Seeds of Discontent, episode 6 (historical perspective on African Americans, Northern migration)

Seeds of Discontent, episode 6 (historical perspective on African Americans, Northern migration)

Seeds of Discontent was a 1968 radio documentary series that explored discontented social groups and organizations attempting to improve their conditions in American society. Created by Hartford Smith, Jr. and Wayne State University’s WDET in Detroit, the series addressed topics including race relations, civil rights, poverty, youth, and crime.

This episode, the first of three featuring interviews with older African American men who had lived in Detroit for decades, focuses on the Northern migration of African American families.

Hartford Smith, Jr.

Originally distributed by WDET in Detroit, Michigan; made available in digitally archived format as part of the Unlocking the Airwaves project, a digital humanities initiative from University of Maryland and the University of Wisconsin-Madison launched in 2021.

1968

English

Sound

Speaker 1 This is the sixth in a series of programs, entitled Seeds of Discontent. Here to present the program is Hartford Smith, Jr., Supervisor of the Screening and Intake Unit maintained by the Michigan Department of Social Services, Delinquency Rehabilitation programs - Mr. Smith. [Smith begins speaking] Welcome again to Seeds of Discontent. For those of you who may not have heard our first two programs, I should like to reiterate the purpose of this series. Our main objective is to identify stress forces within today's society. And I hope that we can better understand and find solutions in order to accomplish this objective. It is felt that it is imperative, that we hear the voices, concerns and feelings of those who wrestle with these forces in their day to day life. So far, we have presented the voices and the plight of juvenile delinquents of the hippies and of those whose existence is tied up in the large subculture of poverty. Tonight, we began a phase in our series that is most vital and understanding the scope and dimensions of discontent. So widespread and contemporary America. Our topic is the American Negro. Speaker 8 into this word. This is happened to call a man. And I wonder when I get to be called and man Speaker 1 Big bill Broonzy song is symbolic of the question, which lies at the base of current discontent about the roots of the question are scattered throughout the bloody and Stripe torn history of race relations in this country. Our emphasis tonight will be on gaining some kind of historical perspective from the voices of those who lived during that era. Well, to get things started, I'd just like to go around the room and ask each of you how long you've been here and just indicate maybe where you came from, basically why he came to Detroit. Speaker 9 Well, I came to Michigan, uh, 19 or 19. I live in the city of Hamtramck until 1926. I came down in the city of Detroit, 1926, and I've lived in Detroit since 1926. Speaker 10 And you sir, Speaker 11 I came from current 37 years ago when I was quite young. I've been here, the remainder of my life, completely sitting in the city grow since this time. Speaker 10 Where did you come from? Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville, Tennessee. Five years old. I see. And you, sir, I came in 29. I came from Chicago. I see. What were some of the reasons for your coming to, oh, well, I bet live in. I see. Speaker 12 Well, when I came the first time in 25, I was wearing a Mariana visit to visit my sister, but I came back here to live in 41. I made seven trips in the medically, you know, between then and Nate, but I came back. He lived here in 41 and uh, well they were plants Speaker 10 I was going on. So I thought maybe that been advance. Speaker 1 And you indicated that you were born and raised in, uh, Selma, Alabama. Speaker 10 Why did you leave? I hadn't left to come to north. And it just, Detroit was not really incidental because I did have relatives here at the time, but I came looking for the man of promise because you hear this, you did hear it in the south go north, because that is where you get the chance, the opportunity and the Northern white man helped to emancipate you. So he will certainly give you a chance. Speaker 1 Most of these men were refugees from the south. They came north looking for the land of promise, looking for a better existence. They are not atypical. And the fact that the city is Detroit does not mean that the experiences, which they will relate to you would have been different in any other large industrialized city. Us census data indicates that from world war one to 1960, the Negro population outside of the south grew from 2.4 million to better than 9 million. From 1960 to 1966, there were significant increases in migration rates from the south to the west coast, the Northeast and north central states. The voices on tonight show represents a combined total of well over a hundred years of Negro life in larger American cities in the north. Let's hear their story about the land of promise that so many black Americans were attracted to after years of degradation, humiliation, slavery, and injustice in the south. Well, based on everything that you've told me so far, certainly most of you were coming to Detroit, uh, attempting to find a better life for yourself to, to get ahead and to well, to follow the American