Happy Thursday!
The music during the exodus of millions of African Americans to the northern states reflected the spirit and hardship of the times.This music traveled from the Southern Diaspora to the North:
Black migrants told their stories in many forms from letters to poems to paintings. Music offered one of the most original forms in which the migration narrative was told.“Times Is Gettin Harder” (a 1940 recording of an older blues tune by Lucious Curtis) described various incidents from racial injustice to economic hardship that prompted one man’s journey away from the land of “cotton and corn.”
Times is gettin’ harder, Money ’s gettin’ scarce.
Soon as I gather my cotton and corn,
I’m bound to leave this place.
White folks sittin’ in the parlor, Eatin’ that cake and cream,
Nigger’s way down to the kitchen, Squabblin’ over turnip greens.
Times is gettin’ harder, Money’s gettin’ scarce.
Soon as I gather my cotton and corn,
I’m bound to leave this place.
Me and my brother was out. Thought we’d have some fun.
He stole three chickens. We began to run.
Times is gettin’ harder, Money’s gettin’ scarce.
Soon as I gather my cotton and corn
I’m bound to leave this place.
Between 1890 and 1910, most African Americans in the South had lost the right to vote through restrictive requirements such as property qualifications, poll taxes, literacy tests, and the “grandfather clause” that limited the vote to those whose grandfathers were registered voters, thus disqualifying blacks who had gotten the franchise only with the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. The tightening of Jim Crow laws led many to leave the South, as illustrated in Alabamian Charles “Cow Cow” Davenport’s Jim Crow Blues:
I’m tired of being Jim Crowed, gonna leave this Jim Crow town,
Doggone my black soul, I’m sweet Chicago bound,
Yes, Sir, I’m leavin’ here, from this ole Jim Crow town.
I’m going up North, where they think money grows on trees,
I don’t give a doggone, if ma black soul should freeze
I’m goin’ where I don’t need no B.V.D.s.
Many men left wives and children with the intent to send for them later once they were able to find work “up north”. Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “Freight Train Blues” is a reflection of his hard and painful decision all in attempt to make a better life for their families:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPZtMFWZT7Q]