Following the Return Migration of Black Americans to the U.S. South

Summer Perritt is a History PhD candidate at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Her work looks at the return migration of Black Americans to the U.S. South in the post-civil rights period. Her project consists of oral history interviews with migrants as well as traditional archival sources such as those collected by the Stuart A. Rose Library. Summer is the recipient of the Pellom McDaniels Fellowship for African American History and Culture.

While most people know about the Great Migration, when Black Americans began leaving the South in mass droves for better opportunities and a life free from Jim Crow violence, fewer people are familiar with the reversal of this migratory phenomenon. Beginning in 1970, Black Americans began returning to the U.S. South in unprecedented numbers. Over the last five decades, almost five million Black Americans have relocated to the South from their homes in the North and West. Today, over half of the United States’ Black population resides in the American South.^[1] My dissertation, tentatively titled, “Southern Reclamation: Understanding Black Identity and Return Migration in the Post-Civil Rights Era,” looks at the meanings of this migration for the people who’ve lived it. Understanding who these migrants were, where they came from, and why they chose to relocate to a region that has historically, and contemporarily, been a site of Black oppression, violence, and subjugation, is key to understanding the modern South and southern identity in its current context.

As one of the only archives that have specifically collected on the topic of the return migration, the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library has been essential to this research. I was able to briefly visit the Library last year and then returned this summer for a longer duration to delve into the rich collections. During this tenure, I first consulted the Michael Lomax Papers. Lomax, best known for his Atlanta mayoral campaigns of 1989 and 1993, was a migrant to the South at an early age. Going through his papers, I discovered that he was born in Los Angeles in 1947 to a journalist mother and a lawyer father. His parents ran a successful Black newspaper and in the 1960s, his mother traveled to Alabama to cover an early civil rights campaign. After his parent’s divorce, Lomax’s mother decided to move to Tuscaloosa, Alabama full-time to be part of the movement. Her six children accompanied her. Lomax spent the next several years of his childhood bouncing between Los Angeles and Tuscaloosa. At the age of sixteen, craving stability, he decided to enroll in Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Aside from a two-year stint at Columbia University in New York, Lomax would spend the next few decades in Atlanta and indeed, the rest of his life in the South. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.^[2]

 

 

Lomax went on to marry another migrant whose papers are housed at the Rose Library, famous playwright and political activist, Pearl Cleage. Cleage was raised in Detroit, Michigan but moved to Washington D.C. to attend Howard University in the early 1960s. Cleage’s papers consist of numerous correspondence with her family back in Detroit. In the early days of her transition, she wrote often about the differences she observed between her home in the North and her new residence in the South citing, that young people back home were wittier, “spoke better English, and dressed a bit better” too.^[3]

As a student, Cleage met Lomax and they married after a brief courtship. They soon moved to Atlanta and started a family.^[4] Unlike her husband, Cleage spoke more pointedly about her move South and was even featured in several newspaper articles specifically about the return migration: “I thought it was going to be very rigid, closed, and pretty dangerous as well. When I got here I found that fortunately was not true.”^[5] Despite those early differences and peculiarities, Cleage chose to make her home in Atlanta and resides there today. She and Lomax divorced in the late 1970s.^[6]

The final two collections I consulted during my time at the Rose Library were the C.T. and Octavia Vivian Papers and the Vincent Harding Papers. Unlike Lomax, whose reasons for moving South were not entirely his own, and Cleage, who found the South a changed place, C.T. and Octavia Vivian as well as Vincent Harding specifically migrated to the South to be a part of the civil rights movement.

Vincent Harding was originally from New York but became involved in the civil rights movement through his connections with the Mennonite Church, serving as their liaison and counselor to Black members in the South. He conducted work with groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee (SNCC).^[7] After Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, Harding stayed on in Atlanta, first to run the King Center, and then a Black studies think-tank known as the Institute of the Black World. He also taught at Spelman College and in that time became an ardent supporter of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the South.^[8] He openly denounced the ‘brain drain’ that was occurring in the region as Northern schools began opening their own Black studies departments and drawing away talented students and professors. Although he was not from the South, he became one of the region’s biggest defenders in the field of education, calling attention to the great need for resources in southern schools.^[9] Unlike his cohort, however, Harding’s migration South was somewhat short-lived as he eventually took a position at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado.

