Gary Hunter lecture, "Black Boycotts and the Rise of Activism in the 1930s," at the University of Iowa, June 16, 1977
Gary Hunter: The following was recorded on June 16th, 1977 as part of the ninth annual Institute for Afro American Culture. Black Boycotts and the Rise of Activism in the 1930s is the subject of this talk by Gary Hunter, assistant professor of history at Glassboro State College in New Jersey. He is introduced by Dr. Darwin Turner, chairman of the Afro American studies program at the University of Iowa.
Dr. Darwin Turn...: Today, a question came up about the involvement of participants as individuals presenting papers in such an institute as this. The question has been raised by individuals before, often by individuals when they first heard about the conference and assume that this might be somewhat in the manner of a professional association conference, in which there's a call for papers on the assumption that the conference will be based entirely on those papers. From time to time in the past, when we have had an individual who seemed to have particular expertise, even though the individual was selected as a participant, we try to make it possible for that individual to have an opportunity to present a paper. In general however, our lecturers have been selected rather than individuals who have identified themselves. And all of that is the kind of preparation for the fact that the speaker I'm going to introduce now is an individual who was selected through a different procedure.
Dr. Darwin Turn...: He wrote to me suggesting a topic that he had worked on and expressing at that time before he knew his summer teaching schedule an interest in joining the institute as a participant. And I responded to him much in the manner that I've described that if he happened to be around for the two weeks, we were certain we'd find some opportunity to let him talk with others about his very interesting research. When it turned out that he was not able to participate in the entire institute, I still wanted to hear something about the research which he was proposing. Therefore, we invited him to come. Gary Hunter received his Bachelor's from Lincoln University. I almost hesitate to comment, such is the attitude of graduates of the Lincolns that often they do not identify whether it is Pennsylvania or Missouri. And I must let him explain to you which one is because if I guess wrong, I will alienate many alumni.
Dr. Darwin Turn...: He received his master's in history from Atlanta University. A second master's in history from the University of Michigan and a PhD from the University of Michigan. After receiving his masters from Atlanta, he taught for a year at Fisk University. Subsequently he taught at Eastern Michigan and the University of Michigan. Since 1974 he's been an assistant professor at Glassboro State in New Jersey. In 1973, he earned the Rackham Dissertation Research prize at the University of Michigan. And this afternoon, he will be talking about with us about boycotts in the United States by blacks during the 1930s. Mr. Hunter.
Gary Hunter: And it is Pennsylvania. All right, before I move in on my discussion, I want to make a change, a little slight change in the title, put a little appendage on it. And the title of the lecture is going to be Don't Buy Where You Can't Work, a Black Urban Boycott During the Depression and the Emergence of 20th Century Black Activism.
Gary Hunter: Now, in a sense, I started on this project approximately around 1971. And usually when I was going through undergraduate school, we used to get to the 20th century. And every time we discussed the 20th century, one thing kind of stood out in my mind that most people who discussed it never really dealt with The Depression years as much as they dealt with other periods. I more or less call The Depression years, 1929 to 1941. It's the step child of the 20th century black historiography. The age of Booker T. Washington seems to fascinate people them years between 1895 and 1915. The so called jazz age or the year of the great migration has a certain glamor to historians maybe because of the presence of Marcus Garvey and some of the things he was doing. And the civil rights movement from 1955 up until around 1970, seems to fascinate a lot of historians.
Gary Hunter: But in the 1930s, when you get to the 1930s, most people tend to concentrate their time on the activities of labor unions. In the 1940s, a lot of people will start talking about the activities of the black cabinet, people like Oxley and Robert Weaver, their relationship with the federal government and The New Deal. This seemed to me to miss the point to a large extent. And I started a seminar paper in approximately 1972. This investigating our local history. It began in Detroit. I investigated Harlem in the 1930s, Cleveland in 1930s and found out that a lot of things were going on in these communities that you didn't quite see in the history books. And one of the most important things that are going on is that black people seem to be a little bit more active in a different sort of way than they were in the first part of the 20th century.
