Life Up North 


“DON’T HAVE TO MISTER EVERY LITTLE WHITE BOY…”: BLACK MIGRANTS WRITE HOME
Four letters written by African American migrants in 1917, and published in 1919 in the Journal of Negro History.  The letters describe what it feels like to be out of the South and provide insights into the diverse experiences migrants had in the North.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5339/


“WE THO[UGH]T STATE STREET WOULD BE HEAVEN ITSELF”: BLACK MIGRANTS SPEAK OUT
In 1917, Charles Johnson, research investigator for the Chicago Urban League, began interviewing migrants in Chicago and Mississippi.  Johnson’s summaries of his interviews conveyed a sense of migrants’ diverse responses to life in Chicago. 
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5337


“CAN I SCRUB YOUR WHITE MARBLE STEPS?”: A BLACK MIGRANT RECALLS LIFE IN PHILADELPHIA
A interview by Charles Hardy with black migrant Arthur Dingle, who served in the Great War and worked with the Pennsylvania Railroad in Philadelphia.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5338/


DEFENDER’S LEGAL HELPS: DISCRIMINATION
A message published in a 1914 issue of the Chicago Defender encouraging any black person who is discriminated against in the Northwestern or Polk Railway Stations to report “the facts” to the paper’s Legal department.
http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/980.htm


ALONG THE COLOR LINES: ECONOMIC
A brief, matter-of-fact report by The Crisis on housing discrimination in Baltimore.
http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/977.htm



DOCUMENT TOPICS

Crop Failure

Sharecropping

Lynchings

Racism

Jim Crow

Letters

Migration

Life up North

Labor

World War I

Writings of DuBois

Poetry

Images

Chicago Riot

Census Data

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