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PLAIN TEXT


As the lights play on the rich red velvet of the curtains that
screen the stage on which our passion play is to be enacted,
there is a quiet hum of anticipation from the stalls. Behind the
scenes, however, the activity is frenetic as some major events in
world history clear the way for the opening chorus line. Like
every play this one has been long in preparation, it has taken
years for the backdrop of events to fall into place. But now they
are there. So, before the cast of thousands takes to the boards,
let us spare a moment to set the scene.

AIN’T GOT NO HOME
. ike a line of dirty washing, stained and discoloured,
mottled and holey, grotesque in both shape and colour,
the history of the world is a gruesome sight to behold.
But at least it is the same the whole world over. None are
sparkling clean; all bear the stain of history’s guilt. In
every society, every culture, every nation, there have been
times when the gutters have run with blood and carrion
crows have hung above fields waiting to peck at the bodies
below. The sound of history is an ululating wail lamenting
man’s inhumanity to man that comes keening down on us
borne on the winds of time. And it is heard by all.
 . . strung out along the eastern
seaboard. If it hadn’t been for the
slaves and their distinctly ethnic
culture, maybe none of our tale
would have happened. Who
knows?
...And the slaves, of course, defin-
ed poverty in the coalescing but
still disunited states of America.
They had nothing. No home, no
money, no belongings, no educ-
. ...Although there is some justif-
ication in history, there is no
absolution.There are always rea-
sons. For everything under the
sun there is a reason. But reasons
do not provide justification,
merely explanation. It is, however,
impossible to turn back the hands
of time, to remake our present by
reshaping the past. History, well,
you know how it is? You’re stuck
with it.
...If, dear reader, you are an
American, take what heart you can
from these words. They are there
so that you know that you are not
being picked on without just cause.
It just happens that it is your hist-
ory that is about to come in for
close inspection. And if the truth
hurts, forgive us. Or, better yet,
forgive yourselves.
 . .

the fires brewing molasses-thick
coffee in blackened enamel pots
when the first of the po’ whites

 . . ation. Why, they did not even have
their own selves. They were as
poor as they could be.
...And that is how it stayed right
up to the Civil War. And beyond.
The abolition of slavery brought
freedom but it was only in name.
They were still the poorest of the poor. And there is little freedom
in poverty. Under such circum-
stances, the only thing to do is
make the best of it, find one’s
pleasures where one can and keep
striving for something better.
...For many negroes freed for the
first time from the shackles of
slavery, the prospect of self-
imposed bondage that represent-
ed their freedom was more than
they could take. For them, there
was little choice. Better the open
. ...This is a history of recent
events and we do not need to look
far into our past to find its genesis.
We have only to cast our minds
back seventy years, not even a
single human life time, to the
1930s, to discern the first flutter-
ings of its existence. Although
these give little indication of the
immense changes that will come to
pass -- no less than the assumption
and transformation of one culture
by another -- they do define the
nature of the beast. In a blaze of
colour, WASPs will become insects
of a different ilk. For, while this is a
history of a white cultural phenom-
enon, the influence of other races,
colours and cultures has had more
than a little impact.
..So let us drift back into the mono-
chrome past. It is the 1930s. This
is the decade of the Hobo. Amer-
ica’s dream has already been shatt-
ered and the country is in a state of
economic decline or even dissolut-
ion. Poverty is the order of the
day. But already the legions are on
the march towards a better future.
They are an army of ragged wand-
erers, a new and different army,
linked by one thing and one thing
alone -- their poverty. Victims, one
and all, they are the new poor.
They are the dispossessed; they are

destitute and desperate. The White
Anglo Saxon Poverty-Stricken.
And they are on the road creating
the myths and legends that will
provide a wellspring of inspiration
in the years to come.
...But that was a beginning and not the start. It goes back further
than that. This is, as I said, a mono-
chromatic tale and it is towards
America’s black sub-culture that
we must look for the roots of the
story.
...In the sixty or so years since the
Civil War, little progress had been
made towards the emancipation of
the negro in American society.
Although the Union of Northern
States had decisively beaten the
Confederation of Southern ones,
ole Dixie was only down but by no
means out. In the South things
went on pretty much the same as
before. Integration was not even
on the agenda and as for equality
. . . . Elsewhere things were little
better. In the north, negro society
also remained separate from white
society. There were enough neg-
roes making that long journey
northwards but they were, to a
man, erstwhile slaves without
education or the social mores to
function in white society. With few
skills, little money and no jobs,
they poured into the cities looking
for a roof, a bed and something to
eat. United by their poverty, they
gathered in the areas where the
housing was cheapest, in the areas where the buildings were crumb-
ling and the streets were desolate.

