Carter G. Woodson...

In treating this movement of the Negroes, the writer does not presume to say the last word on the subject. The exodus of the Negroes from the South has just begun. The blacks have recently realized that they have freedom of body and they will now proceed to exercise that right. To presume, therefore, to exhaust the treatment of this movement in its incipiency is far from the intention of the writer. The aim here is rather to direct attention to this new phase of Negro American life which will do

Map Showing the Per Cent of Negroes in Total Population, by States: 1910 Diagram Showing the Negro Population of Northern and Western Cities in 1900 and 1910 Maps Showing Counties in Southern States in which Negroes Formed 50 Per Cent of the Total Population The migration of the blacks from the Southern States to those offering them better opportunities is nothing new. The objective here, therefore, will be not merely to present the causes and results of the recent movement of the Negroes to the

Just after the settlement of the question of holding the western posts by the British and the adjustment of the trouble arising from their capture of slaves during our second war with England, there started a movement of the blacks to this frontier territory. But, as there were few towns or cities in the Northwest during the first decades of the new republic, the flight of the Negro into that territory was like that of a fugitive taking his chances in the wilderness. Having lost their pioneering

How, then, was this increasing influx of refugees from the South to be received in the free States? In the older Northern States where there could be no danger of an Africanization of a large district, the coming of the Negroes did not cause general excitement, though at times the feeling in certain localities was sufficient to make one think so.[1] Fearing that the immigration of the Negroes into the North might so increase their numbers as to make them constitute a rather important part in the

Because of these untoward circumstances consequent to the immigration of free Negroes and fugitives into the North, their enemies, and in some cases their well-intentioned friends, advocated the diversion of these elements to foreign soil. Benezet and Brannagan had the idea of settling the Negroes on the public lands in the West largely to relieve the situation in the North.[1] Certain anti-slavery men of Kentucky, as we have observed, recommended the same. But this was hardly advocated at all b

The reader will naturally be interested in learning exactly what these thousands of Negroes did on free soil. To estimate these achievements the casual reader of contemporary testimony would now, as such persons did then, find it decidedly easy. He would say that in spite of the unfailing aid which philanthropists gave the blacks, they seldom kept themselves above want and, therefore, became a public charge, afflicting their communities with so much poverty, disease and crime that they were cons

The Civil War waged largely in the South started the most exciting movement of the Negroes hitherto known. The invading Union forces drove the masters before them, leaving the slaves and sometimes poor whites to escape where they would or to remain in helpless condition to constitute a problem for the northern army.[1] Many poor whites of the border States went with the Confederacy, not always because they wanted to enter the war, but to choose what they considered the lesser of two evils. The s

Having come through the halcyon days of the Reconstruction only to find themselves reduced almost to the status of slaves, many Negroes deserted the South for the promising west to grow up with the country. The immediate causes were doubtless political. Bulldozing , a rather vague term, covering all such crimes as political injustice and persecution, was the source of most complaint. The abridgment of the Negroes' rights had affected them as a great calamity. They had learned that voting is one

In spite of these interstate movements, the Negro still continued as a perplexing problem, for the country was unprepared to grant the race political and civil rights. Nominal equality was forced on the South at the point of the sword and the North reluctantly removed most of its barriers against the blacks. Some, still thinking, however, that the two races could not live together as equals, advocated ceding the blacks the region on the Gulf of Mexico.[1] This was branded as chimerical on the gr

Within the last two years there has been a steady stream of Negroes into the North in such large numbers as to overshadow in its results all other movements of the kind in the United States. These Negroes have come largely from Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, Arkansas and Mississippi. The given causes of this migration are numerous and complicated. Some untruths centering around this exodus have not been unlike those of other migrations.

