Making a Way out of No Way: African American Women and the Second Great Migration (Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies)

318 Pages·2009·1.88 MB·English

by  Lisa Krissoff Boehm

Making a Way out of No Way

Making a Way out of No Way
AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN AND
THE SECOND GREAT MIGRATION
LISA KRISSOFF BOEHM
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI / JACKSON
www.upress.state.ms.us
Margaret Walker Alexander Series
in African American Studies
The University Press of Mississippi is a member of
the Association of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2009 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Frontispiece (page ii): Cole, Willie, Domestic I.D. IV.
1992. Steam iron scorch and pencil on paper, mounted in
recycled wooden window frame, composition (including
frame): 35 x 32 x 1 3/8” (88.9 x 81.3 x 3.5 cm). Publisher:
unpublished. Printer: the artist and The Artist’s Studio.
Edition: unique. Acquired through the generosity of
Agnes Gund. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern
Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.
First printing 2009
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boehm, Lisa Krissoff, 1969–
Making a way out of no way : African American women
and the second great migration / Lisa Krissoff Boehm.
p. cm. — (Margaret Walker Alexander series in
African American studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60473-216-0 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-60473-217-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. African
American women—Social conditions—20th century.
2. African American women—History—20th century.
3. African Americans—Migrations—History—20th cen-
tury. 4. Migration, Internal—United States—History—
20th century. 5. Rural-urban migration—United States—
History—20th century. 6. African American women—
Biography. 7. Oral history—United States. I. Title.
E185.86.B6325 2009
305.48'896073—dc22 2008033344
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
For Esther Woods (1913–2005)
and
Madelon Hack Krissoff,
my teachers
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Contents
ix A NOTE ON STYLE
xi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
3 INTRODUCTION
19 CHAPTER ONE
Memories of the Southern Childhood
45 CHAPTER TWO
Guiding Influences and the Younger Years
79 CHAPTER THREE
The Move North
109 CHAPTER FOUR
Encountering the City
139 CHAPTER FIVE
The Work of a Domestic
175 CHAPTER SIX
Family Aspects
viii contents
199 CHAPTER SEVEN
Experiences with Other Types of Employment
221 CHAPTER EIGHT
Reflections on the Migration and a Life of Work
241 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
245 NOTES
271 BIBLIOGRAPHY
283 INDEX
A Note on Style
I wish that all of the women who shared their life stories for this book had
had the opportunity to meet. They could have talked together about the Second
Great Migration, their attitudes towards work and parenting, and the regional
differences between North and South. What a wonderful discussion that would
have been! I have in effect lived in this imagined gathering during the years I
worked on the manuscript. This book is written in a way that allows the women
to come together, at least on the page. When a topic is discussed—for instance,
the influence of elders, or treatment by employers—various voices join the con-
versation, adding personal insights. The reader is a witness to this conversation,
just as I am. As with a real-life gathering, the reader does not have to know the
complete story of the individual speaking to understand her observation. For
readers who would like an occasional reminder of a narrator’s life story, I have
written biographical sketches, located at the front of the book for easy reference.
These sketches provide short descriptions of the lives of the forty women inter-
viewed explicitly for this project. The other voices, drawn from approximately
forty additional oral histories located in archival collections, appear intermit-
tently and thus are not included in the biographical sketches section.
I serve as the narrator of the text, bringing the pieces together and add-
ing the historical background necessary for a fuller understanding of the inter-
views. Throughout the book, the reader will find extended “edited transcripts,”
or large edited segments in one narrator’s voice. These sections are helpful in
re-creating the interview experience and in letting a narrator tell her own story
in an expanded way. Edited transcripts are used to introduce chapters or book
sections. In most cases, the edited transcript on a given subject appears before
the historical analysis. This organization was employed with two objectives in
mind: 1) the format allows the oral history narrators to speak first, and 2) the
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