Abiding Courage

African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community

Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780807845639, 9780807822562
• eBook ISBN: 9780807862841
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

Between 1940 and 1945, thousands of African Americans migrated from the South to the East Bay Area of northern California in search of the social and economic mobility that was associated with the region’s expanding defense industry and its reputation for greater racial tolerance. Drawing on fifty oral interviews with migrants as well as on archival and other written records, Abiding Courage examines the experiences of the African American women who migrated west and built communities there. Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo vividly shows how women made the transition from southern domestic and field work to jobs in an industrial, wartime economy. At the same time, they were struggling to keep their families together, establishing new households, and creating community-sustaining networks and institutions. While white women shouldered the double burden of wage labor and housework, black women faced even greater challenges: finding houses and schools, locating churches and medical services, and contending with racism. By focusing on women, Lemke-Santangelo provides new perspectives on where and how social change takes place and how community is established and maintained.

Chapter One It Was Just Like Living in Two Worlds

Growing Up in the Jim Crow South, 1910–1940

Elmgrove, Longleaf, Tupelo, Laurel, Pelican, Utility, Canton, Cordova. To the unknowing, these place-names conjure up images of small towns settled on yellow, dusty crossroads or spread out along sun-hardened streets. Farms come to mind. So do hot, humid summers. The very names coax up the mercury and warn off those who cannot patiently bear heat. But paired with childhood, these names suggest comfort, and they sound like places where children were loved and safe. Here, in the region of the imagination, the young trundle through cool, raw-scented grass among a twilight assembly of fireflies and cicadas, as parents and neighbors sit easily together on their wide and solid front porches.

The black women who grew up in these towns between 1900 and 1940, and who left during the World War II years—we will call them “migrant women”—recall their childhoods with a terrible sweetness. Terrible because each of these places was home to Jim Crow, and sweet because much of life took place outside of humiliating assertions of white supremacy. In each town, parents, neighbors, clergy, and teachers pieced their varied skills and talents into a continually evolving, transgenerational quilt that sheltered the young from racial hatred, provided the basis for personal and collective identity, and engendered a deeply satisfying sense of security and belonging.

But Jim Crow could not be completely avoided. Its forms differed from place to place, but its purpose never varied: to institutionalize the inferior status of African Americans and protect white supremacy. Implemented by the politically and economically powerful, but eagerly embraced by whites of all classes, segregation controlled potentially explosive competition between white and black workers, masked class tensions among whites, perpetuated an illusion of white privilege as a disincentive to interracial unity, and maintained a supply of cheap black labor.¹

Patterns of Segregation

Jim Crow laws were most explicit where status was uncertain or in constant flux, such as the rapidly industrializing cities of the New South. Rural areas, which often lacked formal systems of separation, had elaborate behavioral codes enforced by tradition. Thus, legal statutes were not the only reliable measure of white racism; in many places, separation and black subordination were so entrenched in the white view of the world that written laws were unnecessary.² Whether segregation's rules were of urban or rural origin, they were reinforced with racial violence. Pauli Murray, a nonmigrant lawyer and activist, recalled how these rules had to be learned and negotiated if one was to survive: “learning about race did not for the most part come in terrifying shocks although there were those too—especially news of lynchings, which, frequently unreported in the newspapers[,] traveled by word of mouth. More often race was the atmosphere one breathed from day to day, the pervasive irritant, the chronic allergy, the vague apprehension which made one uncomfortable and jumpy. We knew the race problem was like a deadly snake coiled and ready to strike, and that one avoided its dangers only by never-ending watchfulness.”³

The metaphorical snake lived in every town and city in which migrant women came of age. Born during the “Age of Jim Crow,” this generation grew up with the violence and humiliation that accompanied the proliferation and elaboration of racial barriers. During a twenty-year period, between 1900 and 1920, southern whites drafted laws mandating separate parks, hospitals, schools, drinking fountains, restrooms, exits, entrances, telephone booths, and even courtroom Bibles. Other laws specified racial separation in public facilities such as libraries, buses, trains, waiting rooms, and workplaces.

