mexico. The first of many large-scale migration streams from twentieth-century Mexico began during the Mexican Revolution. Ironically, because of Houston's strict and discriminatory repatriation policies of the 1920s and 1930s, which also included the forced emigration of U.S.-born Mexicans to Mexico, the Latino barrios of Houston were quite small prior to World War II. Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals, who totaled 500 in 1900, 6,000 in 1920, 15,000 in 1930, and 20,000 in 1940, only comprised 6 percent of the city's overall population in 1950. On the other hand, the 86,302 Blacks living there in 1940 made up 22 percent of the city's overall population. Houston, nevertheless, by the Depression-ridden 1930s, witnessed a Latino community that increasingly competed with Blacks for menial jobs. See De León, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt, 3-56, 110, 147;
134. Guadalupe San Miguel, Brown Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001, 4-6, 23, 55, 99, 110, 147;
135. Emilio Zamora, The World of the Mexican Worker in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993), 10-54;
136. Acuna, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 135-306;
137. and Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 30-42.
138. Along with general census population figures, welfare applications and census manuscript schedules also suggest that Houston migrants came from surrounding areas in Texas. Selected Harris County Social Service Client Case Files, which are represented in this study, are taken from the nonrandom sampling of 400 families - or 2,100 individuals - that applied for and received public assistance between 1917 and 1960 (the overwhelming majority requested public assistance during the Great Depression). Texas-born applicants - 1,368 persons - comprised 71 percent of the sample group, while persons born in Louisiana - 466 persons - made up 24 percent. Individuals born in Houston comprised 38 percent (527 people) of the total Texas sample population. Only 3 percent - or 61 individuals - came to Houston from other southern states, and less than 1 percent, or 9 persons, came from outside the South. The birthplaces of 196 persons - mainly lodgers or landlords - could not be accounted for. See Social Service Department Client Case Files, Harris County Archives, boxes 24-1674, 1882-6600, 11851-12651, 12984-15153, 15170-16536, and 17041-17821, Harris Criminal Justice Center, Harris County, Texas (hereafter cited as Social Service Department Client Case Files);
139. and Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race."
140. This study relies greatly on the Houston Manuscript Census of 1920. The 1920 Houston Manuscript Census figures used in this study are based on the nonrandom sampling of 3,400 persons totaling 10 percent of Houston's Black population for the year 1920. Some 2,764 Texas-born migrants comprised 81 percent of the surveyed group, and 409 individuals from Louisiana made up 12 percent of the sampled persons selected from the 1920 census manuscript schedules. In-migrants born in other southern places totaled 196, or 5 percent, of the entire sample pool. Fewer than 1 percent moved from other communities in the United States or places outside the country. See Manuscript Census, Harris County, 1920, reel 1812, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625, Clayton Genealogy Library, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas; Manuscript Census, Harris County, 1920, reel 1813, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625, Clayton Genealogy Library, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas; Manuscript Census, Houston, 1920, reel 1814, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625, Clayton Genealogy Library, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas; and Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race." The manuscript census of 1920 and the Harris Country welfare applications do not and cannot document the entire estimated migrant community for a number of reasons. First, the manuscript census only determines the state of birth and cannot distinguish between those persons born in Houston and those born in other Texas communities. Second, these records were not randomly sampled. Nor were the welfare applications randomly sampled for this study. Many argue that only through random sampling can scholars adequately eliminate biases. Also, the welfare applicants only represented a miniscule number of migrants, since most Black Houstonians did not receive public assistance at the time of the Great Depression. Taking these limitations into account, these sources do in fact give researchers a small glimpse into the world of Houston Black migrants in the first half of the twentieth century.
141. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States, 1920-32 (1935; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 41-42 (hereafter cited as Negroes in the U.S.).
