The Veiled Southern Diaspora
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a social hydra limited “Equality” and “Opportunity” for African Americans: remove one constraint and another two grew in its place.  In an attempt to escape the “heads,” many African Americans migrated to potential success in Northern states and cities; the Harlem borough of New York City key among them.  Open hostility met the veiled travelers as they began to colonize Harlem and other Northern cities; staking claim to what they earned whilst breaking a geographic constraint that once held them.  Despite initial promise, African Americans found that the virus of Southern prejudice infected the North as well and the veil through which they dreamed projected no more than a mirage.  Though the veil maintained an ever-present filter through which they saw, and how they were seen, the images it filtered and subsequently projected changed throughout this period.  From hope, to regret, to ardor, the veil separating the perceptions surrounding African Americans (both by and of) arguably resulted in the Harlem Renaissance; as the thoughts and passions behind these perceptions allowed for the rebirth.






1903: Acknowledgement of the Required Exodus

From W.E.B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folks

"Out of the hard economic conditions of this portion of the Black Belt, only six per cent of the population have succeeded in emerging into peasant proprietorship; and these are not all firmly fixed, but grow and shrink in number with the wavering of the cotton-market. Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom. For these there is one other avenue of escape toward which they have turned in increasing numbers, namely, migration to town…"


1909: Response to Initial Prejudice -- Founding of the N.A.A.C.P.

From the first issue of The Crisis

"The invasion of Negro property owners is put down as a reason for the failure of Baltimore to grow faster in population...The colored folk of that city long ago became dissatisfied with a particularly bad system of alley homes. They saved their money and purchased nearly the whole length of Druid Hill avenue—one of the best colored streets in the world. Then they began to expand into parallel streets, one of which was McCulloh. They had been told that "money talks," and that the surest road to respect in America was financial success. The result was inevitable. The white people of McCulloh street rose in indignation and are importuning the City Council to pass an ordinance prohibiting colored people from "invading" white residential districts, and vice versa...Why do colored people depress property values? Because of an exaggerated and persistently encouraged racial prejudice. In the encouragement of such prejudice, Baltimore and Maryland have particularly
sinned. Would not an attempt to allay prejudice be wiser than laws against thrift?"

1917: Initial Success -- Veil Gains Transparency

Claude McKay's "Invocation"


Ancestral spirit, hidden from my sight
By modern Time's unnumbered works and ways
On which in awe and wonderment I gaze,
Where hid'st thou in the deepness of the night?
What evil powers thy healing presence blight?
Thou from who out the dark and dust didst raise
The Ethiop standard in the curtained days,
Before the white God said: Let there be light!
Bring ancient music to my modern heart,
Let fall the light upon my sable face
That once gleamed on the Ethiopian's art;
Lift me to thee out of this alien place
So I may be, thine exiled counterpart,
The worthy singer of my world and race.



1921: The Reach -- Expansion of Kinship

From Benjamin Brawley's Social History of the American Negro
Finally let it not be forgotten that upon the American Negro rests the obligation to do whatever he can to help to develop the country. If he will but firmly clasp hands with his brother across the sea, a new day will dawn for American Negro and Liberian alike.



1922: The Veil Not-Yet Gone: Initial Regret

Claude McKay's "To One Coming North"

At first you’ll joy to see the playful snow,
Like white moths trembling on the tropic air,
Or waters of the hills that softly flow
Gracefully falling down a shining stair.
And when the fields and streets are covered white
And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw,
Or underneath a spell of heat and light
The cheerless frozen spots begin to thaw,
Like me you’ll long for home, where birds’ glad song
Means flowering lanes and leas and spaces dry,
And tender thoughts and feelings fine and strong,
Beneath a vivid silver-flecked blue sky.
But oh! more than the changeless southern isles,
When Spring has shed upon the earth her charm,
You’ll love the Northland wreathed in golden smiles
By the miraculous sun turned glad and warm.



1928: Reality: Veil Not Removed, Just Changed

Langston Hughes's "Sunset-Coney Island"


The sun,
Like the red yolk of a rotten egg,
Falls behind the roller-coaster
And the horizon sticks
With a putrid odor of colors.
Down on the beach
A little Jewish tailor from the Bronx,
With a bad stomach,
Throws up the hot-dog sandwiches
He ate in the afternoon
While life to him
Is like a sick tomato
In a garbage can.



1931: The Second Front: New "Weapons" Used

From George S. Schuyler's Black No More


It thrilled him to feel that he was now indistinguishable from nine-tenths of the people of the United States; one of the great majority. Ah, it was good not to be a Negro any longer!"



1939: Power Found: Respect Demanded

From Zora Neale Hurston's Moses, Man of the Mountain

But there are other concepts of Moses abroad in the world.  Asia and all the Near East are sown with legends of this character...all across the continent there are the legends of the greatness of Moses, but not because of his beard nor because he brought the laws down from Sinai.  No, he is revered because he had the power to go up to the mountain and to bring them down. Many men climb mountains.  Anyone could bring down laws that had been handed to them.  But who can talk with God face to face?  Who had the power to command God to go to a peak of a mountain and there demand of Him laws which to govern a nation?