Racial violence, which escalated following Reconstruction, continued into the first decades of the 1900s as the chosen method of enforcing the new Jim Crow laws. Between 1882 and 1927—a period that spanned migrant women's childhoods as well as the adult lives of their parents and grandparents—white mobs lynched over 3,500 black citizens. Far from being softened by the progression of the twentieth century, white supremacy now reached its most refined and elaborate stage. Migrant women, most of whom were raised in Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, shared their early years with an equally youthful Jim Crow, the monstrous product of white fear and greed that clouded young black lives with fear and humiliation.⁴

Within the towns and cities of the South, whites drew boundaries around their neighborhoods. Only servants or people with business who conducted themselves purposefully and deferentially were able to cross over safely. Even then, tension and fear were constant companions, and most black citizens simply avoided the gulf that separated white from black and schooled their children in the risks of transgression. Theresa Waller, who worked in a white section of Houston before coming to California in the early 1940s, was repeatedly hit and pushed by white youths as she walked from her employer's house to the nearest bus stop. Only after her white employer spoke with the youths and established Theresa's connection to a white family in the community could Theresa pass unmolested.⁵

Spatial boundaries enforced hierarchy as well as physical separation. Black residents, who paid taxes like other citizens, coped with vastly inferior services; their neighborhoods were short on street lighting; paving; police and fire protection; sewage, gas, and electrical connections; recreational facilities; and schools. The larger cities, like Houston, usually contained one or more black sections located in or near the older, urban core. These neighborhoods were more self-sufficient, supporting several churches, benevolent associations, markets, restaurants, clubs, recreation facilities, clothing stores, professional offices, schools, barbershops, and beauty parlors. Many families could thus minimize their contact with the white world. Pauli Murray remembered that her “meager contact with white people was paradoxical, since the two races lived close together,” but she proceeded to explain that her family “preferred never to cross the gulf that separated us from white people unless we could do so without losing our dignity and pride.”⁶

In smaller towns, like Laurel, Mississippi, black neighborhoods stood on the edge of white areas and were more dependent on outside businesses for goods and services. Here, as in large cities, a simple shopping trip could easily turn into a series of humiliating encounters. To get downtown, one either walked or used segregated public transportation, because automobiles were a luxury few could afford. In stores, black customers endured the rude familiarity and poor service meted out by white shop owners and clerks. Some restaurants and cafes served black patrons on a take-out basis or in the kitchen; others refused them service altogether. “Negro” or “colored” restrooms, if they existed, were dirty and poorly maintained. Finally, whites retained exclusive use of most swimming pools, skating rinks, bowling alleys, and parks, and they relegated black spectators to less desirable sections of movie theaters and ballparks.

Medical care was separate and unequal. Few white hospitals and physicians served black patients except in the case of extreme emergency, and even then, care was far from certain. Family histories invariably include stories of loved ones who died because the “Negro” hospital was too far away and the white hospital refused care. Equally common are stories that recount humiliating encounters with white doctors and dentists. Maya Angelou, whose work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings describes her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, and her family's migration to California in the 1940s, recalled a trip to a white dentist who refused to treat her, even though her grandmother had loaned the dentist money. Her grandmother said, “I wouldn't press on you like this for myself but I can't take No. Not for my grandbaby. When you come to borrow my money you didn't have to beg. You asked me, and I lent it.” The dentist responded, “Annie, my policy is I'd rather stick my hand in a dog's mouth than in a nigger's.”⁷

White school administrators, making no pretense of equality, systematically undercut the aspirations and efforts of black parents, children, and teachers. Throughout the South, school districts diverted funds to white pupils, while neglecting the needs of black students. Disparities were even greater on a county-by-county basis: cotton counties had the lowest expenditures per black pupil. Black schools in these areas also operated on a shorter year than white schools, because white plantation owners set the school terms to coincide with their desire for cheap black labor to cultivate and harvest cotton; clearly, the white South did not view black child labor as a problem. Henrietta McAlister, who taught in rural Mississippi while a student teacher at Jackson College, hesitated to call what she did “teaching.” “It was an affront. We gave what we had, but it wasn't enough and they [white school administrators] really didn't care.”⁸

During the same period, black teachers and school personnel were grossly underpaid. As late as the mid-1930s, for example, Mississippi's white teachers, supervisors, and principals earned almost three times more than their black counterparts. This calculated misallocation of funds—per teacher and per pupil—led to inferior facilities as well as fewer schools. In many areas, parents created their own classrooms in churches, lodges, and homes, while their tax dollars were diverted to white schools. As if these obstacles were not sufficient to dampen aspirations, school administrators made it difficult for black students to get to school; white students rode buses, while black children walked. In Arkansas, black students constituted 27 percent of total school enrollment but received only 2 percent of total transportation funds.⁹

