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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - III. Population and Migration - 8. Migration - 5. The Future of Negro Migration
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200 An American Dilemma
the whole, Negroes meet relatively less discrimination in the West than
in parts of the Middle West and the East. This, of course, does not apply
to much of the Southwest where Southern whites have gone and have
brought their attitudes toward the Negro with them. The small number
of Negroes already in the West, the relatively small amount of race
prejudice there, and the heavy demand for servants in California will
perhaps make the West Coast cities more popular as places for Negro immi-
gration than Northern cities in the Eastern half of the country. The
relatively great extent of Negro migration to California in the last decade
is perhaps indicative of a future trend.^^ Since Negroes get practically their
only new economic opportunities in growing cities, we may expect that most
of the westward migration will be to the cities of the West Coast and not
to inland cities and rural districts.^®
A great deal will depend upon the future development of employment
opportunities in the war boom, the post-war crisis, and the solution found
for this crisis. The development through these future emergencies will be
shaped, not only by the free play of economic forces in a market, but
increasingly by governmental policies called forth by these emergencies.
We shall come back to these problems in Chapter 19.
As a concluding note, it should be stressed that there is no doubt that
migration to the North and West is a tremendous force in the general
amelioration of the Negro’s position. It is even more: northward migration
is a necessity if the economic status of Southern Negroes is not to deteri-
orate as cotton growing disappears as a means of getting a living for the
masses of rural Negroes. Migration out of the South, further, means not
only economic improvement to the Negro. It also gives him a social status
approaching equality.* It increases the Negro vote, which might become
of rising importance for national policy.® The experience of the migration
of 1917- 1919 also suggests that emigration of a significant number of
Negroes is one of the surest ways of stimulating the Southern whites to
give more consideration to the Negroes that remain in the South. At any
rate it seems certain that a concentration of unemployed Negroes on relief
in the South will only deteriorate race relations in that region.
Many writers have felt that the partial exodus of the Negro population
from the South to the North would ^Wve” the Negro problem. In doing
this, some Northern writers have been thinking of the effects on the
Southern white people.^® Some others, mainly among Southern writers,
have thought about the effect on Northern whites: They believe that race
prejudice will rise with the proportion of Negroes present in Northern
communities j
and they feel that when Northern attitudes become more
like the Southern attitudes, they will lay the basis for a more unified
• Sec Part VII.
“ Sec Part V.
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