142. Although Blacks moved to Houston continuously between the years 1910 and 1940, the 1920-1930 net-intercensal period witnessed the greatest wave of in-migration from surrounding eastern Texas and Louisiana. Some 15,000 people older than the age of ten moved to the city's Black communities. William J. Brophy, "The Black Texan, 1900-1950: A Quantitative History" (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1974), 4, 15, 20;
143. Photo Identification Sheet, Jeff Covington MSS, 184-1R:1;
144. Joseph Williams interview; Jean Walsh, "Dr. Covington, at 90, Is Still Practicing," Houston Post, March 12, 1961, Dr. Benjamin Covington Papers, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas (hereafter cited as Dr. Benjamin Covington MSS);
145. Forrest Garrett Hill, "The Negro in the Texas Labor Supply" (master's thesis, University of Texas, 1946), 9, 67, 81-84;
146. Beeth and Wintz, "Economic and Social Development in Black Houston during the Era of Segregation," in Black Dixie, 88-90;
147. Everett S. Lee, Ann Ratner Miller, Carol P. Brainerd, and Richard A. Easterlin, Population Redistribution and Economic Growth: United States, 1870-1950, vol. 1 of Methodological Considerations and Reference Tables, Simon Kuznets and Dorothy Swaine, Thomas, eds. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1957-1964);
148. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the U.S., 305;
149. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population: Composition and Characteristics of the Population by States, vol. 3 of Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, 831-34 (hereafter cited as Fourteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 3);
150. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 792-806;
151. and Randolph Campbell, An Empire for Slavery (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1989), 2. Although census materials show that the Black population in rural communities surrounding Houston dropped significantly, they do not tell the whole story. Death rates also contributed to the population decline in eastern Texas. In fact, for the years 1930-1940, death rates and not migration primarily explained the region's Black population decline.
152. See Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Texas Mortality, 1930-1940 (Austin: Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics);
153. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1920: Twenty-first Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922), 91-92;
154. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1921: Twenty-second Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1924), 137-38;
155. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1922: Twenty-third Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1924), 109-11;
156. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1923: Twenty-fourth Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1925), 110;
157. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1924: Twenty-fifth Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1926), 102;
158. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1925: Twenty-sixth Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1927), 14-15;
159. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1926: Twenty-seventh Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1929), 14-15;
160. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1927: Twenty-eighth Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1929), 11-12;
161. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1928, 1929, Thirtieth Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1932), 33-34;
162. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1930: Thirty-first Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934), 88-89;
163. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1931 and 1932: Thirty-second Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934), 10;
164. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1933 and 1934: Thirty-third Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1936), 24-25;
165. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1935 and 1936: Thirty-fourth Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1938), 91-92;
166. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Vital Statistics of the United States: 1937 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1939), 50-51;
167. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Vital Statistics of the United States: 1938 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1940), 50-51;
168. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Vital Statistics of the United States: 1939 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1941), 50-51;
169. and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Vital Statistics of the United States: 1940 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943), 79-81.
170. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1915, 78;
171. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States, vol. 2, 639;
172. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the U.S., 30;
173. Social Service Department Client Case Files, boxes 24-1674, 1882-6600, 11851-12651, 12984-15153, 15170-16536, 17041-17282, 17286-17435, and WPA box;
174. Manuscript Census, Harris County, 1920, reel 1812, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625;
175. Manuscript Census, Harris County, 1920, reel 1813, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625;
176. Manuscript Census, Houston, 1920, reel 1814, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625;
177. Carol Rust, "Frenchtown," Houston Chronicle, February 23, 1992, Houston - Subdivisions - Frenchtown - Vertical, Texas Room, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas;
178. Robert C. Giles, Curtis M. Dowell, and Vivian J. Zermeno, "Josephites Have Logged 90 Years in the Diocese," in A Tribute to the Josephites , suppl. to Texas Catholic Herald, September 10, 1993;
179. and Glenn R. Conrad and Carl A. Brasseaux, Crevasse! The 1927 Flood of Acadiana (Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, 1994), 1-30.
180. The word Creole, until recent years, exclusively defined Whites of French or Spanish ancestry born in the West Indies or Spanish America, but today it also refers to persons of African descent with mixed-race ancestry. While many define "Black" Creoles as descendents of "Frenchmen" and Black women, others give a broader definition that includes all White fathers who lived in Louisiana prior to the Civil War: French or Spanish Creoles or Louisiana natives, French immigrants, Anglo-Americans, and Acadians/Cajuns. Carl A. Brausseaux, Keith P. Fontenot, and Claude F. Oubre, Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994), xi-xii, 40-67, 113-20;
181. Davis, History of Black Catholics in the United States, 238-39;
182. Woods, Marginality and Identity, 20-22;
183. Brauseaux et al., Creoles of Color in the Bayou County, xi;
184. and Russell et al., Color Complex, 2-7, 16-18.
185. See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the U.S., 205;
186. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the U.S., vol, 2, 354;
187. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 1044;
188. Robert A. Calvert et al., The History of Texas, 3rd ed. (Wheeling, III.: Harlan Davidson, 2002);
189. Marvin Hurley, Decisive Years for Houston (Houston, Tex.: Houston Chamber of Congress, 1966), 43-47, 53-59, 415-17;
190. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 59-60, 142;
191. Texas Almanac, 2002-2003: 2000 Census Data (Dallas: Dallas Morning News, 2001), 125-27, 287, 383-99;
192. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 19-23; 46-50, 83-85, 109-17;
193. and Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 324-29, 260-64, 402-10.
