Adapting Literature

CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 07.01.09

  1. Unit Guide
  1. Introduction
  2. Social/Political Climate
  3. Artistic Expressions
  4. Strategies/ Classroom Activities
  5. Notes
  6. Works Cited
  7. Poetry Sources
  8. Film Sources
  9. Appendix A: Assessment Rubric "Raisin in the Sun"
  10. Appendix B:Goals/Illinois Standards
  11. Appendix C: Reviews and Criticism of Raisin in the Sun

Using Film and Literature to examine The Great black Migration: An Analysis of "A Raisin in the Sun" through poetic voices

Sharon Monique Ponder

Published September 2007

Tools for this Unit:

Social/Political Climate

"And we have decided to move into our house because my father, my father, he earned it for us, brick by brick." Walter Lee

When Walter Lee presents the question to mama "why did you move here to Chicago forty years ago from the south?" mama explains, "I guess I came here to make a better life for me and my family." This will serve as the springboard for introducing the Great Black Migration with an integration of poetry. Since my students live in Chicago we will examine jobs, housing, and educational opportunities, organizational support systems and poetic protest. Poetry excerpts are used to keep students focused and enthusiastic about the thematic challenges faced during the migration. Let's look at these lines from African American Poet titled "The tired worker" by Claude McKay:

Weary my veins, my brain, my life, — have pity! No! Once again, the hard, the ugly city.

The viewpoint of the black migrant has become distorted. Once the move to the north was thought to be a beautiful promise of hope. Finally, an opportunity to achieve the American dream. After living there for awhile the northern city is viewed as hard and ugly because the black worker is only hired for the most unskilled and hazardous jobs.

We'll look at causes and effects of the Great Black Migration. I will guide students to understand that over one million African Americans moved out of the rural south of the United States to escape problems of racism, unemployment, and poor education and to seek a better way of life. Students will read the section on leaving the south in Seeds of Change in American History, and grapple with the fact that life in the south was very challenging for African American after the Civil War ended in 1865. The Thirteenth Amendment3 abolished slavery but freedom was only the first step on the long journey towards a better life.

Students may ask: "Slavery is over so why leave the South?" Most African Americans still living in the south worked as farmers deceived into thinking they would own their own land. Being poor provided very little options so they lived in small frayed cabins and their children had little chance for education.

Students need to understand the concept of reconstruction and how Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau4 to help freed African Americans. The Bureau provided clothing, food, passed laws giving African Americans the right to vote, hold office, and own land. From 1865 until 1877 African Americans sampled a bit of the American pie. The pie was snatched away very quickly when most southern states passed laws called "Black codes" which limited African Americans right to own land and to work and live where they desired.

By 1877 Reconstruction was over and African Americans had lost many of the rights they gained. Some states required voters to be able to read and understand various sections of the constitution. Some states required poor blacks to pay a poll tax5 in order to vote and some states required blacks to own property in order to vote. These requirements weakened voting rights for African Americans leaving them disconnected once again.

At this point students can use a Venn diagram to compare the challenges of African Americans during reconstruction to present day challenges.

The departure of thousands of African Americans changed the landscape of the South. North was the destination. The train fare from New Orleans to Chicago was about $20.00, a month's pay for most workers. Migrants wrote slogans on the side of the trains expressing their feelings, "Farewell We're Good and Gone," and "bound for the Land of Hope" said it all. Richard Wright, a successful and well-known African American writer moved north from Mississippi as a young man and wrote about his train trip "We look around the train and we do not see the old familiar signs: 'For Colored and For Whites'."

The language of slogans finds it way into everyday speech too. In "Raisin in the Sun" the wife, Ruth, finds out that mama has placed a down payment on a new house; she looks around the cramped apartment and exclaims "Halleluyah! And Goodbye Misery - Don't Never want to see your Ugly face again."