Originally from Missouri and raised in Illinois, C.T. Vivian was a reverend who received theological training in Nashville, Tennessee. While there, he led several sit-ins to protest racial segregation in the city. This led to his involvement with SCLC where he served in multiple capacities from the 1960s through the 1980s.^[10] His wife, Vivian, supported his work along the way, raised six children, and even became the first biographer of Coretta Scott King.^[11] Although C.T. and Vivian’s migration was not linear, they eventually settled in Atlanta and remained there for the duration of their lives. In an unpublished memoir in Vivian’s papers, she candidly describes her move to the South, stating she was “reared in the North and having heard so many tales of the South I never expected to live South.”  Despite this, she notes that the move was necessary for them, particularly her husband, to build a Black community and friendship network after his mostly white upbringing in Illinois. She proclaims, “We moved South in 1955 and in 1983 I must say I love it.”^[12]

Both of these collections highlight some of the earliest reasons for a move southward: to upend segregation and make the region a more tenable place for Black Americans like themselves. Consequently, they changed much more than just the American South. The myriad of reasons for moving South in these stories alone enrich my understanding of the return migration and help to distinguish change over time. These conclusions would not have been possible without the holdings of the Rose Library and the generous support of the Pellom McDaniels Fellowship.

 

Footnotes:

[1]William H. Frey, The New Great Migration: Black Americans’ Return to the South, 1965-2000 (Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, the Brookings Institution, 2004).

[2] Gary Libman, “Lomax Family: From L.A. to South of ’60s,” n.d., Michael Lomax Papers, Box 48, Folder 3 “Newspaper clippings: undated,” Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. Michael Faludi, “Michael’s Way,” Atlanta Weekly, May 12, 1985, Michael Lomax Papers, Box 47, Folder 10, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

[3] Pearl Cleage to Family, September 25, 1966, Mss 1223, Box 1 (Correspondence), Folder 2 (1966 September),  Pearl Cleage Papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library. Emory University.

[4] J. Michael Robertson, “The Jugglers,” Atlanta Magazine, December 1977, Michael Lomax Papers, Box 48, Folder 5, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

[5] Brenda Mooney, “Reversing the Migration: Blacks Headings Back to Live in Southern Cities,” The Sentinel, July 5, 1978, Michael Lomax Papers, Box 47, Folder 23 “Newspaper Clippings 1953-1981,” Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

[6] Lucius Lomax, “Memories of Camelot,” Atlanta Magazine, July 2002, Michael Lomax Papers, Box 47, Folder 17, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

[7] Margalit Fox, “Vincent Harding, 82, Civil Rights Author and Associate of Dr. King, Dies,” The New York Times, March 21, 2014.

[8] “Black (Studies) Vatican,” Newsweek, August 11, 1969, Vincent Harding Paper, Box 50, Folder 12, “Clippings relating to Vincent Harding,” Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

[9] Barbara Campbell, “Why Should We Celebrate the 4th of July?,” The New York Times, March 23, 1969, Vincent Harding Paper, Box 50, Folder 12, “Clippings relating to Vincent Harding,” Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

[10] “C.T. Vivian Timeline,” n.d., C.T. and Octavia Vivian Papers, Box 5, Folder 17 “Biographies and Histories, 1972-74,” Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

[11] “An Interview with Octavia Vivian,” The Monitor, September 1992, C.T. and Octavia Vivian Papers, Box 6, Folder 1 “Life Notes,” Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

[12] Octavia Vivian, “Octavia Vivian Life Notes #2” (Unpublished, n.d.), C.T. and Octavia Vivian Papers, Box 6, Folder 1 “Life Notes,” Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.