● Describe the historical context surrounding these documents ● Identify and explain the relationship between the events and/or ideas found in these documents (Cause and Effect, or Similarity/Difference, or Turning Point) Document 1 In 1917, when she was 10 years old, Rubie Bond moved with her parents from Mississippi to Beloit, Wisconsin, where her father found work in a factory. Over half a century later, in 1976, Bond related her experiences as a part of an oral history project documenting the migration of African Americans to Beloit throughout the 20th Century (from Eric Foner’s Voices of Freedom Volume 2). I'm wondering why your family decided to leave Mississippi. How was that decision made and why was it made? Well, the North offered better opportunities for blacks. John McCord, who was a distant cousin, came and explained about conditions, here and so my father and mother decided to come. What did John McCord tell them? Only of working conditions and the education for children, for young people, was better than what we had in Mississippi. Those things I remember. I've heard that recruiters were often in danger in Mississippi if they came down to get workers for northern companies. Do you recall him ever expressing any fear about this job that he was doing? Yes. I know that many of the blacks would leave the farms at night and walk for miles. Many of them caught the train to come North, come to Beloit at a little place called Ecru, Mississippi. Usually they would leave with just the clothes on their backs. Maybe the day before they would be in the field working and the plantation owner wouldn't even know that they planned to go and the next day he would go and the little shanty would be empty. These people would have taken off and come up here. Now, as a young girl, did you agree with this decision to move North? Did you think it was a good idea? Yes. I think I did. Because even as a child I think I was pretty sensitive to a lot of the inequalities that existed between blacks and whites, and I know that after we came here my mother and dad used to tell me that if I went back to Mississippi, they would hang me to the first tree. From the Wisconsin Oral History Project Document 2 One Way Ticket (1949) | By Langston Hughes I pick up my life, And take it with me, And I put it down in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Scranton, Any place that is North and East, And not Dixie. I pick up my life And take it on the train, To Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake Any place that is North and West, And not South. I am fed up With Jim Crow laws, People who are cruel And afraid, Who lynch and run, Who are scared of me And me of them I pick up my life And take it away On a one-way ticket- Gone up North Gone out West Gone
