A Few Red Drops: Chapters 8–11

Groups of young men—mostly immigrants, a few blacks—roamed the docks, looking for jobs as cooks and sailors on ships, or work as stevedores loading and unloading goods on the docks.

But sometimes blacks would win the job with an offer to do the work for lower wages, leaving the immigrants resentful and hostile.

The whites’ outrage became painfully clear moments later in a barrage of kicks and punches and a determination to beat the blacks to a pulp that only subsided when police arrived, brandishing their guns.

The whites’ outrage became painfully clear moments later in a barrage of kicks and punches and a determination to beat the blacks to a pulp that only subsided when police arrived, brandishing their guns.

This did not sit well with some men, who worried about women infringing on “man’s work.”

Out of the silence, nearby saloons sprang to life, disgorging hundreds of strikers who blocked the roadway, overturning the cart and dragging the driver away.

Mobs of strikers massed for attack, usually launching a hail of stones followed by a melee of fists and kicks.

Sons and daughters joined their mothers to support their fathers as they marched or picketed around the Yard.

Parish leaders used the pulpit to lend “the arm of the Church to what we believe is a righteous cause.”

This blatant disregard of the law outraged the packinghouse owners; future cases were removed to the court of another community where the law was better upheld.

As the summer of 1904 faded away, disillusionment sat heavy over Packingtown and the Black Belt.

The immigrants of Packingtown had come together to demand a better life, to no avail.

But perhaps more than anything else, they blamed blacks for their predicament.

In 1917, immigrants and blacks alike, along with men of every ilk across the United States, left their Chicago homes, their families, and their jobs, and took up President Woodrow Wilson’s call to enter the Great War that was raging in Europe: to “fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy...and [to] make the world itself at last free.”

But the President’s words resonated with a special significance for America’s blacks.

This was a convergence of interests that blacks had been looking for.

As they waited for instructions to march, they practiced their French and bantered with the Irish Seventh Regiment.

Families and friends gathered on a crisp October morning, soaking up the gravitas of the moment.

A great cheer went up as they fell into line and began to march toward the train station, black business leaders at the fore, followed by a shiny brass band blaring “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

A great consensus was reflected in the statement of the Eighth Regiment’s black leader: “There is no color in patriotism. Patriotism is as deeply rooted under the black skin as under any other.”

Steel mills stepped up to produce guns, artillery, and helmets.

Even before President Wilson mobilized United States troops, Swift had been called on for meat to feed the massive European armies that already had been battling for several years.

Along with other industrialists, Swift and his confreres hired thousands of women to fill jobs vacated by men fighting overseas.

Over those fifty years, their optimism was quelled by the continued reign of white supremacy.

As they mulled over their future, southern blacks looked to the Chicago Defender, a source of inspiration and the unvarnished truth about the world around them, for guidance.

One black leader of a Mississippi town observed, “Negroes grab the Defender like a hungry mule grabs fodder.”

Orders were pouring into northern factories for food, clothes, and munitions for soldiers fighting in Europe, and the factories were looking for new workers.

On a stop through Mobile, Alabama, a black man accosted him, crying and begging for a ride up north.

The man’s plight touched Mr. Henderson’s heart.

Proud of his shop’s status as the community hub, Horton took forty to fifty copies of the Defender every week, magnanimously distributing them to customers at cost.

Proud of his shop’s status as the community hub, Horton took forty to fifty copies of the Defender every week, magnanimously distributing them to customers at cost.

His barbershop, his Hattiesburg clientele, was his livelihood.

Looking to pass some time while his daughter was otherwise engaged, he had sauntered down to the local barbershop, where he met a man who was talking up the North, promising a bushelful of jobs, offering free train tickets to Chicago.

Many in the Hattiesburg contingent had written back and forth about the specifics of their arrival.

South State Street was in its glory then, a teeming Negro street with crowded theaters, restaurants, and cabarets.