http://inknewspaper.com/black-news/black-migration-to-fort-wayne Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:03:06 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 http://inknewspaper.com/black-news/black-migration-to-fort-wayne/comment-page-1#comment-46 David Stokes Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:49:10 +0000 http://inknewspaper.com/?p=389#comment-46 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. 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.

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