Spinning the Globe by Ben Green Read Free Book Online

the same migratory route. In 1916, nine-year-old William “Kid” Oliver and his younger brother Napoleon rode the Illinois Central from Bolden, Mississippi, to Chicago to join their father, who was already working as a shoeshine boy at the Morrison Hotel, in the Loop. The Oliver boys had been living with their grandmother and grandfather, an ex-slave, on a farm in Mississippi until their father sent for them. “When we got off the train at the Twelfth Street station, I was amazed at all the tall buildings and the horses pulling fire wagons,” recalls Napoleon Oliver, now ninety-three. There were others: Byron “Fat” Long and Roosevelt Hudson came from Alabama; Walter “Toots” Wright from Mississippi; Agis Bray from Louisiana; and Randolph Ramsey and George Easter from Tennessee.
    As more African Americans poured into the South Side, the housing situation became critical. During World War I, few new houses were constructed, so the existing structures became overcrowded and dilapidated, and the South Side deteriorated into a “festering slum.” When blacks attempted to move beyond the “Black Belt” into surrounding neighborhoods, restrictive covenants were passed, white neighborhoods were “redlined,” and, if that didn’t stop the influx, roaming gangs of hoodlums attacked black families living on the fringes of white neighborhoods. Between 1917 and 1919, twenty-four firebombs were thrown into the homes of black families or their white landlords.
    Resentment toward southern blacks came not just from whites, but from native-born Chicago blacks who feared that the unsophisticated country folk would incite additional prejudice against all African Americans. As one black educator described it: “The southern Negro has pushed the Chicago Negro out of his home, and the Chicago Negro in seeking a new home is opposed by the whites. What is to happen? The whites are prejudiced against the whole Negro group. The Chicago Negro is prejudiced against the southern Negro. Surely it makes a difficult situation for the southern Negro. No wonder he meets a word with a blow.”
    When they enrolled in school, southern blacks were conspicuous by their shabby clothing and halting grammar, and were often two years below grade in schoolwork. That was not surprising given the deplorable funding of public education for blacks in the South, where African American teachers were paid less than half their white counterparts, and black schools were horribly neglected and often in session only five months of the year. Even the Defender, the staunchest champion of the migration, published a cautionary list of “do’s and don’ts” for new arrivals, including: “Don’t appear on the street with old dust caps, dirty aprons and ragged clothes” and “Go clean up north…. In the south a premium was put on filth and uncleanliness. In the north a badge of honor is put on the man or woman who is clean.”
    Following the pattern established during the earlier Jewish migration, black churches, community organizations, and settlement houses sponsored recreation leagues and athletic events for black youth, hoping that sports would speed up the assimilation process. A men’s basketball league was operating on the South Side as early as 1909, a church league followed in 1912, and two years later theSouth Side Boy’s Club and Wabash Avenue YMCA were sponsoring basketball teams that played white teams all over Chicago.
    As the Great Migration continued, however, the racial lines in the city hardened, and the segregation of neighborhoods, schools, playgrounds, and beaches became fixed and irrevocable. The racial divide was less noticeable in elementary schools, as younger children seemed almost oblivious to racial differences. When Kid and Napoleon Oliver arrived from Mississippi, they enrolled in Colman Grammar School, which was about 50 percent black, with most of the white students Italians and Swedes. “I didn’t know anything about