AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45 - Review

Journal of Social History, Fall, 2001 by Steven J. Hoffman

AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45. By Kimberley L. Phillips (Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1999. xv plus 334pp. $59.95/cloth $21.95/paperback).

Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit. By John Hartigan, Jr. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999. xii plus 354pp. $55.00/cloth $19.95/paperback).

Class and Community: Studies in Black and White

Both AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45, by Kimberley L. Phillips and Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit, by John Hartigan, Jr. explore the reality of race and class in the twentieth century urban North, although they approach their subjects very differently. AlabamaNorth examines the role of working-class blacks in the formation of Cleveland's African-American community, whereas Racial Situations looks at the various sources of white racial identity and how it is shaped by class. By looking at two distinct racial communities and the role class plays in shaping a collective identity, these two works help further our understanding of the importance of class in the creation of American communities, both black and white.

AlabamaNorth, as the title suggests, examines the community created by African-American migrants who left the South to obtain better jobs in the urban North. What separates this study from others of its kind is the author's excellent use of a wide variety of primary and secondary sources that place her study in its larger context. Well researched, and thoroughly documented, Phillips' emphasis on the actions of working-class blacks in the creation of the African-American community makes this work an important contribution to the study of both African-American community building and American urban history.

Phillips begins her study by arguing that southern blacks migrated to Cleveland as part of a larger strategy of "movement between farm and nonagricultural labor" in search of "better work options" (p. 18). African Americans moved from rural to first southern, then northern urban centers for wage work to supplement family agricultural income. Although this is not a new argument, Phillips does a nice job placing the experience of Cleveland's migrants into the larger context of the Great Migration, citing a wide range of secondary sources. Phillips' real contribution lies in her use of primary sources, including a number of oral interviews, that give voice to the many men and women who left the South during this period. Phillips attempts to show how, in her words, "African-American men and women interpreted, decided, and managed moves between rural and urban living in the South prior to their move North" (p. 16). This perspective not only brings workers and women to the fore, but also helps establish Cleveland' s African-American migrants as actors making deliberate choices to better their own lives rather than as merely objects acted upon by the push-pull factors so often discussed in relation to migration.

Upon arriving in Cleveland southern migrants experienced uneven access to the jobs available, working in mostly unskilled industrial and service positions. Phillips not only describes this experience, but provides insight into blacks' involvement with unions as well as their efforts at self-organization. Blacks in Cleveland suffered the same union exclusion or segregation of black labor that is so well documented elsewhere. But, Phillips suggests, many of Cleveland's working-class blacks realized "that neither antilabor attitudes nor participation in antiblack unions served their needs" (p. 126). Understanding the limits of both union activity and of organizations promoting middle class antilabor attitudes, such as the NAACP or Urban League, Phillips argues that the only way working-class blacks could promote their own interests was through self-organization.

Cleveland's African Americans developed an associational life that "retained religious values and an expressive culture rooted in their experiences as migrants from the South" (p. 188) which provided the necessary foundation for self-organization. Drawing on their experiences in the South, Cleveland's African-American migrants started their own churches and fraternal organizations, and developed their own social clubs. As the number of migrants increased, southern ways permeated Cleveland's black culture and could be seen in the increase in storefront churches and ecstatic worship practices and in the popularization of gospel quartets. Cleveland's new migrants arrived in the city in search of better economic opportunity, but quickly set about creating a culture that was both familiar and supportive.

Believing that neither white-run unions nor middle-class black organizations were adequately concerned about black workers' problems during the Depression, a group of African-American men and women led by John Holly formed the Future Outlook League (FOL) to push for increased neighborhood employment. The FOL organized boycotts of neighborhood stores, picketing establishments under the banner of "don't shop where you can't work." The FOL boycotts were generally successful and quickly put blacks behind the counter in several neighborhood stores. Cleveland's middle-class blacks, however, found the confrontational tactics associated with direct action distasteful and did not support the FOL. The exigencies of the Great Depression and the failure of the NAACP or Urban League to deliver real results for black workers made the FOL the only viable agency for expressing the frustration of Cleveland's unemployed blacks. Since the traditional leadership of the black community was hostile toward the League, the FOL drew its leaders from the working class, which tended to reinforce its militancy.