194. Negro Population in the U.S., 205;
195. Fourteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 354;
196. Sixteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 1044;
197. Calvert, History of Texas, 3rd ed.;
198. Hurley, Decisive Years for Houston, 43-47, 53-59, 415-17;
199. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 59-60, 142;
200. Texas Almanac, 2002-2003, 125-27, 287, 383-99;
201. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 19-23; 46-50, 83-85, 109-17;
202. and Campbell, Gone to Texas, 360-43.
203. John W. Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (1982; reprint, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), ix, 1-20, 131-70;
204. and Charles S. Johnson, Patterns of Segregation (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943), 117-18. In this study, semirural/semiurban refers to those small towns in Texas and Louisiana that the migrants left.
205. Photo Identification Sheet, Jeff Collins Family Collection, 184-1R:1, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas (hereafter cited as Jeff Collins Family MSS with appropriate reference number);
206. and "Edward Collins," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-21R:1.
207. Photo Identification Sheet, Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-1R:1; "Geneva Mae Justice," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-9R:1;
208. "Geneva Mae Justice," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-17R:1;
209. "Arma Collins," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-20R:1;
210. "Ellison Collins," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-24R:1;
211. "John H. Gay," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-28R:1;
212. "Ernest Johnson," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-29R:1;
213. "Horace Williams," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-36R:1;
214. "Homer Collins," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-37R:1;
215. "Robert Johnson," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-42R:1;
216. "Mary Collins," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-44R:1;
217. "John Marion Gay," Jeff Collins Family MSS, 184-57R:1;
218. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the U.S., 205;
219. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 354;
220. and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 1044.
221. John S. MacDonald and Leatrice D. MacDonald, "Chain Migration, Ethnic Neighborhood Formation and Social Networks," Millbank Memorial Fund 42 (1964): 82-97;
222. and Lewis, "Economic Opportunities in the Industrial Age," 24.
223. Stullivan, Roots of the Stullivan Family, 1-10;
224. Luther Stullivan, interview by author, tape recording, July 23, 1996, Houston, Texas, in the possession of author;
225. Joseph Williams, interview, tape recording, February 13, 1998, Houston, Texas, in the possession of author;
226. Henry Coleman, interview by author, tape recording, February 13, 1998, Houston, Texas, in the possession of author;
227. and Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 56, 83-116.
228. Williams interview; Coleman interview; Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 83-116, 55. Former slave Robert Lee Coleman settled in East Texas with his family in the 1890s. He farmed land as a homesteader in Drews Landing, a small community near Shepherd, Texas, in San Jacinto County. He eventually owned the land on which he squatted. Angry Whites resented the fact that he owned 160 acres of prime East Texas farmland when most Black landowners farmed only half that amount. San Jacinto County farmers also resented his fierce stance on racial equality. Tempers flared in the county after someone stole hogs from a White farmer. A leader in the African American community, Coleman told neighbors that he would readily defend himself and his family against potential troublemakers harassing local Black residents about the stolen animals. One evening, a White storeowner murdered Coleman in cold blood after he came into the man's commissary to make several purchases.
229. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the U.S., 93-104, 812-13;
230. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the U.S., 54-55;
231. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 3, 1026;
232. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S. vol. 2, pt. 6, 1044;
233. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940: Population: Internal Migration: 1935-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943), 22 (hereafter cited as Sixteenth Census of the U.S.: Internal Migration);
234. Lewis, "Expectations, Experiences, and Life in the Industrial Age," 23-24;
235. Beeth and Wintz, "Economic and Social Development in Houston during the Era of Segregation," in Black Dixie, 88-93;
236. and Carole Marks, Farewell, We're Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 60-67.
237. The intercensal net migration table (see Table 1) for the periods 1910-1920, 1920-1930, and 1930-1940 are based on census figures. The numbers are derived from the census figures given in each age cohort in the general population census volumes on Houston. The former decennial year is subtracted from the later year in each cohort group. The figure given represents the probable migration number for that particular cohort. The numerical increase for each period reveals in-migration for those decennial periods. There is, however, no clear way of differentiating between migrants and others who came to the city through annexation. While most Blacks arrived to the city as a result of in-migration, others, like residents of Independence Heights, came to the city through annexation. For this reason, the migration figure given for this work can only serve as a suggestive estimate and not an approximate number. See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the U.S., 54-55;
238. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 3, 1-26;
239. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, pt. 6, 1044;
240. and Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 143-45.
241. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the U.S., 205;
242. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 354;
243. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 1044;
244. Reverend Robert Hayes Sr., interview by author, tape recording, July 30, 1996, in the possession of author; Stullivan interview; Williams interview; Lewis, "Expectations, Experiences, and Life in the Industrial Age," 23-24; and Social Service Department Client Case Files, Harris County Archives, boxes 24-1674, 1882-6600, 11851-12651, 12984-15153, 15170-16536, 17041-17821.
245. "Bossman Kills Black Man and Jim Crow Laws," September 2, 1973, Lipscomb-Alwyn Collection, 2K198:1, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, 1;
246. Stullivan interview; Brophy, "Black Texans," 63-114;
247. Forrest Garrett Hill, "The Negro in the Texas Labor Supply" (master's thesis, University of Texas, 1946), 81-109;
248. Bruce A. Glasrud, "Black Texans, 1900-1930: A History" (Ph.D. diss., Texas Technical College, 1969), 97-104;
249. Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way, 12-13, 17-18, 22-33;
250. Lullelia Harrison, interview by author, tape recording, Houston, Texas, September 23, 1999, in the possession of author, "Flight, Fight, or Blues: Mance Lipscomb, Musician, Farmer, Storyteller, Philosopher, Legend, Gatekeeper of the Centuries;" 2nd draft, December 1995, Lipscomb-Alwyn Collection, 2.325:A12, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin;
251. Nathan W. Pearson Jr., "Mance Lipscomb: An American Musician" (master's thesis, Wesleyan University, 1974), ch. 1, Lipscomb-Alwyn Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, 2K201:1;
252. Williams interview; Jacqueline Jones, The Dispossessed: America's Underclass from the Civil War to the Present (New York: Basic, 1992), 73-103;
253. Peter Gottlieb, "Rethinking the Great Migration: A Perspective from Pittsburgh," in The Great Migration in Historical Perspective, Joe William Trotter Jr., ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 68-82.
254. Stullivan interview; Stullivan, Roots of the Stullivan Family, 1-10;
255. Alwyn Barr, A History of African Americans in Texas, 1528-1995 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 92, 150-51;
256. and Robert E. Zeigler, "The Workingman in Texas, 1865-1914" (Ph.D. diss., Texas Technical University, 1972), 7, 36.
257. Stullivan interview; Stullivan, Roots of the Stullivan Family, 1-10;
258. Bruce Andre Beaubouef, "War and Change: Houston's Economic Ascendancy during World War I," Houston Review: History and Culture of the Gulf Coast 14 (Fall 1992): 89-112;
259. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," x-xi, 21-26, 70-71;
260. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 3-11, 13-30, 33-56, 69-75;
261. Zeigler, "Workingman in Houston, 1865-1914," 1-42;
262. Campbell, Gone to Texas, 360-437;
263. and Jesse Thomas, Study of the Social Welfare Status of the Negro in Houston, Texas, 7-8.
264. Stullivan interview; Stullivan, Roots of the Stullivan Family, 1-10;
265. Manuscript Census, Harris County, 1920, reel 1812, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625;
266. Manuscript Census, Harris County, 1920, reel 1813, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625;
267. and Manuscript Census, Houston, 1920, reel 1814, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625.
268. David McComb, Houston: A History (1969; reprint, Austin: University of Texas, 1980), 65-82;
269. Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South, 3-6;
270. Jesse Thomas, Study of the Social Welfare Status of the Negro in Houston, Texas, 7-8;
271. Beaubouef, "War and Change, 89-112;
272. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," x-xi, 21-26, 70-71;
273. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 3-11, 13-30, 33-56, 69-75;
274. Howard O. Beeth, "Historians, Houston, and History," in Black Dixie , 3-5;
275. Trotter, "Great Migration in Historical Perspective," 14-17;
276. Zeigler, "Workingman in Houston, 1865-1914," 1-42;
277. Campbell, Gone to Texas, 360-437;
278. and Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 1-7.
279. McComb, Houston: A History, 65-82;
280. Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South, 3-6;
281. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," x-xi, 21-26, 70-71;
282. and Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 3-11, 13-30, 33-56, 69-75.
283. McComb, Houston: A History, 65-82;
284. Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South, 3-6;
285. Jesse Thomas, Study of the Social Welfare Status of the Negro in Houston, Texas, 7-8;
286. Beaubouef, "War and Change," 89-112;
287. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," x-xi, 21-26, 70-71;
288. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 3-11, 13-30, 33-56, 69-75;
289. Beeth, "Historians, Houston, and History," in Black Dixie, 3-5;
290. and Trotter, "Great Migration in Historical Perspective," 14-17.
