Throughout the history of African Americans, labor has played a large role in their lives. Labor for Blacks has changed over the few hundred years that they have been in the United States. It began with slavery in 1619, when the first slaves were brought to Virginia. During the period of slavery, slave labor was the main labor force in the United States. Upon emancipation, Black labor changed drastically. Black people had the desire to better their lives by finding jobs, as a result, caused a spread of Blacks across the United States. Before emancipation, labor forced Blacks to be located in the south, and after emancipation, labor shifted the Black communities to the large cities of the United States.
The formation of the first Black communities …show more content…
Between 1910 and 1970, millions of Blacks moved from the rural areas in the South to the urban areas in the rest of the United States. Multiple factors influence them to move, and labor was one of them. Pershing Foster, a doctor, moved from Louisiana to California due to his job. “Perhaps he might have stayed had they let him practice surgery like he was trained to do… but he wasn’t allowed to do anything with it, the caste system being what it was” (Wilkerson, 7). Wilkerson highlights the fact that the southern caste system restricted Foster from getting a job as a doctor. The South didn’t want Foster’s work, so he had to move to somewhere that did. Like many other Blacks during the Great Migration, Foster was forced to leave the South to find work in areas without such a system in place. Other Black people that did have work in the South, such as sharecroppers, left due to unfair treatment. Every year, a landowner told John Starling, a sharecropper, that John had just broke even, a situation where “I (the landowner) don’t owe you (John) nothin and you don’t owe me nothin” (Wilkerson, 53). This demonstrates how landowners were able to keep sharecroppers on their farm. By telling the sharecropper that they had broke even, the sharecropper does not receive any money, and as a result, needs a place to work and a place to live, which the landowner provides. Even if sharecroppers had earned a profit,
The formation of the first Black communities …show more content…
Between 1910 and 1970, millions of Blacks moved from the rural areas in the South to the urban areas in the rest of the United States. Multiple factors influence them to move, and labor was one of them. Pershing Foster, a doctor, moved from Louisiana to California due to his job. “Perhaps he might have stayed had they let him practice surgery like he was trained to do… but he wasn’t allowed to do anything with it, the caste system being what it was” (Wilkerson, 7). Wilkerson highlights the fact that the southern caste system restricted Foster from getting a job as a doctor. The South didn’t want Foster’s work, so he had to move to somewhere that did. Like many other Blacks during the Great Migration, Foster was forced to leave the South to find work in areas without such a system in place. Other Black people that did have work in the South, such as sharecroppers, left due to unfair treatment. Every year, a landowner told John Starling, a sharecropper, that John had just broke even, a situation where “I (the landowner) don’t owe you (John) nothin and you don’t owe me nothin” (Wilkerson, 53). This demonstrates how landowners were able to keep sharecroppers on their farm. By telling the sharecropper that they had broke even, the sharecropper does not receive any money, and as a result, needs a place to work and a place to live, which the landowner provides. Even if sharecroppers had earned a profit,