Jacob Lawrence The Migration Series, Panel 40

40

The migrants arrived in great numbers.

1941 caption
1993 caption
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Two sets of captions accompany Lawrence’s Migration Series: the original 1941 texts and a revised version he wrote in 1993 for a tour of the series organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. Click on each date to compare the two.

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The migrants in this panel, arranged in clusters, stride across an empty expanse of land. Near the center of the panel a young boy exuberantly swings his suitcase behind him; through such details Lawrence suggests the migrants’ hopes for better lives. This image serves as counterweight to his emphasis in many panels on the hardships faced by black southerners—a reminder of the crucial role of optimism in propelling migrants north.

History

As African Americans continued to migrate, many southern newspapers intensified their campaign to persuade black readers that the South was more hospitable, richer in job opportunities, and even safer than the North. In response, the northern black press continued to print not only inventories of available jobs and assistance networks, but also the letters of migrants describing the difference that the move had made in their lives. One subscriber to the Chicago Defender wrote in 1919:

After twenty years of seeing my people lynched for any offense from spitting on the sidewalk to stealing a mule, I made up my mind that I would turn the prow of my ship towards the part of the country where the people at least made a pretense at being civilized. You may say for me through your paper, that when a man’s home is sacred; when he can protect the virtue of his wife and daughter against the brutal lust of his alleged superiors; when he can sleep at night without the fear of being visited by the Ku Klux Klan because of refusal to take off his hat while passing an overseer, then I will be willing to return to Mississippi.

Russell Lee. Negro Boys on Easter Morning in the Southside. 1941. The five boys in their Easter suits posed against an automobile in this portrait offer an image of the possibilities of the urban North of the kind that prompted many black southerners to leave their homes.

Culture

Northern news reports, poems, and other writings on the Migration carried hopeful messages. In a poem that was published occasionally in the Chicago Defender throughout the 1920s, William Crosse writes:

I’ve watched the trains as they disappeared
Behind the clouds of smoke,
Carrying the crowds of working men
To the land of hope

Both amateur and professional musicians were key to building expectations of better days in the North. Traditional African-American spirituals were repurposed as anthems of the Migration: songs like “I’m on My Way to Canaan’s Land” and “Bound for the Promised Land” spoke of redemption from the travails of the South in biblical terms, forging a vocabulary of emancipation that quickly gained traction. In a final sendoff to the southern towns and cities they were leaving behind, migrants often chalked phrases like “Bound for the Land of Hope” and “Farewell—We’re Good and Gone” on the sides of train cars headed north.

“New Faces Among 1927 Lights and Shadows Contributors.” Chicago Defender, July 30, 1927. The Chicago Defender published a poetry column called “Lights and Shadows” in the 1920s and 1930s. The column offered space to dozens of amateur and early-career poets like Crosse and printed some of the earliest work of Gwendolyn Brooks. This 1927 photo-illustration surveys new contributors to the column.

One-Way Ticket Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series

Panel 40▾

The migrants arrived in great numbers.

The migrants arrived in great numbers.

The migrants arrived in great numbers.

The migrants arrived in great numbers.

History

Culture