291. For three different interpretations of the Houston Race Riot, see Robert V. Haynes, A Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976);
292. C. Calvin Smith, "The Houston Riot of 1917, Revisited," Houston Review: History and Culture on the Gulf Coast 13 (Fall 1991): 85-102;
293. and Garna L. Christian, Black Soldiers in Jim Crow Texas, 1899-1917 (College Station Texas A&M University Press, 1985), 145-72.
294. Haynes, Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917, 30-175;
295. Smith, "Houston Riot of 1917, Revisited," 85-102;
296. and Christian, Black Soldiers in Jim Crow Texas, 1899-1917, 145-72.
297. Christian, Black Soldiers in Jim Crow Texas, 1899-1917, 145-72.
298. Haynes, Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917, 30-175;
299. Smith, "Houston Riot of 1917, Revisited," 85-102;
300. Christian, Black Soldiers in Jim Crow Texas, 145-72;
301. Steven A. Reich, "Soldiers of Democracy: Black Texans and the Fight for Citizenship," Journal of American History 82 (March 1996): 1478-98;
302. Hine, Black Victory, 58-59, 94-97;
303. and Pitre, In Struggle against Jim Crow, 16-26.
304. Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 32.
305. Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 32;
306. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fourteenth Census of the U.S., 1114-15;
307. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the U.S.: 1930, Population, vol. 4: Occupations, by States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1933), 1593-95 (hereafter cited as Fifteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 4, Occupations);
308. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population of the U.S., 812-13, 831-34;
309. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 362-65, 792-806, 1044;
310. U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Labor Force, vol. 3 of Sixteenth Census of the U.S., 906-7 (hereafter cited as Sixteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 3);
311. National Urban League, A Review of the Economic and Cultural Problems of Houston, Texas as They Relate to Conditions of the Negro Population (n.p., 1945), 24;
312. and Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South, xv-38, 129-33.
313. Although the census classified stevedores as unskilled workers, Jesse O. Thomas, a social worker for the National Urban League, referred to the members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) as skilled laborers. See Jesse Thomas, Study of the Social Welfare Status of the Negro in Houston, Texas, 9-18. This analysis is patterned after Lewis's study on Norfolk. Like Houston, coastal Norfolk relied heavily on Blacks as waterfront workers. Equally important, Norfolk's economy nurtured a two-tier labor market for African and White Americans.
314. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fourteenth Census of the U.S., 1114-15;
315. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fifteenth Census of the U.S., 1393-95;
316. Manuscript Census, Harris County, 1920, reel 1812, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625;
317. Manuscript Census, 1920, reel 1813, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625;
318. Manuscript Census, Houston, 1920, 1814, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625;
319. and Social Service Department Client Case Files, Boxes 24-1674, 1882-6600, 11851-12651, 12984-15153, 15170-16536, 17041-17821, 17286-17455, and WPA box. Although this study relies on sample welfare applicants who received public assistance in the first half of the twentieth century, it primarily concentrates on the vast majority of Houston-area residents who did not receive assistance. Census materials and supporting sources such as oral histories, manuscript collections, church records, biographies, and memoirs point to the vast majority of Blacks in Houston who did not receive public aid from federal and local governments.
320. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fourteenth Census of the U.S., 1114-15;
321. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations vol. 4 of Fifteenth Census of the U.S., 1393-95;
322. Manuscript Census, Harris County, 1920, reel 1812, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625, Clayton Genealogy Library, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas; Lewis, In their Own Interests, 1-42;
323. Eric Amesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 160-252;
324. Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South, 3-8;
325. and Rebecca Montes, "Working for American Rights: Black, White, and Mexican American Dockworkers in Texas during the Great Depression," in Sunbelt Revolution: The Historical Progression of the Civil Rights Struggle in the Gulf South, 1865-2000,
326. Samuel C. Hyde Jr., ed. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003), 102-32. Galveston longshoremen applied for one of the first ILA charters in the South in 1900.
327. Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans, 160-252;
328. Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South, 3-8, 44;
329. and Montes, "Working for American Rights," 102-32.