dream. Now, I just wonder looking back since the time that you came here, looking back at things that that's happened to you in any areas such as finding a job or finding housing, or just finding things adequate, just, just how have you found it to be? Speaker 9 Well, I find that they acquired a change in order. It was when I first came to Detroit because when I first came to the chart, a housing situation was very bad and then people were doubling up and sleeping together and then sharing two and three men was sharing a room. So I'm like that, but the wages was pretty good. And so they were willing to go along at that because until they could find better, the situation was, uh, changed quite considerable sense that time. And you Speaker 3 Feel that there is better housing? Speaker 9 Well, yes, it's, it's better housing than it was at that particular time. Much better, although it could be much better, but it's still better than it was at that particular time. Speaker 3 How about you, sir? What, uh, has been your experience in terms of looking back now at when you came here, what you were looking for, just how the city reacted to you as a human being? Speaker 10 Well, when I came to Detroit, as far as the housing is concerned, strange enough, anyway, many areas where there were one or two more families living in, and supposedly now, as we turn them in all white, more or less, 98 or 99% white it's, you'd find they wanted to Negro families. They were there. I think only one or two that was the one paid any attention to him. They would be spoken to the big nigga was just neighbors, but the Negroes more or less in sections as we called Naval areas. The thing that has happened in the recent years is that they have been able to move into some areas, uh, that were supposedly white, but the fact that they moved in, they were integrated areas up until the last white person moved out. Because as soon as you leave into the white side and you can away, pretty much the parents have had an exit. That's the bed. Where did Speaker 3 Most Negroes live during those? Speaker 9 Well, those days they're more strict than the hill. Uh, well from, uh, south of, uh, I want to say south of mid battery on the back, uh, of course in the twenties, they all live south of harvest when it was only a few, I guess it wasn't half a dozen families about forest avenue in there and in their early twenties. And then, but they mostly, they all lived the back and more stuff than live east of her, east of Bowlby and street from open street over this way. He was only a few call it people in there in the 20th and then living conditions was, uh, you know, fair. I have to, they, uh, kind of, you know, had a little depression, you know, in the afternoon, depression come on, live conditions got a little better because some of them immigrated out and went different places and so on and so on like that. But in general, it wasn't, it wasn't too good in the twenties. Speaker 10 No, he's not. I think the term black bottom came about. I'm not sure, but it was the lower east side, just like New York has a lower east side. And the concentration was all black. Like people, no matter what their means of life, whether they were prostitutes or whether they were people who worked in infectious or whether they were doctors. There were many doctors who had homes in that area, because I think, I don't know whether you remember anything about the history of Detroit, but I think there was a doctor, uh, that, uh, got into some trouble by shooting someone down there. Yes, was a sweet killed a man, but this, everybody was there one in one area and they couldn't get out of it. So, uh, that was a pattern you had to live there. If you were black, you, no matter what amount of money you had. Speaker 10 And of course, when they told these, this thought the redevelopment in recent years, turn the homes down, buying them up, replacing them. And that's, that's the big thing Negros were there. They own some of them, many of them bought these, these that many of them turned out to be Shannon's because they, the, they didn't have the means of keeping them up to the standard they will when they bought them, because at the income just would not allow them, let me cause many times there's the factions would lay off. The nigger was the first one to be laid off in Scotia. Naturally, if you don't have means you have families eating comes first. And, uh, they told the houses down, they immediately replaced them with these big, like Lafayette towers, these big high rise buildings where the red spot is $150 a month. And the nigger was lucky if he could make $150 in a month. Speaker 10 So now these people who were displaced, there was nothing built, no houses built, maybe they got more money. Maybe they got a little bit more money out of their properties. And the, uh, then maybe supposedly, I don't know. I really don't know whether it was worth and it wasn't after supposedly they got the same amount of money to buy something else, but they couldn't afford to buy the type of houses that were available. And when enough, so the city or the government, whoever was responsible, he did not. He placed the houses that they, that they tore down or took away from it. I say, take took them away because they forced them to sell. These people would probably have maybe stayed there and then the children would take them over and