Group 2

Art as History

We can learn a great deal about historical events and trends by examining artistic
expressions of the era. In 1940-1941, Jacob Lawrence, an influential African-
American Artist, did a collection of small paintings that is now known as “The
Migration Series”. These paintings were 60 small pictures in tempera (A type of
watercolor made with eggs as a binding agent) on hardboard panels. Lawrence
painted the 60 pictures not one at a time but production-line style, working on them
all simultaneously. The artist also provided captions to explain how each painting
relates to the overarching story of The Great Migration.

Your task is to examine “The Migration Series” painting in your packet and decide
as a group how the painting relates to the other documents. Your group has 20
minutes to examine the documents and painting. You will need to come up with a
3-5 minute presentation that teaches the class what you have learned about how the
painting that you have been assigned relates to the other documents in your packet.
When you are giving your presentations, a PowerPoint will be on the overhead
projector that includes your assigned painting and documents to show the class
each of your sources.

Be creative!
Panel 3

“In every town, Negroes were leaving by the hundreds to go North and enter into Northern
Industry”.
 The Uneasy Exodus
Clues about the motives of the migrants come in a variety of forms including this poem by an
unknown author.

From Florida's story banks I go;

I bid the South "Good Bye."
No longer shall they treat me so
And knock me in the eye.

The northern states is where I'm bound,

My cross is more than double,
If the chief executive can be found,
I'll tell him all my trouble.
Arise, you Darkies now a slave,
Your chance at last has come;
Hold up your head with courage brave,
'Cause times are changing come;
All before this change was made
They took me for a tool
No respect for me was paid,
They classed me for a fool.

Anyone doing the work I do

Is paid four dollars per day,
But I must lie, and steal some, too,
To get one-half that pay.
Then they pay me off in trashy mess,
And cheat me in the deal;
They force me hard to work for less
And arrest me when I steal.

Why should I remain longer south

To be kicked and dogged around?
Crackers to knock me in the mouth
And shoot my brother down.
I would rather the cold to snatch my breath
And die from natural cause
Then to stay down south and be beat to death Under cracker laws.
 North to Detroit
Charles Denby went North to Detroit as a teenager in 1924 at the height of the 1920s boom. A
job was easy to come by as was housing. Adjusting to new social norms was not as easy, though.
The excerpt below is from the first part of his autobiography written in 1952 recounting his
experiences as part of the Great Migration.

The job was very rugged. I had to work continuously, as fast as I could move. The heat from the cubulos,
which were round furnaces for melting the iron, was so hot that in five minutes my clothes would stick with
dirt and grease. We'd walk through on our lunch period to talk to a friend. We couldn't recognize him by his
clothes or looks. The men working in his section would tell us where he was or we could tell a friend by his
voice.

My job paid five dollars a day. The first foreman was quiet, he didn't do much raring or hollering like the
other foremen. They would curse and holler. They would pay us off right there if we looked back or stopped
working. Workers passed out from the heat. The foremen rushed a stretcher over and two workers would take
the man out, give him fifteen minutes to revive and then he would have to go back to work. When a man passed
out, the foreman would be running out to see if the guy was conscious. He would be cursing all the time. If the
worker took too long, he'd shake him. They never mentioned a wound serious enough to go to first aid.
Workers would get a layer of iron from the cubulo, bring it to the iron pourers, fifteen to twenty men with long
ladles. These would be filled with hot iron running like water. As their ladles filled up, the men had to
straighten their arms out level and pour the iron down a little hole the size of a milk bottle. All the time they
had to turn slow, like a machine. If they poured too fast, the iron would explode the mold and burn the other
men. The iron would drop on a wet spot and hit the men like a bullet and go into the skin. The man getting hit
still had to hold the ladling iron level to keep from burning the other men. They would wait their chance and
pick out the balls of iron, and sometimes the foreman picked it out as the men went on working. A man would
sit a half hour after work too tired to change clothes and go home.

When I had worked for a month the foreman came and said they were going to change the standard of the job
and put it on piece work. We could make more money. I got a nickel for each pan I shaked out. I was glad for
the money but I was sorry we were on piece work. We had to work just like a machine. Take a mold, knock it
out, set it back. Over and over for nine hours. It was never under nine hours and sometimes ten, eleven and
twelve hours a day. We never knew how many hours we were going to work. If they wanted to send us home at
ten, ten we went. If a machine broke down we waited an hour for repairs. The money was taken out of our
weekly pay even though it wasn't our fault. We cursed every minute of the day. The main curse was against the
foremen. The foremen would say, “God damn it. Do it. If you can't do it there are plenty of men outside who
will.” No women worked in the plant except one little section. They put in seats or something like that.

In four months I was laid off. After being off for some weeks we finally felt we were rested and could go
around to see the city. Everything was different in Detroit in 1925. Relations between Negroes and whites
were close then. Negroes and whites boarded in the same homes many times. There were Negroes and whites
walking around together and nobody even looked up. Every Sunday you could see mixed couples and Negro
couples and white couples on motorcycles. Gangs of kids were often mixed. If a white and a Negro got in a
fight in the plant it was just between them. Whichever one got whipped we laughed. One night, near
Hamtramck, a white man stepped on a Negro's foot. The Negro cursed him. The white guy ran, and caught
him, got him down and beat him up. There were seven of us, and two or three whites watching. The Negro guy
said he'd had enough. All the way home he was laughing and saying he'd gotten whipped by that white man.
But the jobs that whites had were in different places from Negroes. We didn't know whites in the shop. There
was no such thing as going to a white person's home. There was no reason for a white to invite you. The only
whites around us in the foundry were Polish and their language was different.