EXODUS

The Negro’s refrain, “Let My People Go,” continues to have a strong emotional appeal. Though devoted to the Southland in an intense, sentimental way, for the Negro has an infinitely pathetic love of home, he has come sorrowfully to the conclusion—he must go away from here. It is strange, because homesickness is almost a mania with the Negro. He relates himself to the white master’s house where he works, to the rude cabin where his family live, to his church, to the “home niggers,” in an extravagant pathological way which has nothing to do with gratitude. Perhaps it is because as a people the slaves were uprooted out of a home in Africa, and they have a haunting melancholy in the hidden depths of their souls. I believe their childish idealization of heaven in their hymns is fundamentally a sort of homesickness. The Negro is not a natural nomad or vagrant like the Russian, the Jew, the Tartar. He must have been as geographically fixed in his native haunts in Africa. Judge, then, how great a disturbance must take place before the Negro en masse would be ready to emigrate. Yet so it is to-day. With consternation in their aspect, whole families, whole communities, are waiting—to go North. And hundreds of thousands of them are on the move. Of course it is not a complete change of scene. The North has its Negro masses too. One rather loses sight of them among the Whites, but they are there. And they do not cease to invite their unhappy brothers and sisters down South to throw up everything and come North.

While it is commonly said that the Negro cannot stand the colder climate of the North, there is, however, not much evidence to that effect. As their orators are proud to declaim—the only civilized man to accompany Peary to the actual North Pole was his trusted servant, Matt Henson, a Negro. To some delicate Negroes, no doubt, a severe climate would be fatal, but that is true for Whites as well as Negroes. On the whole, the Northern air seems to be good for the Negro if he can stand it. The Negroes of New York and Chicago and Boston, and the Canadian Negroes, are firmer in flesh and in will than those who live in the South. And they are certainly more energetic. They yield more hope for the race as a whole than do the others. Perhaps one ought to discount this fact in the light of the extra prosperity and happiness of the Northern Negroes. There is nothing that will undermine the constitution more than terror and nervous depression. Security is the real Negro ozone.

There has been during the last three years a steady migration of Negroes northward. This has been primarily due to the stoppage of foreign immigration and the consequent labor shortage in the districts which depended on the immigrant. The reasons why the Negro was ready to leave his Southern habitat have been summarized in the U. S. Department of Labor Report:[5]

“General dissatisfaction with conditions, ravages of boll weevil, floods, change of crop system, low wages, poor houses on plantations, poor school facilities, unsatisfactory crop settlements, rough treatment, cruelty of the law officers, unfairness in courts, lynching, desire for travel, labor agents, the Negro press, letters from friends in the North, and, finally, advice of white friends in the South where crops had failed.”

It is impossible to calculate the numbers with any likelihood of accuracy. Even the census of 1920 will hardly indicate what has taken place—for no one can say what allowance ought to be made for natural increase in the last ten years. But the insurance companies reckon that between May, 1916, and September, 1917, between thirty-five and forty thousand Negroes left Georgia. Perhaps the net loss to the South has been a quarter of a million, the majority young, single men and women. Some certainly put the figure higher. The movement has slowed down, owing to the after-the-war stagnancy in trade, the very bad housing conditions in the North, the race riot in Chicago, and other retarding influences. With a revival of trade it may go on more rapidly. Certainly whenever a countryside in the South is visited by some special act of violence there is a tendency for the colored population to flee. Unfortunately, the lot of migrants of the type of Negroes is always a hard one. It is difficult to settle down in a new community. Irregular habits bring disease. Provincial dullness makes it difficult to find a job or to evade sharpers. Unfortunately, also, Negroes are not by nature altruistic, not clannish like the Jews. They do not help one another in distress as much as poor Whites do. So many who flee northward inevitably come to grief.

It is urged in the South that the North is not entirely appreciative of the influx of so many Negroes. But, on the other hand, it is alleged that the large Northern companies sent their agents into every State in the South seeking labor. It was certainly useful to the companies. And although the loose and nondescript unemployed immigrants were guilty of a number of crimes, it is generally held that those who found employment proved very steady and reliable. The Negro proved a safe man in the munition factory, and it was found he could do a white man’s job in a mine and in the steel works. The employers of labor were well pleased. But there was a section of the community that was not pleased, and that was the working class—the poor Whites once more, who saw in Negro migration an influx of non-union labor, depressing wages, and lowering the standard of living. The workingmen speedily quarreled with the Negro—seeing in him the oft encountered strike breaker. Those who have gone through the Negro district of Chicago, with its filthy, ramshackle frame buildings occupied by Negro families, a family to a room, know how appalling is the aspect of the Negro there. In the old days the white population took it as a matter of course, as they did so many other things in this evil industrial conglomeration so aptly called the Jungle. But too much competition and too many unfamiliar, gloomy Negro faces on the streets caused the nervous shock which accounted for the Chicago riots, begun strangely enough not by a Negro attack, but by a white youth knocking a Negro boy off a raft on the lake and drowning him. The three days’ free fight which ensued was one of the most disillusioning episodes in the history of Northern friendship for the Negro.

Nevertheless, Negro leaders still cry “Come North!”

There have always been those who thought that the Negro problem could be solved by encouraging migration. The exodus to the North was hailed as a partial liquidation of the Southern trouble. Doubtless an even distribution of Negroes over the whole of the country would put them in the desired minority as regards Whites. Outnumbered by ten to one, they would never seem to threaten to grasp electoral control or be in a position to use physical force with a chance of success. But these are highly theoretical suppositions. Even at the present great rate of exodus it would take hundreds of years to even them out, and there is no reason to think that the emigrants would distribute themselves easily. They would probably crowd more and more into the large cities like Chicago and Pittsburgh, and be as much involved in evil conditions there as they were in the South.

Another popular misconception is that it is possible to find a home for the Negro in Africa, and get rid of him that way. Men say airily, “Pack them all off to Liberia,” as they used to say, “Send the Jews back to Palestine.” It is not a practical proposal. Abraham Lincoln held this view, and he opened negotiations with foreign governments in order to find suitable territory for Negro colonization, but he gave up the idea when General Butler, who investigated the matter for him, convinced him that the Negro birth rate was greater than any possible rate of transport.

What was true in 1865 ought to be more obvious to-day. It is a physical impossibility to transport those twelve millions and their progeny to Africa. If a large instalment were taken, would they not perish from starvation and disease? The eyes of the world would be on the United States doing such a thing, and they would be involved in a terrible scandal.

But, indeed, the first to cry out “Give us back our niggers” would be the South; for her whole prosperity has a foundation of Negro labor. Take away the black population, and the white farmers, and traders, and financiers would be so impoverished that they also would want to emigrate to Africa.

In a material way would not the whole continent of America suffer greatly? You cannot withdraw twelve million from the laboring class and go on as before. It is a ridiculous solution. The only reason for giving it place in serious criticism is that so many people nurse the delusion that the problem can be solved by deportation. It stands in the way when people would otherwise face the facts honestly—our forefathers introduced the Negro into our midst, he is here to stay, and we have to find out what is best for him and best for the White, taking the facts as they are.

One good purpose has, however, been served by the encouragement of Negro emigration back to Africa. It has kept the Negro in touch with his original home. It has broadened the Negro’s outlook and started a Negro Zionism—a sentiment for Africa. The Negro loves large conceptions—the universal tempts his mind as it tempts that of the Slav. In short, Liberianism has possessed the Negro of a world movement.