 .
PLAIN TEXT
THE GRAVE TRADE

ALTHOUGH there are many blots on the world’s copybook -- the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Spanish Inquisition, the Witch Trials and, more recently, the spate of African tribal persecutions -- there are few that are as immediately emotive as slavery. In its inhumanity and brutality, in the suffering it brought to so many who were undeserving of such harsh treatment, in its disregard for human dignity, slavery is one of the most severe atrocities. Or so it seems to us from our ivory tower of civilised respectability.
....As we look at the history of the New World we can see the slavery that helped to make America prosperous as a major factor that also helped to shape and reshape nations and continents. But that has always been the case. Although it is the US slave trade that is the focus for our condemnation, it is well to remember that slavery has been around for a lot longer than America. The pyramids in Egypt and South America weren’t built by a crowd of Irish navvies on hire from MacAlpine nor were they Romans dying in the gladiatorial arena. In many eastern and African societies a tradition of slave ownership had existed for hundreds of years and only ceased to flourish in the censorous gaze of the Western invaders seeking an excuse to bring civilisation to the fuzzy wuzzies.
....Not that the western oppressors had much of a claim to civilisation themselves. Although slavery had been abolished in most of the First World countries by the second decade of the 18th century, less overt forms of bondage continued to exist. The rules of serfdom and peonage were still in existence in England and other western countries at the start of the 20th century. And -- surprise, surprise -- it was in England that the abolition of the slave trade had the biggest impact. Although many countries had been involved in the trade in people, few had been as involved as the British. And, indeed, only the British had the naval resources and the arrogance to enforce the new anti-slavery laws on the high seas for the whole of Europe. In theory, anyway.
....With the British out of the way, the trade passed to the Portuguese and the Spanish. They had not abolished the slave trade and they were both maritime nations capable of filling the gap left by the English. The British, of course, as always unable to keep their nose out of their own protectionism, assumed the responsibility for policing the oceans wide with some verve. Noble? Or . . . . With the slave trade no longer a runner, British merchants were forging new trade links with the African nations. But, whilst the slave trade existed with other nations, African potentates, who made a lot of money out of selling their citizens to the slave traders, were reluctant to develop other forms of trade. And the British didn’t like that.
....It was, however, a fairly fruitless task trying to patrol an ocean with only 20 ships. Other than at either end of of the sea journey, it was unlikely that slave ships would encounter any resistance. Although, between 1825 and 1865 nearly 1300 slave ships were stopped and over 130, 000 erstwhile slaves were liberated, during the same period over 1.8 million slaves are thought to have arrived in North America.
....Not all the slaves transported across the seas by the Portuguese and Spanish were destined for the Americas. They had their own dominions in the Caribbean to service before they got to the American mainland. From the sugar plantations of Barbados to the banana fields of Jamaica, blacks took over the islands, with the reluctant immigrants making up more than 90% of the population on several.
....If the zeal with which the British policed the seas seemed somewhat contradictory, not to say hypocritical, it is only because it was. For it had been (oh, dear!) the British who had opened up the slave trade with North America in the first place. The first slaves had arrived in Virginia in the early 1600s. Throughout the 17th and the early 18th centuries, slaves continued to be funnelled into the States in a steady stream. By 1790, blacks constituted around one third of the population of the southern states. Although some freed blacks gravitated towards the northern states, where slavery had increasingly been the subject of condemnation, the negro population of North America was concentrated in the south in the slave communities that worked the land on behalf of the Massa.

