Читать книгу The Negro in Chicago - A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot - Chicago Commission on Race Relations - Страница 20

A series of circumstances acting together in an unusual combination both provoked and made possible the migration of Negroes from the South on a large scale. The causes of the movement fall into definite divisions, even as stated by the migrants themselves. For example, one of the most frequent causes mentioned by southern Negroes for their change of home is the treatment accorded them in the South. Yet this treatment of which they complain has been practiced since their emancipation, and fifty years afterward more than nine-tenths of the Negro population of the United States still remained in the South. "Higher wages" was also commonly stated as a cause of the movement, yet thousands came to the North and to Chicago who in the South had been earning more in their professions and even in skilled occupations than they expected to receive in the North. These causes then divide into two main classes: (1) economic causes, (2) sentimental causes. Each has a bearing on both North and South. The following statements are based on reports prepared by trustworthy agencies during the migration, on letters and statements from migrants, Negroes and whites living in the South and the North, and on family history obtained by the Commission's investigators.