To understand this problem in its urban aspects the accompanying diagram
showing the increase in the Negro population of northern cities during the
first decade of this century will be helpful.
Some of these Negroes have migrated after careful consideration; others
have just happened to go north as wanderers; and a still larger number on
the many excursions to the cities conducted by railroads during the summer
months. Sometimes one excursion brings to Chicago two or three thousand
Negroes, two thirds of whom never go back. They do not often follow the
higher pursuits of labor in the North but they earn more money than they
have been accustomed to earn in the South. They are attracted also by the
liberal attitude of some whites, which, although not that of social
equality, gives the Negroes a liberty in northern centers which leads them
to think that they are citizens of the country.[25]
This shifting in the population has had an unusually significant effect on
the black belt. Frederick Douglass advised the Negroes in 1879 to remain
in the South where they would be in sufficiently large numbers to have
political power,[26] but they have gradually scattered from the black belt
so as to diminish greatly their chances ever to become the political force
they formerly were in this country.
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