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When the war cut off the traditional flow of immigrant labor to the United States, northern factory recruiters headed south with enticing offers of higher wages and better jobs. Moving north held particular appeal for the 500,000 Black southerners who migrated with hopes of escaping the stifling embrace of southern Jim Crow laws. The Chicago Defender played a key role in the Great Migration by urging Black southerners to move north and then offering them advice once they arrived. The arrival of southern migrants revealed class and regional tensions within the African American community as middle-class, urban, educated northerners often bristled at the “country” habits of the new arrivals. This article was one of many “do and don’t” lists that the Black newspaper published emphasizing respectability, thrift, cleanliness, and sobriety.
Despite the absence of legalized segregation, the North still maintained unspoken rules of racial etiquette that could be hard for newcomers to discern. By helping migrants prosper, Black middle-class advice-givers were striving to protect the limited economic and political foothold that African Americans had achieved. They also hoped to avoid transgressions that might give whites an excuse to instigate racial violence. There was reason for concern. On July 27, 1919, two months after this article was published, a Black teenager mistakenly swam over an imaginary line that segregated swimming areas of Lake Michigan and was stoned to death by whites standing on the beach. In the ensuing race riot, Black residents took up arms in a show of determined self-defense.
—————SOME DON’TS—————
. . . A fierce agitation is being waged by certain classes of citizens against immigration of southern people to northern cities. It is charged that they are undesirable and are supplanting white laborers in various branches of work. In seeking a remedy to prevent laborers from the Southland securing employment and making an honest living for themselves and their families, every vile thing possible has been said and unlawful acts committed against the men and women who have come to this and other cities of the North, during the past several months, while the southern white is coming in droves on the same trains and we hear no kicks from any one.
It is evident that some of the people coming to this city have seriously erred in their conduct in public places, much to the humiliation of all respectable classes of our citizens, and by so doing, on account of their ignorance of laws and customs necessary for the maintenance of health, sobriety and morality among the people in general, have given our enemies ground for complaint. We consider it absolutely necessary that a united effort should be made on the part of all law-abiding citizens to endeavor to warn and teach those who by their acts bring reproach upon the Colored people1 of this city to strictly observe the laws, city ordinances and customs and so conduct themselves as to reflect credit upon themselves: by so doing it will disarm those who are endeavoring to discredit our Race.
We Call Attention to Some Things Which
Should Be Observed by Our People
| Don’t use vile language in public places. | Don’t leave your job when you have a few dollars in your pocket. |
| Don’t act discourteously to other people in public places. | Don’t work for less wages than being paid people doing same kind of work. |
| Don’t allow yourself to be drawn into street brawls. | Don’t be made a tool or strike breaker for any corporation or firm. |
| Don’t use liberty as a license to do as you please. | Don’t allow buffet flats or rooms rented with privileges to be conducted in your neighborhood. |
| Don’t take the part of law breakers, be they men, women, or children. | Don’t allow children under 15 years of age to run the streets after 9 o’clock p.m. |
| Don’t make yourself a public nuisance. | Don’t get intoxicated and go out on the street insulting women and children and make a beast of yourself—some one may act likewise with your wife and children. |
| Don’t encourage gamblers, disreputable women or men to ply their business any time or place. | Don’t undermine other people by taking from them their work. |
| Don’t congregate in crowds on the streets to the disadvantage of others passing along. | Don’t appear on the street with old dust caps, dirty aprons and ragged clothes. |
| Don’t spend your time hanging around saloon doors or poolrooms. | Don’t throw garbage in the back yard or alley or keep dirty front lawns. |
| Don’t live in insanitary houses, or sleep in rooms without proper ventilation. | Don’t attempt to make an express wagon of street cars. |
| Don’t violate city ordinances relative to health conditions. | Don’t forget street car conductors are bound by rules of the car company which the law compels them to obey. |
| Don’t allow children to beg on the streets. | Don’t oppose police officers in the discharge of their duty; you should be the one to assist in keeping the peace. |
| Don’t allow boys to steal from or assault peddlers going their rounds during the day. | Don’t be a beer can rusher or permit children to do such a service. |
| Don’t abuse or violate the confidence of those who give you employment. |
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