....In the 1830’s the south was moved to stand up for its ‘peculiar institution.’ In a spirited defense of the institution of slavery, it came up with not only economic justifications but also put forward a biblical case and one of racial inferiority. The south argued its case with little success for thirty years until, finally, eleven states took the massive step of seceding from the Union and forming the Confederate States of America. The result was the Civil War.
....Although the ensuing war ended forever the trade in slaves, it did little to bring about the emancipation, integration and equality that would have made it worthwhile. Blacks remained and still remain a sub-culture within the USA. It was, however, one that would have a powerful influence.
PLAIN TEXT • TOP OF PAGE
. In such areas, too rundown even
for the poorest whites, the black
ghettos that would for decades
epitomise the divisions between
the two highly polarised social
groups started to appear.
...The die was cast. As ever, the
blacks were on one side of the
tracks and the whites were on the
other. And so it would remain for
longer than anyone cared to con-
template. In the end, as in the
beginning, the universal bridging
 . . started arriving.
...For both the negroes and the
whites the meeting was a new
experience. This was the first time
the whites had come into contact
with the rich afro-based culture of
the blacks. It was a culture radic-
ally different from anything they
had previously encountered. If
anything it was a more honest
culture than the whites had exper-
ienced. To the anally-retentive
whites, negro society seemed to be
abandoned and streetwise. From
 . . road, the sky and the hills and
an unknown future, than a life
lived in the same old cage. They
were there living off the land or
following the work, riding the
rails and staying alive -- some-
times only barely -- long before
the poor whites appeared on the
scene. They were experienced in
living the hard life of the open
road and had many tricks to teach.
...It would, indeed, be surprising
if the hobos’ newly found mentors
of the open road did not share the
its syncopated rhythms
and wildly suggestive
dances to its mojo
magic and honey
tongued lover men, it
proclaimed its sen-
suality and its alluring
wickedness in so many
exotic ways.
...Not least of these,
was its use of mari-
juana. In many of the
African cultures from
which the slaves had
been so heartlessly
plucked the smoking
of cannabis -- known
as dagga -- was an
accepted custom. It
would hardly be surp-
rising be surprising if
some of the slaves
brought the practice
with them. Cannabis
 . . pleasures of marijuana with their
pupils. In fact, it must be the case.
For, somehow or other, the
smoking of cannabis made the
transition from being an essent-
ially ethnic pastime to one that
encompassed the whole of society.
That is some transition. Big time,
baby, big time. Whilst, in the
urban centres, there must have
been some blacks introducing
whites to new levels of decadence,
the social divisions were still so
strong that this cannot have been
a major factor.
..For those sitting around a multi-
racial campfire, on the other
hand, drinking coffee from the
same pot, swapping tales of their
travels and the open road, sharing
the same poverty and harbouring
the same dreams, what could be
more natural than to assuage their
dissatisfactions with a joint. It is
. factor, if there was one, was the
music. Within a few decades the
influence of black music on pop-
ular American culture would be so
extreme that it would all but take
over.
...But it would take decades. Al-
ready, though, the music of the
negro was having an impact. The
white intelligentsia -- in the North
certainly -- had already fallen for
 . . is a prolific and easy to grow weed.
Maybe they brought seeds with
them. Maybe they found plants
growing in the green land to which
they had been transported. Maybe,
even, the plantation on which they
laboured sported a hemp plot;
hemp was, after all, one of Amer-
ica’s biggest cash crops right up to
its maniacal repression in the 50s.
Who knows? What we do know
 . . surely one hell of an effective way
to soften the harsh edges of real-
ity. It can, as we all know, help
you find beauty in the mundane,
wisdom in the trees and meaning
in the sky. Anything that can
transform driving rain into a
shower of gemstones has got to be
a good thing. Hasn’t it?
...So, this is the backdrop against
which our production will be
staged.
PLAIN TEXT
GREY TURNS TO BLUE
The Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down