330. Thelma Scott Bryant, interview by author, tape recording, July 25, 1996, Houston, Texas, in the possession of author; Ellis Elizabeth Newell, "The Life and Works of C. F. Richardson" (senior thesis, Houston College for Negroes, 1941), 5;
331. Andrew Webster Jackson, A Sure Foundation (Houston: Webster Publishing, n.d.), 385-86, 417-18, 588-89;
332. Hine, Black Victory, 130, 139;
333. James M. SoRelle, "The Emergence of Black Business in Houston, Texas: A Study in Race and Ideology, 1919-45," in Black Dixie, 103-7;
334. Pitre, In Struggle against Jim Crow, 13, 21-22;
335. and E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie: The Rise of a New Middle Class (New York: Free Press, 1957), 138-95. Frazier's controversial thesis, which drew both praise and criticism, has been echoed and criticized by many scholars, including SoRelle. For other works that discuss the Black business elite's motives and role in the Black community,
336. see Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 38-46;
337. Richard W. Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It, 11-19, 39-62;
338. and Spear, Black Chicago, 167-200.
339. Bryant interview; Thelma Scott Bryant, Pioneering Families of Houston (Early 1900s) as Remembered by Thelma Scott Bryant (Houston: n.p., 1991), 1-36;
340. Newell, "Life and Works of C. F. Richardson," 5;
341. George McElroy, "Anna Dupree Looks with Pride on Her Life," Anna Dupree Collection, 110:1, folder 5, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas (hereafter cited as Anna Dupree MSS);
342. "Welcome Acres Homes Eliza Johnson, Home for Our Aged Negro Citizens," Anna Dupree MSS, 110:1, folder 7;
343. Webster Jackson, Sure Foundation, 385-86, 417-18, 588-89;
344. Hine, Black Victory, 130, 139;
345. SoRelle, "Emergence of Black Business in Houston, Texas," 103-7;
346. Pitre, In Struggle against Jim Crow, 13, 21-22;;
347. Patricia Smith Prather and Jane Clements Monday, From Slave to Statesman: The Legacy of Joshua Houston, Servant to Sam Houston (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1993), 205-35;
348. Naomi Ledé, Samuel W. Houston and His Contemporaries: A Comprehensive History of the Origin, Growth, and Development of the Black Educational Movement in Huntsville and Walker County (Houston, Tex.: Pha Green Printing, 1981), 36-160;
349. Naomi Ledé, Precious Memories of a Black Socialite: A Narrative of the Life and Times of Constance Houston Thompson (Houston: N. W. Ledé, 1991);
350. and Naomi Ledé, interview by Bernadette Pruitt, tape recording, Huntsville, Texas, February 1, 2003, in the possession of the author.
351. Grovey v. Townsend, 295, U.S. 45 (1935);
352. Bryant interview; Pitre, In Struggle against Jim Crow, 21-22;
353. and Hine, Black Victory, 130.
354. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 110-34, 147;
355. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States, rev. and abridged ed. with foreword by Nathan Huggins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 281-91;
356. James M. SoRelle, "The Darker Side of 'Heaven': The Black Community in Houston, Texas, 1917-1945" (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University Press, 1980), 110-27;
357. Brophy, "Black Texans," 107-10;
358. Ruthe Winegarten, Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 156-57;
359. and Thomas, Study of the Social Welfare Status of the Negro in Houston, Texas, 16-17.
360. Julia Kirk Blackwelder, Now Hiring: The Feminization of Work in the United States, 1900-1995 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 65-166;
361. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fourteenth Census of the U.S., 1116;
362. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fifteenth Census of the U.S., 1395-96;
363. U.S. Bureau of the Census,, Sixteenth Census of the U.S.: 1940, Population, vol. 3: The Labor Force, 511;
364. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population: Composition and Characteristics of the Population by States, vol. 3 of Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923), 992;
365. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940: Population, vol. 2: Characteristics of the Population (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943), 791;
366. Kraut, Huddled Masses;
367. and Thomas Kessner and Betty Boyd Caroli, "New Immigrant Women at Work: Italians and Jews in New York City," in Silent No More: A Multicultural Reader Exploring the Forgotten Efforts of Minority Groups as They Assimilated, Forcibly or Voluntarily, into American Culture, Dennis L. Morrison and Mark Saad Saka, eds. (Waterbury, Conn.: Emancipation Press, 1996).
368. Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker, 26-53;
369. and Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A., tenth anniversary ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 65-142.
370. Blackwelder, Now Hiring, 65-166;
371. Jones, Labor of Love, 110-95;
372. Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), 192-258;
373. Brophy, "Black Texans," 107-10;
374. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations vol. 4 of Fourteenth Census of the U.S., 1116;
375. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fifteenth Census of the U.S., 1395-96;
376. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S.: 1940, Population, vol. 3: The Labor Force, 511;
377. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population: Composition and Characteristics of the Population by States vol. 3 of Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923), 992;
378. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940: Population, vol. 2: Characteristics of the Population (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943), 791;
379. Kraut, Huddled Masses;
380. and Kessner and Boyd Caroli, "New Immigrant Women at Work," 1996.