In the late 1930s, when most migrant women were of high school age, 87 counties in a sample of thirteen states with segregated school systems had no black high schools. An additional 115 counties provided black high schools, but none of these schools offered four-year programs. Instead, teachers struggled to fit high school curricula into two years or, if necessary, into the normal curricula of the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. Parents also sacrificed, sending their children to board with friends and family who lived near good schools, or moving the entire family to a better district when a son or daughter reached high school age.¹⁰

Willa Henry, raised on a farm near Elmgrove, Texas, lived with relatives in Jacksonville so that she could attend an accredited high school. The couple who took her in, the owners of a small pharmacy, supported her through high school and lovingly called her “daughter.” Later, when she attended Prairie View College, her paternal grandfather and aunts, all of whom graduated from college, helped her financially. Gracie Potter, born in Pelican, Louisiana, boarded less comfortably with a minister in Mansfield while she attended high school. Regarded as a renter rather than a family member, she had to wash her own clothes and buy and cook her own meals.¹¹

Most families did not have the resources to send children away. Lacey Gray, whose family owned a farm in Longleaf, Louisiana, walked two and a half miles to school and two and a half miles home. All seven grades met in a single drafty hall where grownups held evening and weekend meetings. In this less than ideal environment, three instructors managed to teach more in seven grades than Lacey's own daughters later learned in twelve. The nearest black high school was miles away, in Baton Rouge, much farther than her parents could afford to send her, and the distance to the nearby white high school—just one mile—was equally unbridgeable. But even assuming that one had the resources and fortitude to finish school, few good jobs awaited black high school graduates—or even black college graduates.¹²

In southern industries, employers assigned black workers to the least desirable, lowest-paying occupations or tasks and to separate shifts, rooms, or sections of the shop floor. Black workers were also required to use separate washrooms, water fountains, and entrances. Class-based occupational differentiation occurred only within the black community, where a small middle class and elite worked as teachers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, accountants, and storekeepers and in other clerical and professional positions.¹³

The shifting economic interests of white employers and workers continually redefined which jobs were “white” and which were “black.” In the early years of the twentieth century, black-operated barbershops, beauty salons, and caterers, which had once served white customers, lost their business to white entrepreneurs. During the same period, whites took over the skilled trades and trade unions, such as bricklaying, plastering, and carpentry, which had once been the province of black workers. Occupational choices narrowed even more during the Great Depression, as black-owned businesses collapsed and white workers took over “Negro” jobs.¹⁴

By 1930, black workers filled the most dangerous, lowest-paying, and least secure jobs within a dwindling number of occupational categories. Industries with the greatest concentration of black, male employees included turpentine farms and distilleries, fertilizer factories, saw and planing mills, lumber camps, tobacco factories, charcoal and coke works, mines, sugar refineries, cotton gins, cottonseed presses, and brickyards.¹⁵

Because of chronically low wages and lack of job security, a family's financial security often required two wage earners. Many black women contributed to family income by taking in boarders, but over 40 percent worked for wages—mostly in domestic service, laundry, and unskilled factory work. During the Great Depression, black women made as little as $ 1.50 a week in private households and $3.75 per week in factories. At the same time, their labor force participation declined from 42 percent to 38 percent as their jobs were eliminated or turned over to whites.¹⁶

Theresa Waller, raised in Houston, Texas, during the depression, recalled that her entire family had to work in order to make ends meet. Her father put in long hours at a cottonseed compress, while her mother cleaned homes and worked in a poorly ventilated, unheated warehouse sorting salvageable cotton out of damaged bales. After finishing high school, Theresa went to work caring for children and cleaning houses. Her brothers shined shoes or sorted cotton. Theresa's parents had already made sacrifices to keep her in high school, and she wanted to go on to college as some of her middle-class friends had done. Bright and “strong-willed,” she “worried” her mother about school for months before accepting the family's financial limitations.¹⁷

As late as 1940, the majority of black southerners labored in the region's fields, growing and harvesting crops by the same methods used nearly a century earlier. Mechanization, which was not widely adopted until after World War II, did not represent a major threat to the livelihood of this generation. Rather, institutionalized debt peonage, the boll weevil, and New Deal farm policies that gave landowners an incentive to evict tenant farmers kept men and women on the edge of what is humanly tolerable. Of all farm families,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Abiding Courage
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One It Was Just Like Living in Two Worlds
• Chapter Two To Make the Two Worlds One
• Chapter Three I Never Thought I'd Have to Create All That
• Chapter Four I Always Desired Independence, Never Wealth
• Chapter Five I Never Denied Where I Came From
• Chapter Six If We Didn't Do It, It Just Wouldn't Get Done
• Notes
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index