stay there until they died. But when you, when you uprooted and moved have to move, you'd have to go wherever you can. So they have a system is continuously almost thrown the people of different social status together constantly. Speaker 3 I just like to get some of your impressions that you've seen really in the job market or the Negro or in these past 30 to 40 years, uh, would you care to comment a bit on that? What kind of jobs were available to Negro during the early years? Well, let us some of the problems that Speaker 9 The city at that particular time, the city we're giving call the people jobs and the garbage department that was, uh, the most important job for call it. People in on the city know about what year was this well enters in, uh, the late twenties, late twenties? Yeah, the garbage department that was there, what they specialized in giving call the people with jobs on what they call good jobs and the garbage department. So most fellows prefer to go to Fords or Dodges priceless or someplace where they could, you know, make much better living, working conditions at the factories. Back at that particular time was pretty rough. They didn't have no are way over ventilating, uh, factors, uh, without fresh out like they have today. And there was some pretty rough jobs out there, but to call them fellows always in particular, got all of those bad jobs. Speaker 9 And that's just the way he went on and on and on like that until later years. And then just put the time in the rose war to calmly coming soon, doing a little bit better. You see, I worked at a factory and myself and, uh, when a war come on in 19 42, 43, I had worked quite a while at this particular factory. And, um, I knew quite a bit about the work and everything, and it was a good work and it wasn't, it wasn't an absentee. I got elevated to her form when I got to be foreman for all a couple of years and a bunch of the white fellows didn't want to work for me. He didn't want to work under me when I went on, I made the best of it. I couldn't, I had a pretty hard way to go, but I had pretty fair superintendent that, you know, stuck with me. So the work got little so hard and it got a little rough out there. And, uh, due to the fact that it was a lit lit factory where the, uh, consist of a lot of lid and mixing metal. And then my help comes to failing a little bit. And I left the job and went to the railroad and went to there. And then I was a Pullman Porter for the last 15 years. And that's where I returned them. Speaker 9 So that was, Speaker 10 And you worked before, it was the first man, he had to pay $6 a day. And that happened, that comes in, in, in the middle of 30, about the late thirties, as you know, were Negroes and whites paid about the same, the same. But, but, but, uh, just like he said before, the Negro had the back break, he did the back-breaking back in the day. Cause I worked at four with myself. Speaker 12 I had, I had one thing to happen to me, right from the city of Detroit. I took an examination when they first started putting colored people on buses. I took my examination for a bus driver and, uh, it so happened. It was a white boy in the next desk. We took them in the desk, you know, like, just like when I was in school and he was kept asking me what you put for this. But you put for that, I don't know his name. I couldn't call his name. I wouldn't know him if he was in the door when he put for this. But he put for this what'd he put for that time rocked on time, Rob Don, I never heard from him. So I take it on myself to go down and see what happened. Speaker 12 So the guy said, you failed. I said, well, what, what did I feel? And I'd like to shop. And I find it, you know, I told you, you fail. So another guy came up. He said, well, okay, see you eat cool with me. I said, well, okay, you get a card. So they sent me the car and same thing on the car you feel when I go back to check on this thing out and out, right on the 13th floor of the waterboard building, you understand? I don't know names. I can't call names now because it's been a long time. Guess who my examiner was the same fellow that took my answers. That's who my examiner was. And they called the police to have me thrown out in a lot of board building. Speaker 11 I bought you, sir. The only thing I might, I might add a little something. He was talking about the city. Cause for the longest time, most of the civil servants were in the higher Negroes, nothing in a qualified position. When one did get one, he had to get it through a lot of pole. But so happened during the eight years, just as the world getting ready to start, I applied for DSR. And that particular morning there were two or three that I recognized him. Something that I didn't know. But at the end they kept taking them off and letting them go and take them. And some of us remained remember about seven or eight of us. And they told us all the same story. Now the father was telling us this and was supposed to be an examiner. He didn't look like he was qualified to be a grabber even. Speaker 11 And he was the one that was doing examine and they examination. They turned us down on, had to do with the physical compositions, the liquid on the body. If you know what I mean? And he come asking us a personal question. So when he walked away, I said to boy, I said, I told me the truth. I said, have you each one said, no. I said we