Gary Hunter: But before I get into a discussion of the activism on the part of blacks in the 1930s, I want to make a few general comments about the 1920s which I think is important for us to understand, in terms of what happened in the 30s. Now during the period of World War I, we all familiar with the great migrations, where several hundred thousand people, some people estimate approximately a million people migrated from the South to the North in search of jobs and industrial [inaudible]. The majority, of this migration focused on around six or seven specific cities.` New York i.e. Harlem, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Chicago. Approximately around 80% of the migrants that left the South went to either one of these particular cities. Now the creation of the Northern black ghetto or the Northern black urban community reaped a lot of changes on many black institutions.
Gary Hunter: But a few institutions that I came across that are particularly interesting to note in terms of the 1920s, one is the institution of the black church. The black church has always been a central institution in the black community, in the pre-migration year, it's the social center of the black community. The black church produced the majority, overwhelming majority of the black leaders in the 19th century. But as black people urbanized, the influence of the church in the Northern city tends to decline, not so much that people are deserting the church. Matter of fact, you probably have more people belonging to the church in the cities than you ever had before. But the church in the 1920s, as well as in the 1930s finds itself competing with a wide variety of other institutions, which captured people's minds and imaginations. Or they have to compete with the films, they have to compete with the cabarets, the jazz reviews, and particularly a new institution which begins to emerge in the Northern cities during the migration year. And that institution I call as well, Theodore Vincent, the street corner university.
Gary Hunter: The street becomes a very, very active place in many, many Northern cities. And in the sense it takes the place of the church as a major marketplace of ideological thought in the black community, another alternative marketplace of ideas in the black community. On the street, for example, around 135th street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, along State street and Washington Park in Chicago, you could find all sorts of individuals on the street stopping passer-bys, attracting crowds, giving all types of speeches in terms of their different perspectives on black social progress. Matter of fact, Marcus Garvey, he began his career in the United States as one of many, many, many dozens street speakers that you find in Harlem. A. Philip Randolph who we heard something about last night began his careers on the Harlem streets. Or you have many cult leaders on the streets trying to recruit people into their different churches.
Gary Hunter: The street becomes a major place where you can get a lot of different perspectives on how black people can struggle for their own progress. And in my interpretation of what I see in the 1920s, the street corner universities are responsible for a lot of the militancy that tends to emerge in the black community during the 1920s. Now another important development in the 1920s is the rise of the younger generation of black intellectuals. People like A. Philip Randolph, people who are more or less looking for a new ideological perspective. A highly educated group of black youth are emerging or maturing during the so called jazz age. Some of them find themselves involved in the Harlem Renaissance questioning some of the literary and political and social philosophies of the old school, many times represented by the likes of James Weldon Johnson and W. E. B. Du Bois.
Gary Hunter: During the 1920s, I think a lot of people tend to overlook is that is a crucial period in terms of a change in generations. The generational changes that often go along in the course of history. I think I've been brought up very well by the parents of Alex Haley's Roots and his generational to generational picture of the development of his family. But in the 1920s, you got a more highly educated youth emerging because of the coalescing of the development of the black colleges. A lot of times based on some of Booker T. Washington's work. And why we're talking about the black colleges, during the 1920s, you also had a string or a series of black college revolts going on in the 1920s with black students, younger black students are telling the old administrators many times who are white that time has come for us to change over from white paternal administrations to some type of black leadership, black faculty in the black colleges. Because many, many black colleges in the South were still dominated by white administrators and white faculty members.
Gary Hunter: Now in Howard, I think, you get a particular flavor for what's going on in black college in the 1920s as well as some of the concerns of the black youth of the 1920s. One of the major concerns of the black youth of the 1920s, which is partially responsible for the decline of the black church is number one, that the ministry of the black church is now seen as unable to exert any type of leadership because of their lack of their education. Many black college students who are consciously purporting themselves to be the future leaders and many of them on Howard University, according to the Hilltop in 1922 are going to try to challenge Marcus Garvey's leadership of the black community. They're challenging the old guard. You see a very, very acute generational split in the black community in the 1920s. Largely caused by education, the new urban scene, just the urban milieu is very necessary at least in the minds of many intellectuals to challenge the old guard.