381. Manuscript Census, Harris County, 1920, reel 1812, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625;
382. Manuscript Census, 1920, reel 1813, Bureau of Census, Record Group T625;
383. Manuscript Census, Houston, 1920, 1814, Bureau of Census, Record Group, T625;
384. Social Service Department Client Case Files, boxes 24-1674, 1882-6600, 11851-12651, 12984-15153, 15170-16536, 17041-17821, 17286-17455;
385. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fourteenth Census of the U.S., 1116;
386. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fifteenth Census of the U.S., 1595-96;
387. U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Labor Force, vol. 3 of Sixteenth Census of the U.S., 510;
388. Winegarten, Black Texas Women, 262;
389. Blackwelder. Now Hiring, 85-130;
390. and Romero, Maid in the U.S.A., 65-142.
391. Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, 127-34;
392. Winegarten, Black Texas Women, 175-78;
393. Frazier, Negro Family in the United States, 268-91;
394. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 2 vols. (1943;
395. reprint, New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 930-31, 1086;
396. and Bernadette Pruitt, "Domestic Workers," in Encyclopedia of the Great Depression, Robert McElvaine, ed. (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2003), 241-44.
397. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fourteenth Census of the U.S., 116;
398. and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fifteenth Census of the U.S., 1395-96.
399. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fourteenth Census of the U.S., 1116;
400. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupations, vol. 4 of Fifteenth Census of the U.S., 1395-96;
401. and U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Labor Force, vol. 3 of Sixteenth Census of the U.S., 510.
402. Winegarten, Black Texas Women, 85, 101-102;
403. Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, 142-46;
404. Ira Bryant, The Development of Houston Negro Schools (Houston: Informer Publishing, 1935), 93-97;
405. and William Henry Kellar, Make Haste Slowly: Moderates, Conservatives, and School Desegregation in Houston (College Station: Texas &M University Press, 1999), 26-40. The field of education still attracts a large segment of the Black collegiate population. For example, more than 50 percent of Blacks holding advanced doctorate degrees have them in education.
406. See Black Issues in Higher Education 19 (June 2002).
407. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S.: Internal Migration, 22;
408. Social Service Department Client Case Files, WPA box;
409. and Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California, 1997), 163-82.
410. Social Service Department Client Case Files, box 15170-16536.
411. Social Service Department Client Case Files, box 24-1674;
412. and Larry J. Jackson, "The Development of Black Business in Texas, 1919-1969: From a Houston Perspective" (master's thesis, Texas Technical University, 1979). 3-5.
413. Randy J. Sparks, "'Heavenly Houston' or 'Hellish Houston'? Black Unemployment and Relief Efforts, 1929-1936," Southern Studies 25 (Winter 1986): 355. These figures reflect the circumstances surrounding Blacks throughout the nation in cities and on farms.
414. Vivian Hubbard Seals, interview by author, tape recording, May 17, 1999, Houston, Texas, in the possession of author; Lullelia Harrison, interview by author, tape recording, September 23, 1999, Houston, Texas, in the possession of author;
415. Sparks, "'Heavenly Houston'or 'Hellish Houston'?" 356-62;
416. Social Service Department Client Case Files, WPA box;
417. Nancy Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 296-301;
418. Brophy, "Black Texans," 221-22, 296;
419. Barton J. Bernstein, "The New Deal: The Conservative Achievements of Liberal Reform," in Twentieth Century America: Recent Interpretations, 2nd ed. (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 260-62.
420. Sparks, "'Heavenly Houston' or 'Hellish Houston'?" 355, 360;
421. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S.: Internal Migration, 22;
422. Social Service Department Client Case Files, WPA box; Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 163-66, 296-301;
423. Sparks, "'Heavenly Houston' or 'Hellish Houston'?" 362;
424. and Brophy, "Black Texans," 221-22. In Texas, the percentage of Mexican Americans on federal relief exceeded that of both Blacks and Whites. There is no way of knowing the approximate number of African American migrants living in Houston who applied for and received public assistance during the Depression without examining the entire collection of case files.
425. Michael Botson, "Jim Crow Wearing Steel-Toed Shoes and Safety Glasses: Duel Unionism at the Hughes Tool Company 1918-1942," Houston Review: History and Culture of the Gulf Coast 16 (Winter 1994): 104-11;
426. and Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South, 28-38, 112-27.
