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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - III. Population and Migration - 8. Migration - 2. A Closer View
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190 An American Dilemma
of Negroes. That Negroes have not migrated to these places is as much
of a mystery as the relative absence of migration to the West.
Another mystery—^which is not entirely outside our problem, as the
conditions and behavior of Negroes are constantly compared with those
of their white neighbors—^is why poor white Southerners during the entire
period after the Civil War did not move in greater numbers to the North
than they did. The Industrial Revolution came to the Northern cities long
before the Civil War. But the period since i860 has witnessed the greatest
mechanization and expansion of industry. Over-population and poverty
have loomed over the South all the time. It is true that the whites could
move to the Southwest which was mostly closed to the Negroes. The
whites also reserved for themselves most of the jobs in the developing
industry in the South. But industrial wages were low and many whites
were pressed down to share tenancy in the rural districts.® As compared to
the European immigrants, who formed the bulk of the labor supply for
the factories in the North, they should have had the advantage of knowing
the language and of being more familiar with American ways and manners.
In 1930 the percentage of all Southern-born Negroes who lived in the
Northern states east of the Mississippi River was double the percentage of
Southern-born whites living in these Northern states. Most of the Southern
whites living in the North were from the Border states. If we leave the
Border states out of consideration, the proportion of Negroes born in the
Lower South and living in the North outnumbered, by a ratio of five to
one, the proportion of whites born in the Lower South and living in the
North. Despite the fact that most Southern-born whites living in the North
came from the Border states, Negroes born in the Border states and living
in the North outnumbered, by a ratio of two to one, the proportion of
whites born in the Border states and living in the North.^^ This lack of
migration of whites from the South is especially striking when it is realized
that there were almost as many Northern-born whites in the South as there
were Southern-born whites in the North. In 1930 there were 1,931,799
Southern-born whites living in the Northern states outside of the Mountain
and Pacific Divisions j
but there were 1,821,678 whites born in these
Northern states living in the South.^^ Even if we subtract Northern-born
whites living in Washington, D.C., from the latter figure, we have
1,732,120 Northern-born whites living in the South.^^
The corresponding figures for Negroes were: 1,355,789 Southern-born
Negroes living in the Northern states outside of the Mountain and Pacific
Divisions and 52,338 Negroes born in these Northern states living in the
South. Of the latter, 4,621 were living in Washington, D.C., which left
only 47,717 Northern-born Negroes living in the rest of the South.^® The
difference between numbers of Southern whites and Southern Negroes
* See Chapter xi.
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