Some other examples of slogans were prominent throughout the Civil Rights Movement such as: "We Shall Overcome", "Keep your Eyes on the Prize" "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around," and "Oh Freedom over me and before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be Free."

Students will create their own phrases or slogans as if they were moving into a new house. They could also revisit history and create slogans that express the feelings of those who were leaving the south for Chicago.

However, once families arrived they had many problems to solve and students will be asked to brainstorm some of those problems which may range from housing, jobs, schools for their children, and a church to attend for worship within a welcoming community. Cities in the north like Chicago saw some of the biggest increases in black population. Meanwhile the Great black Migration continued, going from 299,000 in 1940 to 500,000 in 1950.

Voices from America:

"Once on the farms I've labored hard,

And never missed a day;

With wife and children by my side

We journeyed on our way.

(from National Geographic, The Great Black Migration)

Employment

After World War I immigration from Europe was at a standstill, Chicago's manufactured goods were in demand. Employers needed a new labor source, therefore factories opened doors to black workers, providing opportunities for blacks to claim full citizenship through their role in industrial economy. For black women the doors were barely opened but domestic work in Chicago offered higher wages and more personal independence than in the south.

Chicago workers labored in industries including meatpacking, clothing production, iron and stele, the manufacturing of foundry, machine and agricultural implements, beer and liquor processing, furniture manufacture, and printing. To insure students have a clearer image of how life was for black laborers explain to them that white industrial workers, were supported by a community network. They lived near their jobs, within neighborhood that offered institutions like saloons with offers of fellowship.

Carl Sandburg, the Poet Laureate of Illinois, expresses this pride and companionship formed by white industrial workers in Chicago during this time:

Hog Butcher for the world

Tool maker, stacker of Wheat.

Player with railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler. . .

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Sweating proud to be Hog butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

(Excerpt) "Chicago"

However, racial segregation kept the relatively few black factory workers in remote parts of the city, forcing them to search for daily transportation to and from work. This also blocked vessels of social interaction that could have reduced racial barriers. Until 1916 black factory workers were very few and those that worked in the factories found jobs on the killing floors of the stockyards or in the steel mills. Black men mostly worked as unskilled laborers, restaurant waiters, Pullman Porters, bootblacks and hotel redcaps while black women filled the laundry trades and other forms of domestic service.

Black employees of hotels, restaurants and the railroads found themselves employed in places which would not service their families as customers.

O WHISPER, O my soul! — the afternoon To rest thy tired hands and aching feet. O dawn! O dreaded dawn! O let me rest! "The Tired Worker" by Claude McKay (1890-1948)

This poem, "The Tired Worker," by Claude McKay may represent the sentiments of a great many black unskilled laborers. To help gain the sense of fellowship white workers experienced, the Pullman Porters established one such organization titled the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids.

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids

The International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids was the first African American labor union charted by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). This organization is important to the economic and political skyline of African Americans in Chicago. The Pullman porters were in an uproar about their treatment from the Chicago-based Pullman Company and sought the assistance of A. Phillip Randolph (Civil Rights Pioneer) in organizing their own union. Founded in New York in 1925, the newly established union assigned Milton P. Webster to organize Chicago's branch which was home to the largest number of Pullman's 15,000 porters.

The wives of the porters assumed an important role in the decade long struggle for union recognition. Their auxiliary functions and support were significant to the union efforts.

When supplemented with tips the porter and maid jobs paid better than many other jobs offered to African Americans. Segregation continued in the North and these jobs still kept black subservient to white passengers. Ultimately, the Brotherhood was an important factor in the civil rights movement.

O Blues!

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool

He played that sad raggedy tune like a musical fool

Sweet Blues!

Coming from a black man's soul,

O Blues

The singer stopped playing and went to bed

While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.

