The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1926, Page 131

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

131

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tions exceeding 200,000. In eight of these States
the number of colored persons exceeded 500,000.
Despite the migration of thousands of Negroes to
the North in the last decades, more than four-fifths
of the colored population of our country is still to
be found in the thirteen States referred to.

The Northern Migration.

For a number of years, but particularly since
the World War, there has been a continuous migra-
tion of the Negro northward and westward, and
this movement has greatly increased the Negro
populations of a number of Northern cities. This
migration at first was from .
the border Southern States,
but the last decade. has seen
the lower South also greatly
affected. ‘These hundreds of
thousands have in most cases
left the plantations of the
South for Northern indus-
trial centers, because higher
wages were offered them for
their labor. and they were
given better school facilities
for their children.

This great Negro migra-
tion has created most acute
housing conditions in North-
ern cities like Chicago, De-
troit, New York, and Phila-
delphia. Whole families are
often crowded into one room,

_ for which an excessive rent
is not. seldom. demanded.
Though in the South they
had been compelled, in many
instances, to live in one-room cabins with “lean-to”
kitchens, these cabins at least were surrounded by
plenty of fresh air; but the close quarters in which
they are frequently compelled to live in northern
cities are no more sanitary and private and lack
the fresh air.

In many Southern cities, where not a few of
the less adventurous colored people go when no
longer satisfied with Southern rural conditions,
they are frequently housed in most dilapidated
frame shanties or in tenements of a pigeon-house
type with no sanitary advantages. As a rule, the
Negroes are compelled to live in neighborhoods
whose streets are unpaved, undrained, and un-
‘policed; and only too often the “red-light” dis-
tricts touch upon, or are even located within, the

segregated Negro neighborhoods. This is true of
Northern as well as of Southern cities. Not in-
frequently the respectable Negroes have to fight
these dangers threatening their growing families
single-handed. ,

Health Conditions.

That these deplorable housing conditions breed
misery, disease, death, and crime in many instances
is only too true. ‘That the death-rate among Ne-
groes is seventy-five per cent. higher than among
whites is largely due to housing and community
conditions. Diseases like typhoid fever, consump-

An African Village.

tion, pneumonia, diarrhea, and other preventable
diseases show a decided excess of deaths among
Negroes, due to a lack of sanitary facilities.

‘Truly, the Negro faces serious problems when
he migrates from his Southern rural surroundings
to a Southern city or a Northern industrial center.
He may enjoy larger liberty, especially in the North,
but he is compelled to pay an excessive rent, to
raise which he must crowd his rooms with all sorts
of lodgers and thus endanger his health and that
of his children and seriously impair his family life.
Migration of the Negro to the city brings problems
for both the Negro and his white neighbors; but
the odds are against the colored man. Keener com-
petition, racial prejudice, and unfair discrimina-
tion will weigh heavily against him.

‘