The Great Migration Escape

This chapter provides an account of the first wave of African American migration into the Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky. It addresses the implementation of Black Codes, also known as Jim Crow laws, the convict leasing system, and how psychological and physical terror in the form of public lynchings helped maintain the social order of white supremacy. Brown attends to the role of the labor agent as a grey-market actor in facilitating the onset of the first wave of the African American Great Migration. Drawing on the oral history and archival data, the chapter distils a profile of the legendary figure, Limehouse, the white labor agent hired by United States Steel Corporation to sneak and transport black men and their families out of Alabama to Harlan County, Kentucky to work in the coalmines. The chapter also focuses on the psychosocial dimensions of this silent mass migration, specifically the spiritual strivings, the hopes, dreams, and disappointments that accompanied the Great Migration.

Introduction

Every mass movement can be traced through the particular conditions under which the migrant self is formed and transformed. This introduction outlines the struggle of black Americans once slavery was outlawed by asking a key question: were they subjects or citizens? Though federal laws gave the now former slaves all the rights of citizens, state and local authorities allowed and enforced segregationist policies. These, in conjunction with various economic pressures, culminated in the African American Great Migration of 1910-1970. Brown, who positions herself as a third-generation descendent of a black Kentucky population that took part in this migration, claims that the collective memory of Appalachian blacks that undertook this stepwise migration deserves more attention.

The Colored School

Within the confines of their segregated social world, black children became aware of the color line at a very young age through racially coded messages, but also through taken-for-granted practices and institutions. This chapter traces the transformation in the black community along the grain of the civil rights movement through a close reading of the rise and fall of one of the institutions most beloved by the black community in Harlan County, Kentucky—the colored school. Brown shows how the black segregated school institutionalized and reproduced racial ideologies within the community. At the same time, she demonstrates how the colored school was a proud site of black cultural expression.

Children, and Black Children

This chapter analyzes the emergence of the racial self among this migrant group of “Black Appalachians.” How does a child come to learn that they are a black child? What are the institutions and practices that inform and reinforce one’s understanding of his or her own racialization? What are the ways in which this generation of African Americans affirmed and valued their own lives within the dehumanizing context of Jim Crow? Drawing on the oral history testimony of Brown’s research participants, this chapter offers a phenomenological analysis of the ways in which African American children of that generation experienced, perceived, and made sense of racism, prejudice, and segregation. The chapter argues that while the racial landscape was much different from that of their parents who grew up in post-Reconstruction era Alabama, the structure of feeling that articulates the ‘us and them’ along racial lines is the same.

Gone Home

Between 1940 and 1970, Harlan County, Kentucky lost seventy percent of its black population due to industrial decline. Accompanying the estimated five million other African Americans who were migrating out of the Deep South, this generation of coal kids migrated to urban cities in Northern, Midwestern, and Western regions of the U.S. This chapter analyzes the ways in which the adults in Harlan County prepared their youth to adopt to a migratory mindset, one in which children understood leaving home after high school was inevitable. Central to this analysis is their decision-making process that factored in gender, institutions, jobs, war, politics, and higher education when choosing destinations and forming the mechanisms that undergirded this massive out-migration. The chapter also focuses on the forming of the post-migration diaspora, particularly the emergence of this group’s diasporic consciousness. Though they were uprooted from home at a young age, thousands of African Americans still consider these post-industrial Appalachian communities “home.” Using the Eastern Kentucky Social Club reunion and the Memorial Day weekend pilgrimage as examples, this chapter offers an in-depth treatment of black place-making, collective memory, and archive.

The Coming of the Coal Industry

This chapter provides historical context for the book and anchors the text in place. Drawing on archival data collected form Kentucky and Alabama-based archives and oral history data collected from African Americans in the sample population, Brown describes the conditions under which the coal mining industry emerged in eastern Kentucky at the turn of the twentieth century. She also describes the economic and social conditions of black life in post-Reconstruction Alabama. Through this historical analysis, Brown reveals the antecedents of the mass migration of African Americans from the Alabama black belt into the coalfields of eastern Kentucky. Moving beyond the individual level push-pull framework of mass migration analysis, this chapter focuses on the role of corporations and fin de siècle northern industrialists in initiating calculated mass migration streams to meet their demand for labor.

A Change Gone Come

This chapter traces the process of African American children in the tri-city area of Harlan County, Kentucky, becoming, like many others in the country, “children of integration” through the historic Brown v. Board of Education case. Both the inheritance and the risks of desegregation befell everyday black children; they would be the change agents for dismantling the “separate but equal” doctrine upheld by Plessy v. Ferguson. What was that experience like? By tracing the background of the Brown case and using oral history testimony, the chapter draws attention to the hidden injuries, loss of community, and transforming racial epistemologies that accompanied forced school desegregation. When asked to reflect on the perceived costs and benefits of desegregation, participant responses varied by generation and level of abstraction. While acknowledging the benefits, they all expressed some form of injury: a loss of community and African American identity.

Home

Chapter Three introduces the children of the first generation of migrants—the coal miners’ daughters and sons. Through their childhood memories of Harlan County, Kentucky, this chapter brings the reader behind the veil of the color line and situates the reader in the heart of the black community. What was it like growing up in a company-owned coal-mining town in the early half of the twentieth century? Further, what was it like doing so while black? Drawing heavily on oral history interview data, this chapter offers a close, personal account of the cultural systems—such as family, gender, religion, play, aesthetics, and traditions—that structured the black social world in pre-Civil Rights era eastern Kentucky.