Black Migration to Fort Wayne
Lecture to trace Black migration from Alabama to Fort Wayne -
On Sunday, February 7th, The History Center will host Dr. Quinton Dixie as he traces the historical development of African-American migration from rural Alabama to Fort Wayne, Indiana, through the 20th century. His lecture, “Migration of African-Americans from Alabama to Fort Wayne,” begins at 2:00 p.m. Admission is free of charge.
Dr. Dixie, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne (IPFW), is a graduate of Michigan State University and earned his Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary. He co-edited the book “Courage to Hope: From Black Suffering to Human Redemption,” a series of essays on the African-American religious experience and American spiritual life.
The George R. Mather Lecture Series is sponsored by The Dunsire Family Foundation. Future lectures in this series include: “The Philharmonic’s Story, From Maestros Schweiger to Constantine” by Anita Cast (March 7); “Economic History of Fort Wayne” by Maclyn Parker (April 4); “Fort Wayne’s Women Medical Pioneers” by Peggy Seigel (May 2); and “History of the Fort Wayne Fire Department” by Dennis Giere (June 6).
The History Center is located at 302 East Berry Street in downtown Fort Wayne. For more details, call (260) 426-2882 or visit www.fwhistorycenter.com
I am writing only what I know about. I was born in Fairfield, Alabama in 1938. I had family in Bessemer, Alabama. I remember my parents moving north before I stared school. At that time, my mother worked at General Electric. My father was working for the government supporting the war effort. In Alabama if you lived in the rural area you could find work as a sharecropper which paid very little. Many young blacks moved from being on a farm to Birmingham area where they could work on the railroads, mines, or steel mills. All three of these occupations shorted your life expectancy. Mine cave in and explosions were common, cooking themselves to death in steel mills, and being hit by moving trains were common. Females which choose to work could only find domestic work in white people homes with low pay. Jim Crow laws and Black Codes were another way some of those mills and mines used to trump up charges to get free labor to work in those mines. Fort Wayne, and numerous other cities in the north offered better working conditions, better pay, and after the men return from war and saw the wages their ladies were making had no desire to return to Alabama. I did not join my parents in Fort Wayne until 1949. I also did not get a chance to hear Dr.Dixie presentation.