t was perhaps a mistake to call a disparate and wayward collection of
geographical entities a ‘Union.’ But they did it anyway. When the United
States of America came into being in 1776 it was little more than a gleam
in the eye of those who created the Bill of Rights that enshrined the
constitution of the emerging nation. To weld the states of which America
consisted into one nation was going to be a hard task. With all the major
functions of governmental administration handled at state level, every state
was a separate legal and political entity with an almost sovereign attitude to
its own status.
....There were many divisions -- economic, social and political -- between the
constituent elements that made up the United States and bringing these
elements together was one of the tasks central government set itself from the
start. If many of the states could spare only a cursory nod in the direction of the
national seat of power, Washington -- in the form of the President, Congress
and the House of Representatives -- couldn’t have cared less. They were still
the national government, the hub around which the states revolved, and their
will would be done. And done throughout the whole country.
....Conflict was bound to result. One of the
sharpest divisions within the (Dis)united
States of America was that of slavery. While
slavery made a tremendous contribution to
the prosperity, social conditions and political attitudes of the South, in the North it was
increasingly frowned upon. As, over the first
half of the 19th century, the rift between the
North and the South widened, it became
clear that trouble lay ahead. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected
President. With an anti-slavery republican president heading the country, by
1861 eleven southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North
Carolina) had seceded -- resigned -- from the Union.
....Organised as the Confederate States of America, under the presidency of
Andrew Jackson, the south made its pitch for independence. Standing against
the federal government and the
rest of the country, the Confeder-
ates were a raggle taggle army
with little more than a great deal
of enthusiasm and patriotic zeal to
keep them up and running. But
even against the might of the US
army, their enthusiastic patriotism
would carry them far. Not, however,
far enough.
...Despite the North’s superiority in
both numbers and supplies, it took
them four long and bloody years to
subdue the south. Although early
victories for the North suggested
that the war would soon be over,
under the inspired command of
General Robert E. Lee, the south
succeeded in turning the tide.
Although the war swung both
ways, the north did not recover the
initiative until March 1864 when
Lincoln appointed General
Ulysses S. Grant supreme commander of the US forces. Suddenly Grant, who
had been responsible for the Union’s successes early in the war, turned the
tide decisively in his favour. After a ten month siege, Grant defeated Lee’s
army at Petersburg, Virginia, while the other Union force, under the command
of General William T(anks for the memory) Sherman, faced the only other
Confederate force of consequence in Georgia. After capturing Atlanta in early
September, Sherman set out on a 300-mile hike across Georgia that left a
swathe of devastation in his wake. In December he reached Savannah and
took that in a short sharp battle. Meanwhile Grant had gained control of the
Mississippi river. With control of the great river, the Union had a throttle hold
on the Confederacy’s main supply route. It became a war of attrition as Grant
starved out the battle weary, wounded and demoralised remnants of Lee’s
once powerful army. In March 1865, with Lee’s army decimated by illness,
desertion and starvation, Grant began his final advance. In early April he
captured the Confederacy’s capital, Richmond, Virginia, and the war was over.
....The cost to both sides had been
immense. Although there were
over 350,000 deaths among the
Union forces, it was the south who
fared worse with a casualty rate of
over 50%. The hardships and
privation for the south had not
been reserved for the army. The
southern states had been
devastated by the war. Farms that
had been abandoned to the
women while the men went to fight
had been neglected or put to the
torch by the Northern forces.
Starvation in both the towns and
the rural areas had been a major
problem. When Grant choked the
army’s supply lines to death, he
also cut off supplies to civilians.
But, even before that, the ill-equipped, ill-funded and hardly organised at all
Confederate army, had been a constant drain on the the south’s resources --
both food and all the other things required to keep an army on the move and
fighting. At the end of the war, as the last tattered and starving remnants of
Lee’s once powerful rebel army came limping home, the south realised the
extent of its sacrifice. It had given its workforce, its bloodline, its sons, to the
war and had lost everything. Everything except its pride and arrogance. As the
song says: ‘Glory, glory, hallelujah, and the south goes marching on.” Huh?
PLAIN TEXT • TOP OF PAGE
. . ...Cue the harmonica . . . .
...Follow that wail of the lonely
bluebird through the driving rain,
the mud slicks and wallowing
puddles, past tents and tarpaul-
ins and shadowy, huddled figures
gazing out from and into the dark-