Brissot de Warville, J. P. New Travels in the United States of America: including the Commerce of America with Europe, particularly with Great Britain and France . Two volumes. (London, 1794.) Gives general impressions, few details. Buckingham, J.S. America, Historical, Statistical, and Descriptive . Two volumes. (New York, 1841.)— Eastern and Western States of America . Three volumes. (London and Paris, 1842.) Contains useful information. Olmsted, Frederick Law. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave

Boyce, Stanbury. Letters on the Emigration of the Negroes to Trinidad . Jefferson, Thomas. Letters of Thomas Jefferson to Abbé Grégoire, M.A. Julien, and Benjamin Banneker. In Jefferson's Works, Memorial Edition , xii and xv. He comments on Negroes' talents. Madison, James. Letters to Frances Wright . In Madison's Works , vol. iii, p. 396. The emancipation of Negroes is discussed. May, Samuel Joseph. The Right of the Colored People to Education . (Brooklyn, 1883.) A collection of public letters

Birney, William. James G. Birney and His Times . (New York, 1890.) A sketch of an advocate of Negro uplift. Bowen, Clarence W. Arthur and Lewis Tappan . A paper read at the fiftieth anniversary of the New York Anti-Slavery Society, at the Broadway Tabernacle, New York City, October 2, 1883. An honorable mention of two friends of the Negro. Drew, Benjamin. A North-side View of Slavery. The Refugee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Related by themselves, with an Account of the Histo

Coffin, Levi. Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, reputed President of the Underground Railroad . Second edition. (Cincinnati, 1880.) Contains many facts concerning Negroes. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, as an American Slave . Written by himself. (Boston, 1845.) Gives several cases of secret Negro movements for their own good. — The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass from 1817 to 1882 . (London, 1882.) Written by himself. With an Introduction by the Eight Honorabl

Bancroft, George. History of the United States . Ten volumes. (Boston, 1857-1864.) Brackett, Jeffrey R. The Negro in Maryland . Johns Hopkins University Studies. (Baltimore, 1889.) Collins, Lewis. Historical Sketches of Kentucky . (Maysville, Ky., and Cincinnati, Ohio, 1847.) Dunn, J.P. Indiana; A redemption from Slavery . (In the American Commonwealths, vols. XII, Boston and New York, 1888.) Evans, W.E. A History of Scioto County together with a Pioneer Record of Southern Ohio . (Portsmouth, 19

Garrison, William Lloyd. An Address Delivered before the Free People of Color in Philadelphia, New York and other Cities during the Month of June, 1831 . (Boston, 1831.) Griffin, Edward Dore. A Plea for Africa, . (New York, 1817.) A Sermon preached October 26, 1817, in the First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York before the Synod of New York and New Jersey at the Request of the Board of Directors of the African School established by the Synod. The aim was to arouse interest in colonizat

Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Improvement of Public Schools in the District of Columbia , containing M. B. Goodwin's "History of Schools for the Colored Population in the District of Columbia." (Washington, 1871.) Report of the Committee of Representatives of the New York Yearly Meeting of Friends upon the condition and wants of the Colored Refugees , 1862. Clarke, J. F. Present Condition of the Free Colored People of the United States . (New York and Boston, the America

Adams, Alice Dana. The Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery in America . Radcliffe College Monographs No. 14._ (Boston and London, 1908) Contains some valuable facts about the Negroes during the first three decades of the nineteenth century. Agricola (pseudonym). An Impartial View of the Real State of the Black Population in the United States . (Philadelphia, 1824.) Alexander, A. A History of Colonisation on the Western Continent of Africa . (Philadelphia, 1846.) Ames, Mary. From a New England Woman

The African Methodist Episcopal Church Review . The following articles: The Negro as an Inventor . By R. R. Wright, vol. ii, p. 397. Negro Poets , vol. iv, p. 236. The Negro in Journalism , vols. vi, p. 309, and xx, p. 137. The African Repository ; Published by the American Colonization Society from 1826 to 1832. A very good source for Negro history both in this country and Liberia. Some of its most valuable articles are: Learn Trades or Starve , by Frederick Douglass, vol. xxix, p. 137. Taken f

District of Columbia.       The Daily National Intelligencer . Louisiana.       The New Orleans Commercial Bulletin .       The New Orleans Times-Picayune . Maryland.       The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser .       The Maryland Gazette .       Dunlop's Maryland Gazette or The Baltimore Advertiser . Massachusetts.       The Liberator . Mississippi.       The Vicksburg Daily Commercial . New York.       The New York Daily Advertiser .       The New York Tribune .       The New York Tim