Detroit and the Great Migration 1916-1929, by Elizabeth Anne Martin

"Detroit is
the city of
magic accomplishment."
-Detroit City Directory, 1924-1925

Despite the efforts of the Urban League and other institutions in Detroit to assist migrants during the years 1916-1929, their needs for employment, housing and health care were met only to a limited degree. John Dancy, however, remained optimistic. "Some of us in Detroit," he asserted in 1927, "are skeptical that we do not make progress fast enough. We are a new city and have not yet found ourselves, but I am by no means afraid. On the other hand, I am convinced that we are getting ready to launch into a number of enterprises that will make for racial respect .... All that is necessary is to work hard, keep the faith and be prepared for whatever comes [1]. For the thousands of jobless, homeless, poorly educated and starving African-Americans in Detroit, however, "keeping the faith" was often not enough. They sought tangible evidence of progress and criticized Black supporters of the League for allowing whites to determine the pace and substance of African-American programs.

Marcus Garvey described African-American leaders of organizations like the Detroit Urban League as "modern Uncle Toms seeking the shelter, leadership, protection and patronage of the 'master' in their organization and so-called advancement work" [2]. Garvey urged the five thousand members of Detroit's Universal Negro Improvement Association to denounce the subservience of Dancy and other members of the Black elite [3]. Garvey advocated racial separatism and called upon Black Americans to celebrat. their heritage by leaving the country and establishing their own nation [4]. Many African-American community leaders despised Garvey, however. because his separatist message offended liberal whites and delighted segregationists.

One African-American who claimed to "see" the suffering masses was J.H. Porter, a citizen of Detroit who founded the "Good Citizens League" (GCL), a counter-organization to what he referred to as the "White League on Urban Conditions [5]. Porter categorized such famed Black Detroiters as Reverend Bradby of Second Baptist Church and Forrester Washington of the Urban League as "political burns" and equated their negotiations with whites to the selling of their souls to the devil [6]. Porter complained that whites had used Black supporters of the League to achieve their own purposes. He attacked the Urban League for spending money on the Krolik garment factory, asserting that the Krolik company should have financed the factory itself. He claimed that he had wanted to use the Community Fund money that had paid for the building to fund an orphanage [7]. Although Dancy asserted that Porter had no following among African-Americans in the city [8] and whites dismissed the GCL as "an element of crabby, muddleheaded near-reds whose idea of progress [was] apparently to foment race hatred [9], Porter's talk must have seemed threatening to somebody, because Detroit police arrested him in 1929 for the distribution of "violent and inflammatory literature" [10].

Porter's most intriguing claim was that the Community and the Urban League were part of a huge "ring" controlling the lives of Blacks in Detroit [11]. To be sure, a relatively small number of liberal whites and a slightly larger pool of Black elites directed almost all of the programs for migrants in the city. A common leadership linked the work of the Urban League, the various Black churches, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Visiting Nurses Association, and other community organizations.

Henry Stevens, a founding member of the Detroit Urban League, was simultaneously the chairman of the Urban League Board and the chairman of the budget committee of the Detroit Community Union [12]. The fact that several other members of the League board were also members of the Community Union made the League a logical recipient of most of the funding for African-American causes in the city. Chester Culver, general manager of the Employer's Association, Fred Butzel, a member of the Americanization Committee of the Detroit Board of Commerce, and Mrs. Julian Krolik, wife of the garment factory owner, also were members of the board of the Urban League and obviously influenced the shape of League activities [13].

Black supporters of the Urban League had multiple ties to other organizations that worked with migrants. The editors of the African-American newspapers, the Detroit Herald and the Detroit Independent, which published many articles supporting the efforts of the Urban League and African-American churches, both sat on the Urban League board [14]. Two pastors who worked closely with the League, Reverend Bagnall of St. Matthew's and Reverend Bradby of Second Baptist, were contributing editors to the Detroit Herald [15]. In addition, Bagnall and Bradby each served for several years as president of the Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Another former president of the NAACP, William Osby, sat on the League board and was a trustee at Dunbar Hospital, a member of the St. Antoine YMCA management board, and a trustee and secretary at Second Baptist Church. Several other trustees at Dunbar and several members of the management board of the St. Antoine YMCA also served on the Urban League Board at one time or another. Finally, John Dancy himself had numerous institutional ties. During the 1920s he was president of the Detroit Social Worker's club, secretary and treasurer of the Detroit Federation of Settlements, a member of the management board of the YMCA, chairman of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, president and treasurer of the Michigan People's Finance Corporation, and a member of the advisory board of the state Bureau of Negro Welfare [16].

