"Headed for louisville:" rethinking rural to urban migration in the South, 1930-1950

Journal of Social History

Volumn 40, Issue 2, 2006, Pages

  Adams, Luther ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

^b Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846380687     PISSN: 00224529     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.2007.0000     Document Type: Review

References (147)

1. Toni Gilpin, "Left By Themselves: A History of the United Farm Equipment and Metal Workers Union, 1938-1955," (Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 1992), p. 417.
2. Ibid., pp. 417-419.
3. Interview with Dr. Maurice Rabb by Dwayne Cox. August 15, 1977. Black Oral History Collection, University of Louisville, Archives and Records Center.
4. Ann Ratner Miller, Net Intercensal Migration To Large Urban Areas of the United States, 1930-1940, 1940-1950, 1950-1960 (Philadelphia, 1964), pp. 89, 161 & 220;
5. on the decade 1950-1960, see Net Migration of the Population by Age, Sex, Color, vol. 1, part 4, p. 649;
6. on 1935-1940 see Leon Truesdell, Population, Internal Migration, 1935 to 1940, Sixteenth Census of the United States (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943);
7. and on 1960-1970 see Marcus E. Jones, Black Migration in the United States with an Emphasis on Selected Cities (U.S.A., 1980), p. 71.
8. For a general over view of Louisville and Kentucky see, George H. Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio: A History of Louisville and Jefferson County (Louisville, 1979);
9. Marion B. Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky, Vol. 1: From Slavery to Segregation, 1760-1891 (Frankfort, 1992)
10. and George C. Wright, A History of Blacks in Kentucky: Vol. 2: In Pursuit of Equity, 1890-1980 (Frankfort, 1992), which provide the background on African Americans in the state.
11. Wright, Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930 (Baton Rouge, 1985)
12. focuses on the city before the Depression. On African American migration in Kentucky, see Luther J. Adams, "It Was North of Tennessee: African American Migration and the Meaning of the South" Ohio Valley History, 3(3) (Fall, 2003) &
13. "African American Migration to Louisville in the Mid-Twentieth Century," The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, vol. 99, No. 4 (Autumn 2001).
14. Joe William Trotter Jr., River Jordan: African American Urban Life in the Ohio Valley (Lexington, 1998), compares the formation of African American communities in Louisville, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Evansville.
15. Louis M. Kyriakoudes, The Social Origins of the Urban South: Race, Gender, and Migration in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, 1980-1930 (Chapel Hill, 2003).
16. Peter Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way, p. 44-45;
17. James Grossman, Land of Hope, p.95, 111-112
18. & Jacqueline Jones, "Southern Diaspora: Origins of the Northern 'Underclass'" in Michael B. Katz, ed., The "Underclass" Debate: Views from History (Princeton, N.J., 1993) p.40.
19. James Grossman, Land of Hope, p. 111.
20. For overviews of the scholarship on the national migration that had begun in the 1910s, see Joe William Trotter, ed., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender (Bloomington, Ind., 1991);
21. Alferdteen Harrison, ed., Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South (Jackson, Miss., 1991).
22. On specific case studies see, Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: Making of a Ghetto, 1890-1930 (New York, 1968);
23. Allan Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920 (Chicago, 1967);
24. William Tuttle, Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York, 1970, reprint, 1974);
25. Elizabeth H. Pleck, Black Migration and Poverty: Boston, 1865-1900 (New York, 1979);
26. Florette Henri, Black Migration: Movement North, 1900-1920 (Garden City, N Y, 1975);
27. James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970 (Urbana, 1980);
28. Peter Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way: Southern Blacks' Migration to Pittsburgh, 1916-30 (Urbana, 1987);
29. Joe William Trotter, Jr. Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45 (Urbana, 1988);
30. James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago, 1989);
31. Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia (Berkeley, 1991);
32. Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District, 1870 Through the Civil Rights Era (Seattle, 1994);
33. Elizabeth dark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out: African-American Domestics and the Great Migration (New York, 1994, reprint, 1996);
34. Farah Griffin, "Who Set You Flowin'?": The African-American Migration Narrative (New York, 1995);
35. Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African-American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Chapel Hill, 1996);
36. Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990 (New York, 1998);
37. Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, To Place Our Deeds: The African American Community in Richmond, California, 1910-1963 (Berkeley, 2000)
38. &. Josh Sides, L. A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley, 2003).
39. Pete Daniel, "The New Deal, Southern Agriculture, and Economic Change," in The New Deal and the South (Jackson, 1984), p. 57.
40. Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960 (Baton Rouge, 1987), p. 167.
41. Alan Brinkley, "The New Deal and Southern Politics," in The New Deal and the South (Jackson, 1984);
42. Broadus Mitchell, Depression Decade: From New Era Through New Deal, 1929-1941 (New York, 1961), pp. 99-101;
43. Pete Daniel, "The New Deal and Southern Labor," in The New Deal and the South (Jackson, 1984), pp. 48-49;
44. Pete Daniel, "Going Among Strangers: Southern Reactions to World War II," in Journal of American History. (December, 1990), pp. 886-887;
45. Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal For Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue: The Depression Decade (Oxford, 1978), p. 48;
46. Harvard Sitkoff, "Impact of the New Deal On Black Southerners," in The New Deal and the South (Jackson, 1984), p. 121;
47. Jeannie Whayne, A New Plantation South: Land, Labor and Federal Favor in Twentieth Century Arkansas (Charlottesville, 1996), pp. 162-165;
48. Raymond Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression: The Problem of Economic Recovery (Westport, Connecticut, 1970), pp. 12-13. The AAA contracts established in 1933 determined that landowners and cash tenants would receive the entire "parity payment." While tenants and sharecroppers would receive between three-quarters to one-half the payment depending on their status and interest in the crop, farmer laborers working for wages did not receive any of the payment.
49. Pete Daniel, "The New Deal and Southern Labor," p. 56
50. &. Raymond Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression, p. 60.
51. Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, p. 72.
52. Pete Daniel, "The New Deal and Southern Labor," p. 55.
53. Broadus Mitchell, Depression Decade: From the New Era Through the New Deal, 1929-1941 (New York, 1961), pp. 220-221.
54. Pete Daniel, "The New Deal, Southern Agriculture, Economic Change," p. 59
55. and Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, p. 319.
56. Alan Brinkley. "The New Deal and Southern Politics," p. 113.
57. Raymond Wolters. Negroes and the Great Depression, p. 93.
58. Raymond Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression
59. & Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal For Blacks, p. 55.
60. Raymond Wolters. Negroes and the Great Depression, p. 109.
61. Harvard Sitkoff, A New For Blacks, p. 55
62. &. Raymond Wolters, Negroes in the Great Depression, pp. 13.
63. Chad Berry, Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles (Urbana, 2000), pp. 31-32 and 60.
64. John N. Webb and Malcolm Brown, Migrant Families (Washington, 1938) 4.
65. See also C. E. Lively, Rural Migration in the United States (Washington, 1939)
66. and Sam Joseph Dennis, African-American Exodus and White Migration, 1950-1970. For out-migration during between 1950-60 in Eastern Kentucky
67. see, Harry K. Schwarzweller, Mountain Families in Transition: A Case Study of Appalachian Migration (University Park, 1971);
68. "Sociocultural Origins of Migration Patterns of Young Men From Eastern Kentucky," University of Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Lexington, Kentucky, December, 1963;
69. "Career Placement and Economic Life Chances of Young Men from Eastern Kentucky," University of Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Lexington, Kentucky, January, 1964;
70. "Family Ties, Migration, and Transitional Adjustment of Young Men from Eastern Kentucky," University of Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Lexington, Kentucky, May, 1964.
71. Leon Truesdell, ed. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940. Population. Internal Migration, 1935 to 1940: Color and Sex of Migrants (Washington, 1943).
72. The Unemployment Committee of the National Federation of Settlements, Case Studies of Unemployment (Philadelphia, 1931) pp. 112-113. None of the case studies reveals their subjects full names, hence Mr. Leighton.
73. Christopher Silver and John Moeser, The Separate City: Black Communities in the Urban South, 1940-1968 (Lexington, 1995), p.6. According to Silver and Moeser, segregation led to the development of "separate cities." Where African-Americans lived in communities balanced between the denial of access and a full range of opportunities, they often developed a self-reliance that fostered independent Black-owned business.
74. Associates of Louisville Municipal College, University of Louisville, Louisville Urban League, and Central Colored High School, A Study of Business and Employment Among Negroes in Louisville (Louisville, 1942), pp. 37, & 42-43.
75. Ibid., p. 28.
76. Ibid., pp. 62-63 & 68.
77. Donald Brandon, American Negro Migration from 1920 to 1947 (Ph. D. dissertation; Teachers College, Columbia University, 1949), p. 153.