"Weary Blues" (excerpt) by Langston Hughes

Chicago Defender

The first issue of the Chicago Defender was distributed on May 6, 1905. What began as a four page brochure quickly became the most important black metropolitan newspaper in America. The paper's producer Robert Sengstace Abbott call that "American Race Prejudice must be destroyed" led the Defender to fight against racial, economic, and social discrimination, boldly reporting on lynching, rape, mob violence, and black disenfranchisement. The paper challenged fair housing and equal employment.

The Chicago Defender remains most noted for its active role in the Great Black Migration. Southern Migrants received their first glance of life in Chicago in the pages of the Defender. Fueling the enthusiasm for migration across the south, articles in the newspaper urged African Americans to move north, showing pictures of the best schools, parks and houses in Chicago next to pictures of the worst conditions in the South.

The Chicago Defender took on an advisory role to the southern migrants, by providing details on how to behave in the Northern cities. For Example:

"Be clean. . .. Water is cheap. . .. . .Avoid loud talking, and boisterous laughter on the streetcars and in public places;. . .In the south they don't care how they dress; here they make it a practice to look as well in the week as they do on Sunday."

Students can analyze this advice in small groups or as a class to determine the tone and mood expressed.

As more African Americans decided to move north, they relied on the newspaper for assistance. Migrants wrote hundreds of letters to the Defender seeking information about jobs, housing, education and transportation. Here is an example of one such letter: Students can also research other letters through the Defender's archive (still located on South Side) and write letters themselves based on personal concerns they may have if migrating to Chicago or present concerns of regentrification. The letter is kept in its original form and mechanics to maintain its authenticity for teaching purposes.

Dear Sir:

Please gave me some infamation about coming north I can do any kind of work from a truck gardin to farming I would like to leave here and I can't make no money to leave I ust make enough to live one please let me here from you at once I want to get where I can put my children in school. (National Geographic)

The Chicago Pullman Porters distributed the Chicago Defender to southern migrants but the paper was eventually banned from mail distribution in many southern States which enforced harsh penalties towards anyone found distributing or reading the paper.

Housing

"I too sing America"

I am the darker brother

They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes

But

Tomorrow

Nobody will dare say to me

Eat in the Kitchen

"I Too Sing America" (excerpt) by Langston Hughes

African American migrants were not allowed to live in many areas due to segregation and very little money. The South side of Chicago was the major section of town where blacks resided. However as more and more migrants arrived adequate housing was scarce and became overcrowded and rents skyrocketed.

"We don't want to make no trouble for nobody or fight no causes and we will try to be good neighbors." Walter Lee

The Great Black Migration was the basis which tempted some whites to use mortgage discrimination and redlining in inner cities like Chicago. Restricted covenant6 followed the Great Black Migration in the 192's, which prohibited the purchase, lease or occupation by blacks in more desirable sections of the city. These laws restricted blacks from moving into neighborhoods occupied by whites. Residential segregation extended its big shoulders into Chicago suburbs as well. For example, Skokie, Park Ridge, and Evanston wrote racial residential restrictions into the deeds on 1926-27 subdivisions. Restrictive Covenants secured white status and produced a depressing effect on black homeowners. We will also refer to Hansberry vs. Lee, 1940.

Redlining7 is the practice of denying financial services to specific neighborhoods, usually because its residents are poor minorities. Affluent housing areas received green lines, while black neighborhoods were assigned red lines labeling them undesirable. Redlining's negative effect presently resonates in sections of Chicago particularly the Englewood community where my students live.

Englewood was once a thriving community of German, Scottish and Irish immigrants. . Sears developed a 1.5 million dollar store establishing Englewood as the second busiest shopping district in the city. The 1940s real-estate values began to decline with the increase of blacks moving into the area. The practice of redlining and disinvestment sealed Englewood's future as a low-income community. Bankers' response to lending in the Englewood area was "The rate of the loan is determined by risk, the Negro has to pay a higher rate because he is not secure in his job."

After receiving all of this background knowledge, my students are now able to research and interview business and home developers, city planners and elected officials about the future plans for rebuilding their community which is affectionately known as "The Wood."

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