Episodes

“In the North the African American had more educational opportunities.” Jacob Lawrence Image credit: The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC “South State Street was in its glory then, a teeming Negro street with crowded theatres, restaurants and cabarets. And excitement from noon to noon. Midnight was like day. The street was full of workers and gamblers, prostitutes and pimps, church folks and sinners.” — Langston Hughes In many ways, the North delivered on its promise. The migrants enjoyed hi...

“The migration spread,” Jacob Lawrence Image credit: The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC http://media.blubrry.com/american_epistles/content.blubrry.com/american_epistles/Great_Migration_Part_2.mp3 “We must have the Negro in the South … It is the only labor we have; it is the best we have—if we lost it, we [would] go bankrupt.” –Macon (Georgia) Telegraph, 1916 Prior to World War I, African Americans had plenty of reasons to want to leave the South. But they had little reason to believe that ...

“…the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” W.E.B. du Bois Initiated before the end of the Civil War, Reconstruction held the promise of freedom, full citizenship, and (for men) the franchise for African Americans. But even before the Federal troops that were enforcing Reconstruction withdrew from the former Confederate States, Southern communities and legislatures set about to return the freed men and women to their former condition. Despite ...