Negroes Heading North for Better Living Conditions, Pay, June 7, 1923

Negro Exodus Amounts to Strike Against Conditions in South. . . Says Advancement Association

The migration of trainloads of Negroes northward from the southern states is tantamount to a strike against intolerable living conditions, low wages, poor schools, injustice in the courts, the brutalities of the jim-crow system and lynching, according to a statement issued today by the National Association fort the Advancement of Colored People, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The statement which is signed by James Weldon Johnson, Secretary of the Association, is as follows:

“Trainloads of Negroes migrating northward from the Southern States are evidence of a concerted movement, really a strike against the intolerable conditions now prevailing in the south. Of course, the lure of high wages in the North is playing its part.

“Recognition of the past ill-treatment of the Negro has played in bringing about the loss of its chief source of labor by the South, is coming from the white people themselves. In Alabama and Mississippi the white people are belatedly talking about giving the Negro schools some share in the distribution of educational funds. In Florida the lumbermen are planning a campaign having for its object better treatment of Negroes, in the lower courts, remedy of the convict leasing and fee system, by which Negroes are arrested on trivial charges.

“The departure of Negroes from the south literally by the trainload is speedily bringing about a virtual revolution in the traditional southern attitude. The Jacksonville, Fla., Journal of May 24 reports a movement among lumbermen embracing the territory of Georgia, Florida and southern Alabama, to abolish the fee and convict lease system. ‘A Negro arrested is a Negro covicted’ is the sentiment admitted by these men to prevail among the lower courts at present. The program of the lumbermen, as outlined in the Jacksonville Journal includes not only reform of court procedure, but building of churches for Negroes and improving their surroundings and living conditions.

“Additional testimony of the force of the present movement comes from steamship companies, one of which, the Merchants and Miners’ Steamship Company, has issued a warning that its service to Jacksonville will be curtailed unless it is possible to obtain more labor. Officers of this and of the Clyde Line increased wages recently without appreciable effect upon the labor shortage.”

“Even from Virginia, in an editorial of the Richmond News-Leader, comes the statement that ‘the South, finally, must improve the living conditions of its Negro workers, who are now in a veritable migration, and are going wherever they have the promise, however illusory, of better things. They are no longer held back by timidity or by ignorance of the outside world, as once they were, and many of them are pathetically susceptible to the lure of higher wages, even for temporary employment. If the South is to retain these Negroes, it must make them as contented as practicable. In some places this calls for better treatment and freedom from fear; everywhere it means better homes and, generally speaking, better pay.

“The northward movement of Negroes from the South is in fact a strike against the industrial and social conditions prevailing there. In the migration the Negroes are bringing into play the economic power of their labor which is naturally more effective than any mere appeal to sentiment.

From the front page of The Star of Zion, Charlotte, Thursday, June 7, 1923. Star of Zion, the official organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.