Page:Chicago Race Riots (Sandburg, 1919).djvu/22

12 taking fifty, all in one coach. I hear that later he made a third trip and has now moved the whole of his original congregation of 300 members up to Boston. He told me that the first group he took to Boston were all naturally inclined to go. The second group made up their minds more slowly. He said that probably they would not have gone at all if it had not been for fears of lynching. A series of lynchings in Texas at that time gave him examples from which to argue that the north was safer for colored people.

"With many who have come north, the attraction of wages and employment is secondary to the feeling that they are going where there are no lynchings. Others say that while they know they would never be lynched in the south and they are not afraid on that score, they do want to go where they are sure there is more equality and opportunity than in the south. The schools in the north are an attraction to others.

"I make these observations from having personally talked with my people in Madison county, Alabama, where there were 10,000 negroes, of whom 5,000 came north in two years."