Gary Hunter: Now, as the 20s go on. As the Harlem Renaissance intellectuals challenged the old guard in terms of their literary approach, have the young college students challenged the old guard administrators. In the midst of all this conscious developing struggle in the black community, you had a depression hitting the black community in late 1920s. Now most people associate the depression as beginning in 1929, October 1929. But in the black community, the depression starts much, much more early. A matter of fact, the urban league under T. Arnold Hill recognizes there are serious unemployment problems in the black community as early as 1926, 1927. In an article in January of 1928, T. Arnold Hill points out that the rank and the file of the Negro workers are concerned about their job. They do not know what's happening, but there seems to be a rapid growth of unemployment with which he points out begins in 1927.
Gary Hunter: Now, the basic reason why you have a increase in unemployment in the black community, 1926, 1927, 1928 is because of the margin on nature of black employment in the Northern urban scene. Number one, most black workers are unskilled. They work in unskilled occupations. Majority of black women are housewives or the majority of black workers in the mills are unskilled workers, which are expendable. And if we have any type of understanding of the American economic system, particularly during the 1920s, by 1926, 1927 the so-called boom of America had reached a saturation point. Most economic historians have already pointed this out. In 1926 road construction, highway construction stopped because a lot of state and city governments have extended themselves in terms of bond obligations. So they stopped building highways and laying off a lot of unskilled black construction workers. They're the first to go, the old dictum, the last hired, the first fired.
Gary Hunter: The same thing happens in auto automobile production. Automobile inventories are building up very rapidly during 1926, 1927. So they let go of a lot of black workers. The Urban League points out in 1927 for the first time since 1922, we're getting more people applying for jobs then the jobs are available. Each Urban League branch in most of the major Northern city point out this dilemma, that there's more black people in the North that jobs are available for. And what accentuates the problem is that black people are still migrating out of the South during the late 1920s. The economic situation in the South is not any better in 1926, 27 then it was in a year prior to World War I. So you have a growing unemployment problem in the black community, very, very early in terms of what our normal conception of when the depression begin.
Gary Hunter: Now, what basically happens is 1929, when Wall Street fall through, you have panic ensuing. Even before 1929, people were estimating unemployment in the black community to be ranged in roughly around 15 to 20%. Today figures, well that's kind of high, but back in this period of time people were very concerned about it. But after 1929, the period between 1929 and 1932, when the panic really set in and people really started getting laid off. The black workers position in Northern industries really, really deteriorated. By 1930, 1931 unemployment in many Northern city for black workers we're approaching 50%, one out every two black workers in the Northern cities by 1932 at least were unemployed. That goes for black men and black women. Black women were particularly hard hit in 1929, 1930. Most of them were in housework. And when the panic started on Wall Street and people started retrenching their pocketbooks and cutting out luxury expenses their maids were the first to go.
Gary Hunter: And when things really started getting bad by 1932 or early 1933, when many people point out the depression hit rock bottom. Your averaging black unemployment averaging twice that of the white population. Now, as the depression deepens between 1929 and 1932, the black community starts calling on it's leadership to exert some type of influence in terms of trying to change the tide of this rapid black unemployment. People turned their eyes to the traditional black institution to provide some type of alleviation or cure for The Depression situation. They're looking for some type of leadership. Now, when you look at the major black organizations during the late 1920s, and particularly during the early 1930s, there not much they can really do about The Depression situation. Matter of fact, they themselves were broke off. For example, excuse me, The Urban League, which got most of its money from local community chest, from foundations, found suddenly that their philanthropic contributors were saying, well we no longer have any money for you. We've took a bad beating on Wall Street. Our investments went down the tubes, so we no longer have any type of money to be contributing to you.
