The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1919, Page 29

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

29

Sunday of the month, prayer-services and Scripture-
reading every Wednesday night, and Sunday-school
every Sunday. We have a large Sunday-school, but
our day-school is not so large as it has been, because
most of the children have been sick with the “flu.”
May God continue to bless us with the true
preaching of His Word! Katy Morty.

oe

A Challenge.

He

Whole districts of Georgia, Alabama, South Caro-
lina, Mississippi, and Louisiana have been depopu-
lated of their Colored people. The Negroes of these
States have been going North at the rate of probably
a half-million every year. The black man has been
going North in tremendously large numbers for the
past -years to try his fortune among strangers in
a strange land. Some have left the plantation with
no other baggage than a pair of cheap overalls and
a heart filled with great expectations. Others that
have left the South were men that had been the
owners of farms and houses. In not a few cases
this exodus of the Negro has worked great hardship
upon the Southern planters. Cotton was left un-
picked, and other valuable crops could not be har-
vested. In some cases farmers offered to treble the
usual wages, but even this inducement brought no
satisfactory result. The Negro had decided to leave
the South and seek his fortune in the promised land
of the North. The tidings that had come to him from
north of Mason and Dixon’s line had decided him
to turn away from the plantations of the Gulf States
vad try his fortune in the great industrial plants
of the North.

What was the cause of this great migration of
the Colored people to the unfriendly climate of the
North? What consideration furnished the impetus
to these thousands to leave what had been their
home and that of their ancestors for many years?
Was it the mere desire to earn a few more dollars
that impelled these thousands to disrupt their family
ties and go to a new and untried country? Probably
two reasons may be given that will cover most cases.
The one is a desire to have better schools for their
children, and the other a revolt against what the
Negro has called racial injustice.

But it is not our intention to spend any time
at present in learning what may or may not have
been the reason why this or that Negro family left
the South and took up its home in Chicago, Indian-

‘not one-fourth of the houses had baths.

apolis, or some other city of the North. The fact
remains that 1,000,000 Colored people went North
during the past twenty-four months, and they have
found there better schools for their children and
work which paid them in a day almost as much as
they could earn in Alabama or Georgia in a week,
But they also found things not so desirable; namely,
high rents, bad air and sanitation, and dirt.

The North was taken by surprise and had made
no provision for the great invasion. The newcomers
found it impossible to find homes. A year ago
I found probably about 12,000 Colored people living
in a district of Detroit that a person would have
considered inadequate to accommodate 2,500. Most
of the houses are wretchedly unsanitary. Probably
With all
this the rents are.exorbitantly high. It was common
for people to pay five dollars a week for a small
bare room. In this particular district of Detroit
the Negro invasion resulted in an increase in the
rents ranging from 25 to 300 per cent. The plethoric
pay envelope received at the factory looked quite
emaciated after the landlord had been given his
share.

In other manufacturing cities of the North con-
ditions are no better. We have heard of cases where
Negroes have been compelled to pay $35 a month

' for tumble-down, unsanitary houses that had for-

merly been rented for $13 per month. We know
from personal investigation that the living conditions
in Chicago are also quite bad, and that the rents
which Negroes are obliged to pay are considerably
higher than white people pay for the same kind of
dwellings.

Awakened by the great loss to its industries
which followed the Colored man’s departure, the
South is beginning to see the necessity of doing
more for the Negro than it did before. In not
a few localities the black man is now offered better
schools, library facilities, and higher wages. And
this change is having its good effect, for the depots
of our Northern cities are no longer crowded with
dark faces and bandana-covered bundles. But those
that are in the North are apparently not thinking
of going back South. Though there are many things
that have a tendency to call them back to Mississippi
or Alabama, they cannot forget the injustices they
there suffered, and this memory of old wrongs keeps
them up North.

What, now, is the North going to do for these
strangers within its gates? They need adequate
homes, they need cleanliness and fresh air, above all