The fact that a relatively small group of people directed a majority of the activities for migrants was by no means inconsistent with the League's original purpose. The Detroit Urban League's founders had envisioned it as a coordinating agency of programs for African-Americans in the city [17], and with ties to so many diverse organizations, the League was in an excellent position to serve as an efficient "coordinator." Like almost all the National Urban League affiliates, the Detroit league worked to assimilate migrants to life in the city, to improve employer impressions of African-American workers and to foster better relations between the races--all by coordinating their efforts with those of influential members of the white cormnunity [18]. Porter's complaint, however, was that this "coordination" of elites led institutions to ignore needed programs for underprivileged African-Americans [19].

To place all the blame on the Urban League or any other single institution in Detroit for the failure of the city to satisfy all the needs of its thousands of newcomers would be unfair, however. The institutional response to the migration to Chicago during the same period reveals striking similarities to Detroit and suggests that the disappointing outcomes in both cities may have been almost inevitable. Like Detroit, Chicago experienced a tremendous explosion of its African-American population after World War I. From 1910 to 1930, the Black population of Chicago more than quintupled [20]. In response to the migration, the Chicago Urban League was founded in 1917. With the help of several other institutions in the city, the Chicago League attempted to address migrant needs for employment, housing, recreation, and assimilation [21].

As in Detroit, African-Americans in Chicago had been relegated primarily to service occupations before the great migration. When the war came, the increased demand for labor created openings for Blacks in many different industries. Although the Chicago League was able to find thousands of jobs for migrants in the factories and stockyards, it could not, however, convince very many employers to hire Black men for skilled occupations or Black women in non-domestic positions [22].

Most Black migrants to Chicago lived on the city's South Side. Like the St. Antoine district in Detroit, the South Side had always been the first home to most immigrants who came to the city [23]. In addition, whites who migrated from the South in search of jobs began moving into these same neighborhoods during the first World War. White newcomers, however, could move out of the area when their incomes rose, while restrictive covenants and other forms of discrimination kept Blacks from leaving the ghetto. As Black migrants crowded into the densely populated South Side, the already poor housing conditions in the area worsened. Dilapidated, unsanitary buildings housed many more people than their builders intended. Rents skyrocketed in the face of unprecedented demand [24]. Meanwhile, white residents formed neighborhood associations and terrorized Blacks who tried to purchase homes in non-Black areas of the city. The Chicago Urban League, like its Detroit counterpart, struggled to clean up neighborhoods and find migrants decent places to live, but the League fought a losing battle [25].

Despite the efforts of the Chicago Urban League and other institutions to assist and educate the migrants, the racial tensions aroused by the migration proved beyond their control. Violence erupted in a terrible riot in 1919 [26]. Later in the 1920s, the Chicago Urban League lost the financial support of its chief benefactor [27]. The Detroit Urban League did not experience as severe problems with violence or funding during this period as the Chicago League did, but the fact that the histories of migrant work in both cities were so similar suggests that the problems faced by the migrants were simply too large for a few institutions in any one city to handle, particularly at a time when racial discrimination was so pervasive.

Like progressive reformers who were intent on "Americanizing" immigrants, institutions in Chicago and Detroit that were concerned with Black migrants sought to Americanize the Black newcomers. Unlike immigrants, however, Black migrants were not the pride and joy of white reformers, and those who tried to assimilate were never welcomed to "melt" into the larger American society. Whites did not permit Blacks to ascend the social and economic hierarchies of their communities. Neither the southern nor the northern white communities of the United States welcomed Blacks as equals, and they extended assistance to the African-Americans in their midst only grudgingly.

African-Americans who migrated to Detroit after World War I believed they would have the chance to live better lives in the North. They packed their bags, left home and loved ones behind, and moved to Detroit in search of their dreams. Sociologist George Haynes explained their motivation in 1924, asserting that when people "believe they see opportunities to get better wages, better food, better clothes, better houses, better schools for their children and greater freedom, they may be mistaken in what they think they will get, they may blunder in trying to get it, but they know what they want and will seek it" [28].

Many among the newcomers to Detroit after World War I were mistaken in what they thought they would "get." Seventy years after African-Americans and liberal whites formed the Urban League to help the rural migrants adjust to the industrial and largely white Detroit community, African-American neighborhoods in Detroit remain segregated, poverty and unemployment are still endemic, housing conditions are deplorable, and crime is rampant. Certainly, without the assistance of the Urban League, African-American churches, and other concerned institutions, the conditions of the migrants would have been immeasurably worse. What their experience suggests is that however commendable the efforts of some voluntary institutions have been, more is needed in American society to solve the problems of the poor and the victims of racial discrimination.