Gary Hunter: Now by 1931, 1932, the majority, the overwhelming majority of The Urban League branches, which during the 1920s specialized in finding black people jobs were no longer really in any real sense operational. Most of the employment departments or the local Urban Leagues had shut down because of the lack of funding or The Urban League laid off the majority of its staff. For example, in Detroit, which operated one of the largest and most successful Urban Leagues during the 1920s, by 1930 only had two people on the staff, the director, and a part time secretary. The rest of the staff that recruited for jobs just had to be laid off because there were no jobs to be secured from the factories because the car factories were laying off.
Gary Hunter: Now the Detroit situation is very similar to what's going on in the rest of the country. And the same situation is going on with the NAACP. NAACP branches, which were never really concerned, that much concerned about economic issues find themselves, in their terms of their funds being cut as well. Their funds are being cut as well in the same sense as The Urban League. The philanthropists can no longer afford to be funding them at the same level they were during the 1920s.
Gary Hunter: Yeah. Another major black organization, what used to be the largest, the UNIA, Marcus Garvey. By late 1920s because of external pressures by the US government and foreign powers and internal conflicts was declining very rapidly by the time The Depression got here. It was still a national organization, but it no longer commanded any type of financial foundation or ideological or leadership abilities that it did during the early 1920s. So there was not much that the UNIA could do, in terms of establishing some type of approach to deal with the rapid escalating unemployment in the black community.
Gary Hunter: Now it seemed like the only traditional black institution which tried to meet the problem of black unemployment during the late 1920s, early 1930s, was the Colored Merchants Association, was they called the CMA movement, was basically is an adjunct organization of the National Negro Business League headed by a guy named Albon Holsey, the CMA movement. Now the CMA movement is basically a child of the 1920s, new negro. The CMA movement's primary function was to stimulate the development of black business. It was organized in 1928 in Alabama. And the CMA movement's primary concern was to find a way in which black businessman could compete with white businessman operating in the black community.
Gary Hunter: One of the sore spots of black economic development during the 1920s, despite the optimism that many people had about the potential, the development of black business in cities. One of the sore spots was that small black merchants couldn't compete with local chain stores. Local chain stores could always under sell you. They could buy quantities at mass and had no business putting you out of business. Now what the CMA movement wanted to do, was to organize black grocers, black retailers into cooperative buying pools, reorganize black businesses to the point where they are be able to compete with local white merchants.
Gary Hunter: Now in 1928, when it's organized, it is publicized or propagandized as a means of black business being able to move some of the white businesses out of the black community. And most black communities, the 1920s and 1930s, like in most black communities today, white businesses did the overwhelming majority of business in the black community.
Gary Hunter: Now what basically happens when unemployment begins, the CMA purports itself as a means of employing black workers. Which is another sore spot in the black economic situation in the Northern cities, is that in most Northern cities, despite the fact that black people might've did 90% of the business in a store in 125th street in Harlem, nobody black worked in most of the stores in Harlem. The same thing can be said in most major Northern cities during this period of time. Stores did not hire black people to work in them despite the fact that they catered to a overwhelming majority black clientele, they just did not do it. And what the CMA movement proposed to do was to organize black people's purchasing power, which was one of the major slogans of the 1920s, the double duty dollop, shifted into black business.
Gary Hunter: So the black business could grow to the point where it could start employing a substantial amount of black workers as a means of trying to combat The Depression. Now, unfortunately the CMA movement started at the wrong time in history. Black unemployment jumped by leaps and bounds after 1930, the amount of black people that have enough money to go into CMA stores is rapidly declining. Stores had to pay a membership dues of approximately $10 a year, which was a lot of money by 1930 for many black businessmen. Considering that the average business at a black store did in the 1930s in the Northern cities was roughly around $600 a year worth of business. And now that usually had to pay his self and perpetuated family. So the black enterprise in terms of the CMA movement was really doomed before it started.