78. Earl Lewis, "Expectations, Economic Opportunities and Life in the Industrial Age: Black Migration to Norfolk, Virginia, 1910-1945," in Joe William Trotter, Jr. ed., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective (Bloomington, 1991), p. 23.
79. NAACP Papers. Clippings from "Methods of Pro-integration Groups Differ," Courier-Journal, September 14, 1960. Kentucky, Louisville. Part II, C-50, Branch File 1956-65, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.
80. NAACP Papers. "Brief Sketch." Part I, G-76, Branch Files, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. (Although Anderson is widely believed a Louisville native, a hand written note from Anderson to Thurgood Marshall indicates he was in fact from Frankfort, Kentucky.)
81. Wade Hall, The Rest of the Dream: The Black Odyssey of Lyman Johnson (Lexington, Kentucky, 1988), pp. 10 & 7.
82. George C. Wright, "The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky, 1900-1970." in W. Marvin Dulaney and Kathleen Underwood, eds. Essays on the American Civil Rights Movement. (College Station, 1993), p. 51.
83. Wade Hall. The Rest of the Dream, p.60.
84. Associates of Louisville Municipal College, University of Louisville, Louisville Urban League, and Central Colored High School, A Study of Business and Employment Among Negroes in Louisville. (Louisville, 1942), pp. 73 & 74.
85. George D. Wilson Papers &. George D. Wilson, Footprints in the Sand. (Decorah, Iowa, 1982), pp. 82 & 89.
86. Howard W. Beers and Catherine P. Heflin, The Negro Population of Kentucky, Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 481, January, 1946, 14, pp. 5 & 21.
87. Interview with Goldie Winstead-Beckett. Black Oral History Collection, University of Louisville Archives and Records Center; Howard Beers and Catherine P. Heflin, The Negro Population of Kentucky, pp. 24-27.
88. Interview with Lyman T. Johnson by Regina Monsour. 1977. Black Oral History Collection, University of Louisville Archives and Records Center.
89. Urban Renewal Relocation Files, 1960-65
90. Interview with W. L. Holmes by Mary Bobo. 1979. Black Oral History Collection, University of Louisville, Archives and Records Center.
91. Interview with W. L. Holmes.
92. Shirley Mae Harmon, "A Comparison Study of Black and White Women War Workers," p. 21.
93. Wade Hall, Passing For Black, p. 32. Lincoln Institute was a school established for rural Blacks in Kentucky from towns or counties that did not support adequate education.
94. Wade Hall, Passing For Black, p. 34.
95. Race Relations in Louisville: Southern Racial Traditions and Northern Class Dynamic, Policy Paper Series, June 1990, Urban Research Institute, University of Louisville, pp. 4-5.
96. Neil McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Chicago, 1990), p. 10.
97. J. Harvey Kerns, A Survey of the Economic and Cultural Conditions of the Negro Population of Louisvilk, Kentucky and A Review of the Program and Activities of the Louisville urban League (Louisville, 1948), pp. 80, 111, 159 and 33.
98. See Wright, A History of Blacks in Kentucky, p. 54.
99. J. Harvey Kerns, A Survey of the Economic and Cultural Conditions of the Negro Population of Louisville, p. 175.
100. George C. Wright, Life Behind A Veil: Blacks in Louisville Kentucky, 1865-1930 (Baton Rouge, 1985), p. 4.
101. Interview with Reverend William G. Marks by Luther Adams. November 29, 1997
102. Charles Henry Parrish, Jr. Papers. Interview with Code, 036. University of Louisville, Archives and Records Center. Since the Parrish Papers stipulate that the interviewees remain anonymous I have adopted pseudonyms for each interview in the text.
103. Interview with W. L. Holmes by Mary D. Bobo. August 15, 1978. University of Louisville, Archives and Records Center.
104. Ibid.
105. Interview with Amelia B. Ray by Kenneth Chumbley. August 25, 1978. University of Louisville, Archives and Records Center.
106. Charles Parrish Papers, Box 10, Interview with Code 048. University of Louisville, Archives and Records Center.
107. Interview with Amelia B. Ray by Kenneth Chumbely. August 25, 1978. Black Oral History Collection, University of Louisville, Archives and Records Center.
108. Interview with Goldie Winstead-Beckett by Kenneth Chumbely. September 12, 1978 and Municipal Reference Collection, Folder: Planning Urban Renewal. University of Louisville, Archives and Records Center.
