THE SOUTHERN DIASPORA
What broke the agricultural–export–workforce nexus and overwhelmed the planter Redeemer economy was the Southern Diaspora. It ranks with the Yankee Diaspora and the Great Immigration in its effect on America, certainly in its effect on economic development. Population migration, the exit and enter factor, has proven to be a powerful driver of change in our ED policies and strategies. Importantly, the Southern Diaspora visibly made manifest the potential for regional change—although at the time the immensity of what regional change could do was less appreciated. The diaspora in the pre-Depression years was not a flood, but it still had consequences nevertheless. In the section below the key actors, the destinations and some consequences are discussed; but the diaspora is a work in progress and further discussions will follow.
The sizeable and unstoppable departure of African-Americans starting around World War I captured the national consciousness. That exodus, honored by a special title—the Great Migration—however is only part of the story.13 The southern exodus was not exclusively African-American; two and one-half times more whites than blacks (and Latinos) moved over 75 years. James Gregory estimates that the Southern Diaspora included 8 million blacks, 20 million whites and 1 million southern-born Latinos (Gregory, 2005, p. 14). However this volume honors the special title “the Great Migration” and restricts its use to African-American migration; “Southern Diaspora” includes all who relocated from the South between 1900 and 1975.
Pre-1920 southern extra-regional migration was characterized by whites moving west to farm or to New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago to work in industry. Blacks mostly relocated to New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, but also to farm in Indiana and Kansas. By 1900 over one million southern-born whites and 335,000 African-Americans lived outside the South. Say it another way, 92 percent of blacks remained in the South. With the onset of the Southern Diaspora during World War I, however, the volume, context and character of southern migration changed dramatically.
Gregory discerns three phases: (1) World War I through the 1920s; (2) the Depression and the war years; and (3) post-World War II to the early 1970s. From 1970 onward, the South, while still exporting millions of residents, would import millions more—registering a net increase of population and ending the Southern Diaspora. To put this in perspective, the Census Bureau reported that 32 percent of Americans lived in the South in 1900; by 1970 only 31 percent lived in the South; and by 1980 33 percent were southerners. This section focuses on the first phase only.
The Cotton Belt historically overlapped “the black belt” in which the overwhelming majority of southern blacks lived. The majority of southern whites, however, lived in the outer South—West Virginia through Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas: “The two major Southern Diasporas would separate along these racial/ geographic lines. The black migration had its base in the cotton belt; most white migrants left the outer South … Motivations also divided along lines of race” (Gregory, 2005, p. 23). The impact of population loss varied by state and within each state. The South Atlantic industrial belt (Maryland and Virginia) actually increased in population.
Phase 1 white migration was different than black migration, not only in the geographic areas from which it came but also in its composition and, to some extent, its final destination. The economic pull factor for each race was shared: the labor shortages in northern wartime industry and the promotion of available jobs by companies and the railroads. So white migrants followed southern black migrants into northern and Great Lakes cities. Less apparent was the white migration to California, primarily Los Angeles and San Francisco. Los Angeles numerically acquired most of the white migrants of all the Phase 1 destinations.
The most likely to leave were young people with blue collar skills … oil workers to California, timber men to the forests of the Northwest, construction workers following the building booms that raged in cities from Detroit to Los Angeles … the West also attracted a substantial number of southerners with money to invest in land and new forms of agricultural production … college students were another element in the [Phase 1] white diaspora. (Gregory, 2005, pp. 26–7)
Interestingly, Gregory observes that white Phase 1 migrants settled mostly in suburbs. Also, “25 percent had found white collar jobs and 20 percent worked as foreman, craftsmen, and other skilled positions, only 22 percent held unskilled … or service jobs.” White migration remained somewhat “invisible,” and white southern newcomers in Phase 1 “were anything but poor and disadvantaged” (Gregory, 2005, p. 86).
The Great Migration undercut the subsistence tenant–sharecropper cotton/tobacco economy. That economic system was the impenetrable wall perpetuated by the Redeemer divided mind, inhibiting southern industrialization and urbanization. The sharecropper/subsistence economy kept down the price of its cotton on international markets; but even with this subsidy the South’s cotton-export system was not sustainable, given the low-wage advantages held by other world regions. But the South’s export economy held up so long as cotton prices were sufficiently high. This changed after World War I; 1910 was the peak year for southern agricultural employment. With cotton prices up and demand high (protected from external price competition by high tariffs) African-Americans stayed in place.14
After 1918 a sort of perfect storm hit the South’s cotton economy. First, World War I disrupted international trade patterns, and, while the demand/price for cotton increased during the war, a slow decline followed. Second, the boll weevil had affected cotton production before 1900, but the blight slowly spread across the Cotton Belt.15 The first areas affected were the Carolinas and Georgia. Wherever the boll weevil went, yields fell, increasing cotton prices and benefiting unaffected areas. By 1922 virtually the entire Cotton Belt was infested. Third, if the boll weevil were not disaster enough, Mississippi River flooding (starting in 1922) affected delta populations. The 1927 Great Flood opened the migration spigot, creating a first-class catastrophe similar to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (2005). Economic desperation combined with Jim Crow segregation spurred migration as the best alternative to avoid starvation and obtain civic and political freedom. Poor Afro-Americans from the Carolinas and Georgia, and later the Mississippi Delta, disproportionately constituted the pioneering first wave of the Great Migration (Lange et al., 2008).
Early First Great Migration did not produce a flood of refugees; rather a constant drip, drip, drip that, in aggregate, drove change. During these years the Great Migration was characterized by individuals and small groups who “escaped,” usually by railroad. Lured by the prospect of employment in northern cities and factories—an opportunities advertised by recruiters from northern factories and railroads—they mostly headed up North. African-Americans from the East Coast generally migrated to Philadelphia, Boston and New York. Those from Georgia and Alabama usually headed for Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Detroit. Chicago was primarily favored by African-Americans from Mississippi and Louisiana.
The reality for new migrants upon arrival in an unfamiliar and “strange land,” the northern city, was segregation—driven into the most deteriorated housing and neighborhoods. Employment meant being hired as a strikebreaker, in unskilled and first-fired positions. Initial social-economic reaction to this relatively sudden migration was violent and explosive. The summer of 1919 (referred to as the “Red Summer”) witnessed 22 race riots in cities throughout the United States, with the worst in Chicago. Less visible “communities within communities” developed over the next 40 years. The “second ghetto” was slowly unfolding in northern and midwestern cities. The gradual emergence of the second ghetto affected the practice of CD in these communities—frankly taking the wind from its sails. CD, despite its concern for the disadvantaged, worked in white neighborhoods (mostly). Racial change and neighborhood succession picked up noticeable steam in our Big Cities—and CD got caught into its crosswinds and swells.
In the South, of course, the reaction was different. The hitherto unthought of and impossible prospect of sustained depopulation threatened not only the southern agricultural business model but also a way of life, a culture. Southern chambers and state governments, chastened Redeemer elites and economic developers took notice. The aggressive momentum of southern chamber and state industrial promotion/ attraction during the 1920s was no doubt partially fueled by the background fear of depopulation. Also evident was a bit of “deer in the headlights” inertia. We shall return to that topic in Chapter 9.
Ron W. Coan 