Gary Hunter: But the important thing to remember about the CMA movement in terms of what's happening in the 30s, is that it really accentuated or highlighted this concept of black purchasing power. That black people in the Northern cities now that they have made wages, they are now making wages instead of sharecropping credit agreements. Now have money to spend. And if we can channel it in the right direction, we can develop a viable black economy. Now the CMA movement didn't work. By 1934, it's out of business for all practical purposes. It goes bankrupt. It never really got off of its feet. But what the basic problem is in the 1930s, with the failure of the CMA movement, with the failure of the NAACP to meet the crisis, with the failure of the Urban League to meet the crisis, with the failure of the UNIA to meet the unemployment crisis. Black people started demanding some type of leadership, and it was just not there in the early part of the 1930s in terms of traditional black institution.
Gary Hunter: Now probably the only black institution in the 1920s that really remains active during the 1930s and throughout the 30s was the street corner university, I was talking about previously. It remains active. Matter of fact, it becomes more active as 1930s move on. During the early 1930s, you really got the appearance of communists on the streets of most American cities. During the 1920s, black nationalists, people associated with the UNIA, really dominate the streets speaking in most Northern communities. But by the 1930s, the communist with a ready made issue about the falling apart of the American economic system are really being active on the streets. Communists led anti-eviction parades, mass demonstrations on city halls. They had all types of demonstrations.
Gary Hunter: Probably one of the most famous type of demonstrations that the communist party organized on the early 1930s, were these rent eviction squads. Now basically what the rent eviction squad was, was number one, you walk through any black community in early 1930. You probably have to jump over people's belongings out in the street because so many people are getting evicted from their home. Now, usually what the communists anti-eviction squads did was when a person was thrown out of his house, they go to the person's house put his furniture back in his house and sit out and stage a sit in and refuse to let the police come in and take the people's furniture out of the house again. Now this becomes very common, particularly in Chicago. And one particular anti-eviction demonstration led to a clash with the police. Which left four people dead. And the whole city living in the fear that they might be another 1919 level race riot in Chicago.
Gary Hunter: But you had the communists, as well as black national street speakers leading all types of demonstrations. And often with significant resolve. In Chicago after the rent eviction riot in 1931, the court system decided to ease eviction policies in Chicago. You had the same type of things going on in places like Milwaukee, Columbus, Cleveland, Ohio, and Philadelphia. With communists operating these rent eviction squads. You have mass demonstrations, black people participated with the [inaudible] arm. It seems as if people in the streets, the street corner university was getting much, much more militant in trying to deal with, in terms of an employment situation. You have many spontaneous acts occurring on the streets. For example, in Chicago, again, which seems to be a hotbed of street radicalism in the early 1930s. The city and I don't know why they did this, about a month after the rent eviction riot, they had to clean the streets. The city had to clean the streets in South Side Chicago. So what do they do?
Gary Hunter: They send an all white street repair crew in South Side, Chicago. The brothers seeing this all white street crew. They chased them out of Chicago. And within a matter of three or four hours, 5,000 black people staging sit-ins in the Chicago streets, demanding jobs. And the city decided to let black people clean the black streets in the South Side of Chicago. And this is just not happening in Chicago, but many other places. And many of these street incidents led to death. Columbus, Cleveland, Detroit, several people were killed in this street type of radicalism, which was emerging in the early part of the 1930s. After response to the unemployment situation.
Gary Hunter: But these type of gains were short term gains. But still they're very important in terms of at least somebody was getting some jobs. Some people were not getting evicted from the houses. And the communist party was really growing in influence in terms of the black community. Coupled with their [inaudible] demonstrations in the Scottsboro case, which they were participating in. You know, the communist party getting pretty popular in the black community to say the least, much to the dismay of the traditional leadership. Now what basically happens, Chicago, at least in my sense, emerges as a major city. Everybody likes to talk about Harlem. And it's significance in terms of development of black thought, development of black radicalism, blah, blah, blah. Harlem is the capital of the black world. But by the 1930s, the early 1930s, Harlem, most people were saying was not quite as militant as Chicago because of the type of things that were going down in the Chicago streets. Now Chic-