Your editorial entitled, “A race marching out of death” in Friday’s issue is interesting and also true. I believe it is the height of folly for our people to migrate north in such large numbers. The colored man’s physical make-up is adapted to the south; and I believe the south is the best place for him. I am therefore opposed to this unsound migratory policy to which so many of our people are committed. Statistics show that the accumulation of wealth, the maintenance of a normal death-rate, and general improvement among moral, physical and industrial lines obtain more readily and substantially in the south than in the north.
Still, as you point out, man’s native impulses have prompted him to yield to migratory instincts, from the dawn of history up to this hour. The time when he began to manifest this migratory instinct is lost in the mists of antiquity.
Political unrest, industrial disturbances, and financial embarrassments have given rise to man’s inherent tendency to go from one place to another to avoid existing confusion or better his condition. The negro is no exception to this general rule.
From all sections of the south—though unwisely I believe—a colored mass of humanity is flowing in a steady stream to northern states and cities. The writer unchangingly believes they are making a mistake, but the migrants think differently.
This exodus of colored people from the south is due to economic and social causes, chief among which is the desire to better their condition. The industrial centers of the north offer higher wages, which, from the colored man’s viewpoint, is an enticing consideration. The ravages of the boll weevil over large sections of the south brought about unsettled farming conditions which seriously affected the colored man’s farming activity. Then, too, destructive floods over parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida, together with the increased cost of living with an accompanying tendency to decrease wages, caused thousands of colored tenants to go north to “seek their fortune” or facilitate their chances of making a livelihood. Over 1 million negroes have migrated north and west within the last five years.
Also the glimmering star of hope, however unwise it may have been, shown with increased brilliancy, and caused many colored people to become inspired to go north where they could exercise the right of suffrage. Although I believe that, when sufficient numbers shall have migrated north, the same restriction will obtain there that now exist in the south.
In northern cities, for the most part, he thinks he will enjoy the blessings of sewerage, asphalted streets, granolithic sidewalks, lighted streets, and other modern conveniences, whereas, in most southern cities these conditions do not exist in the negro section.
While the present migratory tendency is persistent, still I believe it can be and should be checked. Therefore I suggest that the south build and equip better school houses, and thus give better educational facilities. I think it would help some if there were a uniform salary scale for all teachers. The states require a uniform examination, and unform requirements to get certificates but do not pay uniform salaries.
For instance in some states an A grade white teacher is paid $133.33 while an A grade colored teacher is paid $100 per month. The colored man conceded that the white teacher might be paid more than the colored teacher, but not an increase of 33 1/3 per cent. It would also help, I think, if both races in the same district or town were given the same length of term. In many towns, the white people have eight and nine months school and they give the negroes six months. Many special tax districts also run their lines in a zigzag fashion so as to include the whites and exclude the black people. I think it would also help if the capitalists would encourage the colored man to become a skilled laborer. It would help if they were to build more hosiery and cotton factories and employe colored operators in them. It would help if some of the practice of placing all of the hardest manual labor on the colored man and reserving the best places for the white man, would lessen. The colored man does not object to the white man having the best places, but he thinks that they ought to be mixed up just a little, and give a few good jobs to colored people.
Then, too, the newspapers—the greatest agencies of the advancements of civilization—could do much to relieve the situation. They should all be more liberal in their attitude towards the negro. Usually when a negro does a praiseworthy thing, however meritorious it may be, the newspapers are silent as a tombstone. But when a negro commits a crime these same newspapers herald it far and wide, and this makes the colored man feel that he is the victim of rabid race prejudice. Many newspapers do not even like to publish articles from a negro’s pen. If the newspapers give more prominence to laudable, constructive efforts of negroes and less prominence to their crimes.
The railroads could assist materially in the solution of the migratory problem by giving equal accommodations. Intelligent self-respecting colored people should be accorded better accommodations on the railroads. They do not want to ride the same cars with white people, certainly not, but they do want equal accommodation when they have to pay the same fare. This they do not get.
The foregoing are some of the elements which will help solve the problems, I think, and which the migrants themselves admit will do it. There is, however, many things that must be done by the negro himself. He must rid himself of ignorance, stay in his place and obey the law. He must eradicate crime, practice honesty, and remember that he is a negro in the north, in the south, in the east or in the west.
--R.S. Graves in Greensboro News
From page 7 of the Reidsville Review, May 14, 1923
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