ness. Past the bundles of
ratty rags and torn and tattered
clothing that denote the sleeping,
the dreaming and the dead.
Through the thick miasmatic air,
damp and clinging with the sticky
odours of grits and pork fat and
cheap burnt coffee. The surround-
ing hissing blanket of rain is
penetrated by the hacking cough
of TB, the whimpering cry of a
baby, the clang, clang, clang of a
distant freight train ploughing
through the deep dark night to-
wards some unknown destination.
And behind it all is that damned
harmonica. But, in the distance, a
fire burns, its bright welcoming
warmth is hardly restrained by
the damp wood that causes it to
splutter, crackle and spit. There is
the dull clang of enamel mugs on
the lip of a coffeepot. The quiet
hum of conversation, an exclam-
ation, laughter and then more
conversation. As we draw close
the flames light the faces of those
sitting under the dripping tarp-
aulin. There are gaunt faces,
deeply etched and weather stain-
ed, grey skinned and thin lipped,
hardened by hunger and a hard
life. And as we approach closer,
other faces appear out of the
shadows. It is the teeth and the
whites of the eyes that we notice
first, only then do the flattened
noses, the wide foreheads and the
cheeks like shiny roasted coffee
beans come into view. A match
flares and someone lights a big old
reefer. There is a murmur of con-
versation, a quiet chorus of assent and some smiles are exchanged.
...“Hey, stranger,” says an old
timer with a battered sweat-
stained stetson pulled down hard
onto the wiry hair that sprouts
from his head and extends over
most of his face, “don’t stand
there in the rain. Shake the mud
off your heels and com’en join us.”
...In the bell shaped cone of
warmth with a mug of hot coffee
defrosting our fingers and a reefer
making its way towards us, the
world looks and feels a brighter
place. As the conversation rises
and falls, there is that sad, lone-
some harmonica sound. It is
more distinct, defined and poig-
nant, more profound than the
thoughts of an eagle.
...And on the fringes of the fire
light, way in the back of the tar-
paulin, there is the lone harmonica
player. Sitting next to him is a
white boy with a cheap guitar on
his lap. As the black harp player
leans back into a wailing seventh,
eyes closed and brow furrowed
with the intensity of the sound,
the guitarist plucks a chord. And
suddenly they are making music.
...The conversation around the
fire hums along.
...The old timer by whose side we
sit, turns and says: “You look like
you’ve been doin’ some hard
travellin’, stranger.” Silence falls
and all eyes turn towards us.
Suddenly it is our turn to tell our
story and share our knowledge.
Hard travellin’, indeed.
PLAIN TEXT
TOP OF PAGE
. .
. the syncopated rhythms and
cunning back beat of jazz. Soon
they would be followed by the
socialites and then the masses as
Hollywood picked up the beat and
transformed it into a cultural
event. But, although the music of
the times defines the phenomenon
and provides it with a soundtrack
to die for, it is only one aspect of a
multi-faceted social event that has
another, more significant, precur-
sor -- cannabis.
...How that made the cultural
crossover is another story. For,
although black culture was starting
to influence the whites, the two
societies remained essentially
separate. There must have been
isolated incidents when blacks and
whites mixed socially, particularly
 . . is that when
you are far
from home,
alone and
unloved, work-
ing like a dog
for no money
and little food
and sleeping
on a wooden pallet covered only by a
cheap blanket, a joint offers
some sweet solace.
...And, indeed,
it was not as if
smoking dope
was a new
phenomenon
. those involved in the performing
arts, ever a haven of open mind-
edness and understanding. But
‘isolated’ is the word. There was,
however, another forum in
which blacks and whites met on
reasonably equal terms -- the hobo camps where the poverty of one and all was the leveller that none could resist. Here, too, music had a significant part to play but we’ll be coming to that.
...When slavery was abolished,
there were few options available to
the ex-slaves -- stay on the land
and work for ‘the Massa,’ head for
the cities to live in the rat infested
slums or to just head out into the
great blue yonder. With such
enticing alternatives, it is hardly
surprising that many chose the last
option. They were the first true
hobos -- the itinerant musicians,
the farm workers, the turpentine
camp travellers and the for-hire
handy-men -- who were waiting by
TOP OF COLUMN
 . . in the Americas. South of the
border, down Mexico way, there was already a flourishing industry based on the growing of smokable hemp. The Stateside negro population constituted a major new market for the Mexican grass growers and clearly they took advantage of it. Indeed the influence of the Mexican connection was significant enough that, for ever after, smokable hemp would be known by its Mexican name, marijuana.
...It is here, if anywhere, in the
roots of the slave trade, that we
find the seeds of the culture with
which this history deals. It is
impossible to pin it to dates. For
we are talking centuries not
decades or even years here. This
goes back to the very start of the
country and beyond, to a time
when the land was no more than a
fringe of provinces, each owned by
a different old world country,
TOP OF COLUMN

