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Oh, and on anecdotal note, my dad made some rather interesting observations.
We stated upthread that there was not a lot of migration between southern states during the 30s. My dad disagreed with this assertion (at least as it pertained to NC...where he also spent some of his childhood). He pointed to the success of blacks such as John Merrick who founded the N.C. Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1898. Durham, he says, had a thriving black business community that attracted many blacks from bordering states (including some of my relatives apparently). And he also cited the vast number of historically black colleges in NC that drew blacks from SC, VA, TN, GA, etc. This probably explains why NC's black population grew much faster than SC's after 1920.
In general, he said, NC was considered a more liberal state than SC and provided more opportunities for blacks, which gave black North Carolinians less incentive to leave the state. A notable exception, he said, was Wilmington where the Ku Klux Klan literally turned it from a majority black to a majority white area over night (I'll have to do more research into this). Even then, he said that a number of blacks moved from Wilmington to other cities in NC such as Raleigh, Durham and Greensboro. When blacks left their towns in SC, they tended to leave the state altogether.
The last thing he said was that SC systematically purged blacks from the state through public policy. An example he cites is the fact that SC offered to pay the tuition of any black student that was accepted to college out of state. And he said that SC, having been a majority black state for a good part of its existence, had whites that were absolutely fearful of that majority and did all they could to destroy it. So since the state offered to pay their tuition if they went to school out of state, he chose Howard (as his siblings before and after him did). And at that time, he said, most of his classmates were leaving for DC to take jobs in the federal government they had procured through relatives. The first thing kids said they would do once they finished HS, he said, was go directly to the Greyhound station. And the evidence shows that most of them backed up their words.
Interesting stuff, eh?
Definitely interesting stuff and worthy of further research.
I'm aware of the Wilmington riots and Durham's "Black Wall street. I wonder if GA's Black population experienced a slight increase during the Great Migration years for similar reasons, centered on Atlanta's rising status as a center for Black culture.
I just understand why some of you want DC to be southern so badly. I DON'T GET IT! It's not southern, and people in the south don't consider it southern!
Definitely interesting stuff and worthy of further research.
I'm aware of the Wilmington riots and Durham's "Black Wall street. I wonder if GA's Black population experienced a slight increase during the Great Migration years for similar reasons, centered on Atlanta's rising status as a center for Black culture.
Yes, I'm certain. Even though Georgia experienced a heavy outflow of blacks (rivaling SC in some decades but dispersing a far greater percentage to the Midwest), Atlanta attracted other blacks from rural Georgia and elsewhere. Mississippi and South Carolina, on the other hand, experienced literal black evacuations (Mississippi and SC were the original Chocolate Factory before R. Kelly was ever on the scene). And though the "evacuations" have long been over, the general trend of blacks moving away from those states hasn't changed.
You still see guys selling watermelons out of the back of pickup trucks if you head up Rhode Island towards Woodridge or New York Avenue towards Ft. Lincoln.
I just understand why some of you want DC to be southern so badly. I DON'T GET IT! It's not southern, and people in the south don't consider it southern!
Not only that, but people in DC don't consider themselves Southern. They call people who they perceive as country "Bamma's". And that term goes all the way back to like the 60's. I saw a vid from the 70's of this Black dude from DC, talking about how to eat a proper watermelon, and saying "That's how them cold-blooded Bamma's eat watermelon".
Yes, I'm certain. Even though Georgia experienced a heavy outflow of blacks (rivaling SC in some decades but dispersing a far greater percentage to the Midwest), Atlanta attracted other blacks from rural Georgia and elsewhere. Mississippi and South Carolina, on the other hand, experienced literal black evacuations (Mississippi and SC were the original Chocolate Factory before R. Kelly was ever on the scene). And though the "evacuations" have long been over, the general trend of blacks moving away from those states hasn't changed.
And what's pretty telling of how black they were, is that, even with the mass-evacuations of Blacks from these areas, these states still remained some of the Blackest(if not THE blackest) states in the US.
Yes, I'm certain. Even though Georgia experienced a heavy outflow of blacks (rivaling SC in some decades but dispersing a far greater percentage to the Midwest), Atlanta attracted other blacks from rural Georgia and elsewhere.
Indeed. It should be kept in mind that during the Great Migration years, you also had Blacks in the rural South migrating to urban centers in the South as well as in the North.
Quote:
Mississippi and South Carolina, on the other hand, experienced literal black evacuations (Mississippi and SC were the original Chocolate Factory before R. Kelly was ever on the scene). And though the "evacuations" have long been over, the general trend of blacks moving away from those states hasn't changed.
I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate for SC. Although it's not attracting Blacks like NC (Charlotte and the Triangle) and GA (Atlanta) during this period of the so-called reverse great migration, it's also not hemorrhaging Blacks to a great extent either. I'd even say it may have be experiencing small net gains of Blacks on a decennial basis.
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