imagine with me the scene it's a scene
that played out in nearly all of our
families
it's a scene in which a young person
somewhere in our family tree somewhere
in our lineage had a heartbreaking
decision to make it was a decision to
leave all that they had known and all of
the people that they had loved and to
set out for a place far far away that
they had never seen in hopes that life
might be better migration is usually a
young person's endeavor it's the kind of
thing that you do when you're on the
cusp of life and so there is in all of
our families this young person somewhere
in our background that person is
standing at a dock about to board a ship
that will cross the Atlantic or the
Pacific Ocean that person is loading up
a truck that will cross the Rio Grande
or that person is standing at a railroad
platform about to board a train that
will cross rivers and mountains out of
the Jim Crow South to what they hope
will be freedom in the north and there
with this young person as they are about
to board that ship that boat that truck
that train are the people who raised
them their mother their father their
aunt their uncle their grandparents
whoever it might have been who had
gotten them to this point
those older people were not going to be
able to make the crossing with them and
as they looked into the eyes of the
people who had raised them there was no
guarantee that they would ever see them
alive again remember there was no Skype
no email no cell phones not even
reliable long-distance telephone service
and even if there had been many of the
people that they were leaving did not
even have telephones this was going to
be a complete break from all that they
knew and all of the people that they
loved and the very next time that they
might hear anything about the people who
had raised them might be a telegram
saying your father has passed away or
your mother is very very ill you must
return home quickly if you are to see
her alive again that is the magnitude of
the sacrifice that had to have happened
in nearly all of our families just for
us to be here a single decision that
changed the course of families and
lineages and countries and history to
the current day one of these migration
streams stands out in ways that we may
not realize it was called the great
migration
it was the outpouring of six million
african-americans from the Jim Crow
South to the cities of the north and
west from the time of World War one
until the 1970s it stands out because
this was the first time in American
history that American citizens had to
flee the land of their birth just to be
recognized as the citizens that they had
always
no other group of Americans has had to
act like immigrants in order to be
recognized as citizens so this great
migration was not a move it was actually
a seeking of political asylum within the
borders of one's own country they were
defecting a caste system known as Jim
Crow it was an artificial hierarchy in
which everything that you could and
could not do was based upon what you
look like this caste system was so
arcane that was actually against the law
for a black person and a white person to
merely play checkers together in
Birmingham you could go to jail if you
were caught playing checkers with a
person of a different race someone must
have seen a black person and a white
person playing checkers with someone in
some town square and maybe the wrong
person was winning or they were having
too good of a time but whatever it was
that this person saw with this black
person in this white person playing
checkers they felt the entire foundation
of southern civilization was in peril
and decided that it was worth taking the
time to write this down as a law this
caste system was so arcane that in
courtrooms throughout the south there
was actually a black Bible and
altogether separate white Bible to swear
to tell the truth on in court
the very word of God was segregated in
the caste system of the Jim Crow South
the same sacred object could not be
touched by hands of different races this
artificial hierarchy because it goes
against human desires to be free
required a tremendous amount of vile
to maintain such that every four days
somewhere in the American South every
four days an african-american was
lynched for some perceived breach of
protocol in this caste system in the
decades leading up to the start of the
great migration this caste system had
been put in place for many many reasons
but one of them was to maintain the
economic order of the south which
required not just a supply of cheap
labor but an oversupply of cheap labor
to work at the will of the land this
great migration began when the North had
a labor problem the North had a labor
problem because it had been relying on
cheap labor from Europe immigrants from
Europe to work the factories and the
foundries and the steel mills but during
World War one migration from Europe came
to a virtual halt and so the North had a
labor problem and so the North decided
to go and find the cheapest labor in the
land which meant african-americans in
the south many of whom were not even
being paid for their hard work many of
them were working for the right to live
on the land that they were farming they
were sharecroppers and not even being
paid so they were ripe for recruitment
but it turned out that the south did not
take kindly to this poaching of his
chief labor the South actually did
everything it could to keep the people
from leaving they would arrest people
from the railroad platforms remember
putative Lee free American citizens they
would arrest them from their train seats
and when there were too many people to
arrest they would wave the train on
through so that people who had been
hoping and saving and praying for the
chance to get to freedom had to figure
out how now will we get out and as they
made their way out of the south out of
away from Jim Crow they followed three
beautifully predict
of all streams as is the case in any
migration throughout human history in
this particular case there were three
streams one was the migration from along
the East Coast from Florida Georgia the
Carolinas and Virginia to Washington DC