427. On February 14, 1942, the largest Black weekly in the nation, the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper, initiated the Double V sociopolitical philosophy among African American journalists, civil rights activists, grassroots organizers, ministers, middle-class professionals, rank-and-file workers, along with others within the Afro-American community. During World War II, Americans of African descent demanded victory abroad over the Axis enemies of the United States and victory over the enemies of Black civil rights and social justice in the United States (and abroad as well). A month later, the Chicago Defender weekly coined another slogan after a brutal lynching in Sikeston, Missouri: "Remember Pearl Harbor and Sikeston too."
428. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 296-301;
429. Sparks, "'Heavenly Houston' or 'Hellish Houston'?" 362;
430. Brophy, "Black Texans," 221-22;
431. and Robert D. Bullard, Invisible Houston: The Black Experience in Boom and Bust (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 3-39.
432. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population of the U.S., 205;
433. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 354;
434. Rust, "Frenchtown"; Vivian Seals, "Independence Heights, Texas," in Independence Heights, Texas: The First Black City in Texas, 1915-1928 , researched and compiled by Vivian Hubbard Seals (Houston: n.p., 1998);
435. Sparks, "'Heavenly Houston' or 'Hellish Houston'?" 353-54;
436. and Bullard, Invisible Houston, 4-40.
437. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 2, 1044;
438. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population, 1920: Occupations, vol. 4 of Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923), 1114-16;
439. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Occupation by States, vol. 4 of Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1932), 1593-95;
440. U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Labor Force vol. 3 of Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, 506-7;
441. Botson, "Jim Crow Wearing Steel-Toed Shoes," 110-13;
442. Sparks, "'Heavenly Houston' or 'Hellish Houston'?" 355-56;
443. and Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 89-90.
444. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Characteristics of the Population: Part 43: Texas, vol. 2 of A Report of the Seventeenth Decennial Census of the United States: Census of Population: 1950, 509-51;
445. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 223-71;
446. Sparks, "'Heavenly Houston' or 'Hellish Houston'?" 355-56;
447. Pratt, Growth of a Refining Region, 89-135;
448. Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community, 107-31;
449. Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 173-87;
450. and Richard W. Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915-1945, 304-12.
451. Hine, Black Victory, 123-37, 173-257;
452. Nancy Ruth Eckols Bessent, "The Publisher: The Autobiography of Carter Wesley" (master's thesis, University of Texas, 1981), 3-7;
453. "Anna Dupree Looks with Pride on Her Life," Informer and Texas Freeman, December 9, 1972, Anna Dupree Collection, 110: 1, folder 5, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas;
454. William Henry Kellar, Make Haste Slowly : Moderates, Conservatives, and School Desegregation in Houston (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 28-33;
455. and SoRelle, "Emergence of Black Business in Houston," 103-15.
456. Hine, Black Victory, 123-37, 173-257;
457. Eckols Bessent, "Publisher: The Autobiography of Carter Wesley," 3-7;
458. "Anna Dupree Looks with Pride on Her Life," Anna Dupree Collection, 110:1, folder 5, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas;
459. Kellar, Make Haste Slowly, 28-33;
460. SoRelle, "Emergence of Black Business in Houston," in Black Dixie , 103-15;
461. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 331-51;
462. Cole, No Color Is My Kind, 3-12;
463. and F. Kenneth Jensen, "The Houston Sit-in Movement of 1960-61," in Black Dixie, 211-20.
464. Barbara Vobejda, "Census Report Sees Big Shift of Blacks to Southern States," Houston Chronicle, January 9, 1998;
465. SoRelle, "Darker Side of 'Heaven,'" 110-27;
466. Winegarten, Black Texas Women, 156-57;
467. Thomas, Study of the Social Welfare Status of the Negro in Houston, Texas, 16-17;
468. Beeth and Wintz, "Economic and Social Developments in Black Houston during the Era of Segregation," 88-100;
469. Howard O. Beeth and Cary D. Wintz, "Segregation, Violence, and Civil Rights," in Black Dixie, 163;
470. Bullard, Invisible Houston, 1-31;
471. Pruitt, "For the Advancement of the Race," 9-32, 85-101, 330;
472. Davis, History of Black Catholics in the United States, 238-39;
473. Hine, Black Victory, 75-257;
474. Pitre, In Struggle against Jim Crow, 24-26;
475. Obadele-Starks, Black Unionism in the Industrial South, 3-6;
476. Greater Houston Partnership, Houston Facts 2000, 2 (Houston, Tex.: Houston Partnership, 1999);
477. and Trotter et al., African American Urban Experience, 1-17.