The Great Nothern Migration, Updated

Three weeks ago, I led off a post with this John McCutcheon cartoon about Black Americans leaving Dixieland for more attractive job markets in the north.

"The South Will Soon Be Demanding Restriction of Migration of Its Labor," by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1923

I really should have hunted up some cartoons by southern editorial cartoonists to represent a different viewpoint. 

Well, better late than never: Memphis Commercial Appeal cartoonist James T. Alley answered McCutcheon with this cartoon cautioning any Black Tennesseeans that while the pay might be better up north, southern employers were more considerate of their workers than those cold, heartless Yankee businessmen.

"The Labor Agent Doesn't Picture This" by J.T. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 24, 1923

Likewise, if you thought the hearts of those Yankee employers was frosty, wait till you got a load of their winters!

"I Wish I Wuz in de Land of Cotton" by J.T. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 13, 1923

As hinted by the cut line below his May 13 cartoon, one shouldn't mistake Alley for a recalcitrant devotee of the Lost Cause. Still, I have difficulty imagining any of the emigres writing in to the Memphis Commercial Appeal to voice their regrets.

Alley did, however, have a point about the weather, particularly in 1923. That year, the winter lingered in the Northeast and Midwest unusually late, only to have an early summer hot on its heels.

"Hiptized" by Frank "Spang" Spangler in Montgomery Advertiser, May 4, 1923

Alabama cartoonist "Spang" Spangler chimed in that all y'all are gonna miss yer soul food, and who knows what gawdawful crap is in "The Great Mister Y Northern Hash," bless its heart, up yonder!

To be clear, we've got plenty of watermelon, cantaloupe, yam, and corn on the cob up here; the "Negro Exodus" brought collard greens and field peas along with it as well. Possums are all over the place, if not necessarily on the dinner menu. I will, however, confess to being ignorant of yallar laig.

I assume it tastes like chicken. 

"Northern Migration" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, by June 9, 1923

Last time around this topic, I skipped this cartoon because of Morris's crude racial caricatures drawn straight out of vaudeville. I get the reference he was making to migration, and I'm sure he had birds and butterflies in mind; but the resulting image reminds me too much of the flying monkeys in the 1939 "Wizard of Oz."

In 1923, Utah-born Morris had been living in New York long enough that he had to have seen what actual Black people look like. The Northern Migration had begun ramping up after World War I, but news coverage hints that it spiked dramatically in the spring of 1923.

Returning to the serious side of things, now: 

"Almost Burned Out" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. June 10, 1923

As per the cut line in Alley's May 13 cartoon, the job market was not the only reason Black southerners were leaving Dixie; but they would find the Klan expanding in the same direction.

Up North, the Klan attracted new members by agitating against Roman Catholics, foreign immigration, and alcohol. Yet there was plenty of anti-Black animus already there, as evidenced by the postwar race riots in Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington D.C., and elsewhere, as well as lynchings as far north as Duluth.

Elmer Bushnell was not a southern cartoonist (aside from working in Memphis at some point early in his career); he drew for the Ohio-based Central Press Association. I found this cartoon of his on the front page of Columbus (Georgia) Enquirer-Sun; and I have to wonder whether the caption, predicting that the Klan would soon sputter out, was his or the creation of a milquetoast editor wearing rose-colored glasses under his green eye shades.

To my eye, the caption ill matches the cartoon. Nor does it square with the historical record; the Klan was a force to be reckoned with nationwide throughout the 1920's.

"Going Back into Business for Himself" by Roy H. James in St. Louis Star, June 7, 1923

Certainly the inner politics of the Klan were still deemed noteworthy by other editorial cartoonists, as here commenting on a breakaway movement led by "Col." William Joseph Simmons. Inspired by Birth of a Nation, Simmons had founded the 20th-Century iteration of the Klan in 1915, but was ousted as Imperial Wizard in November, 1922. Simmons opposed a move championed by his successor, Hiram Wesley Evans, to admit women to the Klan, "in violation of a decree entered in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, and, further still, ... the original charter which defines that male members only shall be admitted to the Order."

Simmons's Knights of Kamelia, also known as Knights of the Flaming Sword, is estimated to have grown to 60,000 members nationwide. Estimates of Klan membership under Evans, meanwhile, vary widely from 2.6 million to 6 million members, the terrorist organization extending beyond Dixie, especially in Indiana and Michigan.