109. Charles E. Hall, Negroes in the United States, 1920-1932, p. 48. Ironically, it also stands in stark contrast with the African American population in the North as well since more than two-thirds lived in cities larger than 100,000.
110. On Kentucky's Black population see, Howard Beers and Catherine P. Heflin, The Negro Population of Kentucky, Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Kentucky, Bulletin 481. January, 1946. p. 24;
111. See also A. Lee, Coleman, Pryor, Albert C. and Christiansen, John R. The Negro Population of Kentucky at Mid-Century, Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 643, June, 1956
112. and Gordon F. De Jong and George A. Hillery, Jr. Kentucky's Negro Population in I960, Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 704, November, 1965.
113. Urban Renewal: R-10 Project relocation files (Southwick I to West Downtown) 1960-1961, boxes 22 and 29. City of Louisville Archives.
114. Ann Ratner Miller, Net Intercensal Migration To Large Urban Areas of the United States, 1930-1940, 1940-1950, 1950-1960. (Philadelphia, Pa, 1964), p. 220.
115. Robert, Weaver. Negro Labor: A National Problem (Port Washington, N. Y, 1946), p. 135
116. & J. Harvey Kerns, A Survey of the Economic and Cultural Conditions of the Negro Population of Louisville, Kentucky & A Review of the Program and Activities of the Louisville Urban League (Louisville, Kentucky, 1948), p. 22.
117. Donald G. Brandon, American Negro Migration From 1910 to 1947 (Ph. D. Dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1949) pp. 31-32.
118. Ira De. A. Reid, "Special Problems of Negro Migration During the War," in The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly (July, 1947), vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 287-288.
119. Pete Daniel, "Going Among Strangers: Southern Reactions to World War II," in The Journal of American History vol. 77, no. 3 (December 1990), p.901.
120. Survey of Economic and Cultural Conditions of the Negro Population of Louisville, p. 11.
121. National Defense Migration Hearings p. 6770
122. and George H. Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio: A History of Louisville and Jefferson Country (Jefferson County, K.Y., 1979) p. 206.
123. George H. Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio, p. 208.
124. George Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio, p. 206.
125. Hearings Before the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, Part 14, Trenton Hearings (Washington, D. C., 1941), p. 6770.
126. Ibid., pp. 208 and 210.
127. Joe William Trotter, Jr. River Jordan: African American Urban Life in the Ohio Valley (Lexington, 1999), p. 147
128. & George C. Wright, Blacks in Kentucky. p. 16.
129. Ibid.
130. Survey of the Economic and Cultural Conditions of the Negro Population of Louisville, p. 22. It is important to note that the President's Executive Order which established the FEPC did not lead to African-American employment in defense industries as a whole, but in all branches of the federal government. For the first time Blacks gained access to a host of jobs such as supervisors, foremen, chemists, clerical and postal workers throughout various federal agencies.
131. Shirley Mae Harmon, "A Comparison Study of Black and White Women War Workers in the Louisville, Kentucky During World War II," (M. A. Thesis: University of Louisville, 1999).pp. 20-21.
132. Urban Renewal Relocation Files. R-10 Southwick I to West Downtown. Box 20 &. 29. City of Louisville Archives.
133. Interview with James Glass. By James Montgomery, February 29, 1976. Oral History Collection, University of Louisville, Archives and Records Center.
134. Ibid.
135. Interview with James Glass and Survey of the Economic and Cultural Conditions of the Negro Population of Louisville, pp. 34-35.
136. Murray B. Walls Papers. Box 2, Folder 17. University of Louisville, Archives and Records Center.
137. National Defense Migration Hearings, p. 6772
138. National Defense Migration Hearings, p. 6772.
139. For example see, Carter G. Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration (New York, 1918);
140. Emmett J. Scott, Negro Migration During the War (New York, 1919, reprint 1969);
141. Thomas J. Woofter, Negro Migration: Changes in Rural Organization and Population of the Cotton Belt (New York, 1920);
142. Charles Johnson, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (New York, 1922, reprint, 1968);
143. Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: Making of a Ghetto, 1890-1930 (New York,1968);
144. Allan Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920 (Chicago, 1967);
145. and Kenneth Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930 (Urbana, 1976).
146. Interview with Reverend A. J. Elmore by Luther J. Adams. September 23, 1996.
147. Howard W. Beers and Catherine P. Heflin, "The Negro Population of Kentucky," Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 481, January, 1946, p.p. 2-3,& 20.