would get together. And let's cause this sounds . We got together in a group, I got him the gun and we got together, a group went back to him and told him he he'd have to tell us something better than that. Otherwise we wouldn't take the matter to course he didn't. So then he started back down and then he finally went back in the room. He came back and told me that I was all right, everybody. One by one. He told us all we all right. Speaker 3 The question of police brutality was the number one issue and the reason riot situation. And so it's important to go back now in terms of your early years here. And, uh, I shouldn't look at the police department as it grew up, um, during the early years that you were here, sir. Um, when can you first remember, or was there always Negro officers on the floors and what was the experience of, of the Negro with, uh, the police department during those days? Speaker 9 Well, ever since I've been here, they've had fellow patrol months and not very many things is now not, not too many and now, but, uh, they were, uh, caught him Klein to go along with the white police department and, uh, sometime ago or quite a few years ago, back in the early twenties and third, I mean in the late twenties and early thirties, the police department, they were pretty curl. And uh, they used to have them used to treat the people off of bed, especially the colored people. Because at that particular time we had our boys commissioner your name by the name of Rutledge. And, uh, he always, uh, never talked to police to have any courtesy, to watch the black citizens just, and his point was to knock them down and kick them around and beat them or shoot them over to anything that they see fit to do. Speaker 9 And it was never nothing done about it. And any investigation never got out of the, never got out of the front door. It just like that. And so as time went on, it just eventually got a little better. And then the lady is yes, a few years ago, what? They had a price, all a police crash, a white girl was killed up here on Kirby. At that particular time, we had a mayor here by the name of Marianne on a police commissioner by the name of Hubbard, Hubbard w hot. And he put on the Christ drive and that particular time they would pick up anybody that they saw walking the street at night, unless you had her or unless you were some kind of professional man and something good to explain that to them. It just pick up, pick, pick, pick you up. And if your answer wasn't sufficient and run you down to jail and keep you in jail sometime overnight two or three days, sometime call it investigation, which was all uncalled for. Speaker 9 And then the mail lost this year election. And they just turned just because of those facts, because the people got on him and wanted him to her find this police commissioner. And he said that haunt was his man. We were at a meeting a couple of times and heard a professor quick debate with him over to McGregory over here at Wayne state. And he says that Hart was a good man. And he jumped him then. And any complaints you made to hot didn't get no further in the door. I was misused a couple of times by the policeman. I had an attorney to sit down and write the commissioner a letter, and I kept a copy of it. You never heard from him. It was nothing that goes on about anyone. And that's just the way it went on. Speaker 10 Well, if you, but because I've seen some very flagrant exhibitions of disrespect to Negro people by a patrolman in the street. And one instance is that a, I can almost call it a year. This is quite a long time ago. It was 1935. And the grown Roman pull up to the corner of Linwood avenue and enjoy road. He was coming out of dry road, stopped for traffic light. In the meantime was an officer in the corner. Directing traffic is run in the afternoon. School was letting out, but there were two people in the car and they were talking in the car, stopped. And then the hair just a little bit, not across the crosswalk, but just controlling was standing there watching this particular car. I watched the people in it and he yelled out, Hey nigga, get that damn car back. Excuse if I'm gonna use that expression because he used it and the people in the streets, a lot of people, but he had no respect for the people of the streets and all the people driving in crying. Speaker 10 Because at that time, uh, there were not, there were no Negroes living. And then here we around then Joe, I wrote none at all. None whatsoever. It goes to keep from getting beetle ahead. I suppose he just backed the car up. But this was something that I witnessed. I heard you ask a question about Negro policemen on the force. And years ago you had many Negro policemen on the forest. I say many, I mean, but there never has been adequate and number, but, uh, they were, uh, lauded by the police department for the simple reason that they were very hard on Negro people. They kept them in the basically the totally illegal areas. And of course he got his reputation by kicking his own people around, beating them over the head and Dan them to speak. And then I've heard the mention of one. I don't remember, but around Hasting street, yes, it was 1, 1, 1 fellow by the name of, I remember him because he used to patrol Hastings street that was working weapon. Speaker 10 I used since juvenile first came to the city as a barber and he would walk down