 .
THE BEAT
GOES ON
Turn to the next
page for more of
this thrilling saga.
In Part 2:
Dream the American dream
But wake up to reality
Lose all your money
Experience terrible wind
Meet the hobos
Sleep on the ground in puddles
Take a ride on the rails
Go to Jail and do not pass Go
Join the breadlines
Taste the Grapes of Wrath
Learn to fear fruit
Catch a chill
Then pneumonia
And die before you can tell the stories to your grandchildren
Bugger !

PLAIN TEXT
AIN’T GONNA BE A SLAVE NO MORE
Although, at the end of the Civil War, the southern states had been forced to comply with the abolition of slavery laws, down on the farm little changed. The south’s acquiescence was to say the least reluctant. While on one hand it had given the slaves their freedom on the other, in total defiance of the Fourteenth Amendment, the southerners systematically deprived the negroes of their civil rights. The ‘Jim Crow’ laws which would prevail until the enlightened reign of the Kennedys, introduced segregation at every level of society and effectively disenfranchised the entire Negro population.
.....Those who remained on the plantations found themselves working under conditions of virtual slavery. Now sharecroppers, they had their own plots to work provided they had paid their labour dues to the Massa first. Although sharecropping had seemed a fair and just system to the ex-slaves it quickly revealed its true nature. Bondage comes in many forms. Every sharecropper received a strip of land to work as his own each with a ‘dog-trot’ cabin, leaky, draughty and rotting. At the beginning of each year each sharecropper would also receive, on credit, all the ‘furnishings’ -- food, household equipment, seed, plough and mules -- to make it all work. The equipment was on hire but the goods were sold outright from the company store. In exchange for this beneficent largesse, the sharecropper contracted for his whole family to work part of each day -- the larger part -- in the Massa’s fields. They would even get a little money for the work they did. At the end of the year, when the crops from the sharecroppers own plot were sold, the debt to the company would be paid-off. That, anyway, was the theory. The reality, however, was far harsher. Contracted to sell their produce through the company store that had funded their enterprise, the crops rarely realised even a small proportion of their true value. After paying off the rent for their farm buildings and the food they had received, most sharecroppers would find themselves in debt to the landowner at the end of the year. As the years passed and the debt grew, the sharecroppers realised that they had been had. Indeed, they were as firmly enslaved as ever.
.....For many, however, there had seemed little option but to remain on the plantations where they had been brought up and where they understood the status quo.
.....Of course, not all remained on the land. In the last quarter of the 19th century there was an increasing movement away from the land. By 1910, slightly under one third of the Negro population had moved away from their home states. Of the one and three-quarter million negroes who had moved on, some had headed towards the West, nearly half a million had gone to the North and the rest had taken to the road in search of work and a new place to set up home.
.....In the post-Civil war devastation of the South, there were railroads to be rebuilt, roads to make and remake, levees and landing stages to build. As the great Mississippi again became a working lifeline into the heart of the South, there were roustabouts and stevedores required to service the massive flat-bottomed steamboats

TOP OF COLUMN
 . that hauled freight and passengers on the wide river. And if the work could not be found in the South there was a whole country out there.
.....For the more adventurous (not to say, resilient, strong and hard-working) there were ‘the jobs.’ If all else failed, a Negro would eventually find work doing one of ‘the jobs’ that were ‘protected’ for the blacks and the poorest whites. Such work -- whether in the turpentine camps, with the logging crews, on the railroads, in the mines and gravel pits or in the tobacco, fertiliser and cement factories or sawmills -- was almost invariably of an extremely hard physical nature, in dangerous conditions, involving substances and processes that were injurious to health and insanitary and uncomfortable living conditions. In torpid swamps where the humidity and the heat were so dense that one was instantly covered in perspiration, the turpentine workers would ‘gutter’ the eucalyptus trees extracting the corrosive resin for processing into turpentine or, working from boats, would fell the cypress trees fringing the swamps. Working from dawn until sundown, plagued by swarms of ravening mosquitos, living in camps often fenced in by barbed wire under the crudest conditions and suffering the most miserable privations, their lot was little better than that of a convict working out a sentence of hard labour.
.....For a Negro in the labour camps, the system was not dissimilar to that of the sharecropper. ‘Fixin’ s and furnishings’ -- accommodation and board -- were supplied by the company on credit and deducted from the workers pay at the end of the week. The big difference was that if a worker found himself in debt at the end of the week, he would simply leave. No-one would follow him for there were plenty of others just waiting to step into his shoes.
.....For those prepared to take the long trek to the North, things were a little better. There was work to be had in the great steel mills and manufacturing plants of the northern cities and increasingly the negroes from the South responded to the tales of better prospects and job opportunities. What had been a steady trickle became a sort of flood in 1914 when, with the prospect of war looming over Europe, the flow of immigrants from the old world dried up. For the northern industrialists who were expanding to meet the demands of the impending war and needed cheap labour in quantity, this was a major disaster. In need of workers, they looked to the South. Recruitment Officers were despatched to entice the blacks away from the land and into the cities. The plantation owners, however, were having none of it. Many of the recruitment officers were literally tarred and feathered or seen off at the point of a gun. Black workers who did leave the plantations were forced back by county sheriffs armed with hastily drawn-up laws designed to stem the tide of migrant workers. Despite the best efforts of the plantation owners and the law officers, countless negroes left the land on which they had grown up and lived their lives and, with no knowledge of what to expect, headed for the blast furnaces of Chicago and Detroit. By 1930 nearly half of the Negro population lived in towns.

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