to Philadelphia New Jersey New York and
on up the east coast
there was the Midwest stream which
carried people from Mississippi Alabama
Tennessee and Arkansas to Chicago to
Detroit to Cleveland and the entire
Midwest and then there was the West
Coast stream which carried people from
Louisiana and Texas out to California
and when they really wanted to get away
they went to Seattle and when they
really really wanted to get away they
went to Alaska the farthest possible
point within the borders of the United
States from Jim Crow South before the
great migration began 90% of all African
Americans were living in the south
nearly held captive in the south but by
the time this great migration was over
nearly half are living all over the rest
of the country so this ended up being
nearly a complete redistribution of part
of an entire people this great migration
was the first time in American history
that the lowest caste people signaled
that they had options and were willing
to take them that had not happened in
the three centuries in which African
Americans had been on that soil at that
time it had not happened in 12
generations of enslavement that preceded
nearly a century of Jim Crow how many
greats do you have to add to the word
grandparent to begin to imagine how long
enslavement lasted in the United States
secondly this great migration was the
first time in American history that the
lowest caste people actually had a
chance to choose for themselves what
they would do with their god-given
talents and where they would pursue them
think about those cotton fields and
those rice plantations and those tobacco
fields and those sugar plantations on
those sugar plantations and on those
tobacco fields and on those rice
plantations and on those cotton fields
for opera singers jazz musicians
playwrights novelists surgeons attorneys
accountants professors journalists and
how do we know that we know that because
that is what they and their children and
now their grandchildren and even great
grandchildren have often chosen to
become once they had the chance to
choose for themselves what they would do
with their god-given talents without the
great migration there might not have
been a Toni Morrison as we now know her
to be her parents were from Alabama and
from Georgia they migrated to Ohio where
their daughter would get to do something
that we all take for granted from at
this point but which was against the law
and against protocol for
african-americans at the time that she
would have been growing up in the south
had they stayed and that is just to walk
into a library and take out a library
book merely by making the single
decision to leave her parents assured
that their daughter would get access to
books and if you're going to become a
Nobel laureate it helps to get a book
now and then you know it helps music as
we know it was reshaped by the great
migration as they came nor
they brought with them on their hearts
and in their memories the music that had
sustained the ancestors the blues music
the spirituals and the Gospels gospel
music that had sustained them through
the generations and they converted this
music into whole new genres of music and
got the chance to record this music this
new music that they were creating and to
spread it throughout the world without
the great migration Motown would not
have existed the founder Berry Gordy his
parents were from Georgia they migrated
to Detroit and when he got to be a grown
man he decided he wanted to go into
music but he didn't have the wherewithal
the go all over the country looking for
the best talent and it turned out he
didn't have to it turned out that there
he was surrounded by children of the
great migration whose parents had
brought this music up with them during
the journey
and among those children were these
three girls there was Mary Wilson
Florence Ballard and there was a third
one Diana Ross we might not know Diana
Ross's name had there been no great
migration because like a lot of
Americans and a lot of human beings in
general she might not have existed
because her parents might not have met
her mother was from Alabama father from
West Virginia they migrated to Detroit
different years met married had her and
her siblings and thus a legend was born
jazz was a creation of the great
migration and one of the greatest gifts
of the great migration starting with
Louis Armstrong who was born in
Louisiana and migrated on the Illinois
Central Railroad to Chicago where he got
the chance to build on the talent that
was within him all along Miles Davis his
parents were from Arkansas they migrated
to Illinois southern Illinois where he
would get the chance to build on the
talents that were within him all along
but which could have gone fallow in the
cotton country of Arkansas
john coltrane he migrated at the age of
16 from North Carolina to Philadelphia
where upon arrival in Philadelphia he
got his first alto sax and there are
lovers of jazz who cannot imagine a
world without John Coltrane having
gotten ahold of a saxophone Thelonious
Monk Michael Jackson Jesse Owens Prince
August Wilson Richard Wright Ralph
Ellison Michelle Obama these are all a
few of the millions of people who were
products of the single decision to
migrate the people of the great
migration met with tremendous resistance
in the north and they were not able to
defeat all social injustice but one
person added to another person added to
another person multiplied by millions
were able to become the advance guard of
the civil rights movement one person
added to another person added to another
person multiplied by millions acting on
a single decision were able to change
the region that they had been forced to
flee they had more power in leaving than
by staying by their actions these people
who had absolutely nothing were able to
do what a president of the United States
Abraham Lincoln was not able to do these
people by their actions were able to do
what the Emancipation Proclamation could
not do these people by their actions
were able to do what the powers that be
north and south could not or would not
do they freed themselves thank you
[Applause]
[Music]