the street and lift fellows was standing on the sidewalk during the depression. Nobody had jobs and he'd walked by and she was standing by the wall. It was adequate group and him in the past. And he would, uh, he to tobacco and he would spit as close as he could to your feet to make a jump back cause tried to spit on you. And he says, when I come back, don't be standing there and now you ain't doing anything. And maybe they were only two people standing. I've heard him tell just two men standing talking. These were men who were working, had been working in factories. Uh, particularly the two men that I can recall. Now, these men came from West Virginia who are law abiding citizens. And I know the mirror well. Speaker 10 And, uh, they were standing there talking, talking about work and about unemployment because I happen to be standing in front of the place and he didn't care. Just don't be here when I get back. So, okay. Many of them, some of those fellows had represented because they had during the gangster area, they happened to the, the, uh, the minutes of the gangster was, uh, to the white man himself because they shot each other. But as long as one of these Negro policeman would kill one of them once in a while, then he was okay with him as long as he kept going, as he continued kicking it and shooting Negroes. And, uh, they have never promoted. And I'm pretty sure there are many things to bear this out. Now, Negro policemen patrolman very rarely get above the rank of Sergeant. Uh, you haven't had, I don't know how many they have. Speaker 10 They have been the lieutenants. I think there've been very many, but it seems as though the, the very fact that when you get above Sergeant, you have to wear then senior Lieutenant that gives you some status. So they don't make Negro policemen, lieutenants very fast, but they have had many Negro detectives that were, uh, and they tend to Negro the white. But the, but the point is that what I'm driving at is the reason they, they get this promotion, which is seemingly big. And maybe these films glorified in themselves because they can't say, oh, I'm a detective. And he thinks he's something above everybody else, but he's in plain clothes. So when he walks out the door, only the people who know him personally on can identify him by some of his actions or his name. I don't want to know that he's a Lieutenant. Right. Speaker 3 I see. Okay. Let's look for a moment at what a lot of talk. There's been a lot of talk, certainly in the last five years about discrimination, discrimination in jobs, discrimination and housing discrimination in schools, discrimination all over and just, let's just go back and look back at the times during your early years here. And, and just try to describe in a few words, uh, what the story was at that time, in terms of, uh, of equality, of, of, of, uh, of how a man was treated as a man. Speaker 10 Well, did you ask me, I'll see it in one word. I mean, a couple of words, there wasn't any, there wasn't any, Speaker 3 This then for many was the land of promise. I, no Speaker 1 Point in editorializing, they have stated that history, as they've seen it develop over the past 40 years and their perspectives are important. If the problem is to be fully understood, one final commentary on what this existence, this history has meant Speaker 10 Over 37 years, I have had some experiences that were gratifying because all people cannot be there's no composite cannot be generalized, but as a whole, the land of promise, I'm still looking for, because I find that in the United States, which was created or was founded because people were looking for freedom and Liberty and a chance it was done by white and they still have it for themselves that way. And I assume looking for the land of promise, and I'm sure that with the thinking of the young Negro today, even though they say violence will not get anything, it's going to make him think him. I say to white man, thank you and give a little bit more consideration and respect for the black man, because we were in the land of promise. And then if I recall last summer, Roy Wilkins said, we might just, as we all get together and do things right, because we're not going to be getting after each other through every August. So there's no point in that we are here to stay. We didn't ask to come. We brought here and we don't intend to leave. We just gonna see that we get some of the things that are here since we helped to build it. Speaker 8 When I was into this word, this what happened to him? I want to win. I want to win. I want to women. I get to be called . When I got back from overseas that night, get you some old holes. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder where will I get to be called? Or man, I gotta wait. extra gangs to black. Man's I don't get what he can do. was on educated clothes are dirty and I've got an education when I'm still apart. Right on. I wonder when Speaker 1 Next week, another historical perspective on the Negro in America, our subject will be ranch, red light districts and the Negro community. You have just heard Hartford Smith, junior supervisor of the screening and intake unit maintained by the Michigan department of social services. Delinquency rehabilitation programs, seeds of discontent is produced by Dave Lewis for WDET radio and engineered by David Pierce. This is Wayne State University radio.