"Tell the whole White world”: crime, violence, and Black men in early migration New York City, 1890-1917

Abstract

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Department of History, 2014Through analysis of criminality, defensive and offensive violence and black migration from the South to the North between 1890 and 1917 this dissertation seeks to understand how black migrant men participated in the nadir of race relations. By exploring the lives of black men who travelled to New York City and discussing the continuities and disparities they faced in the North and South, I argue that African Americans were not only victims of intensifying racial discrimination and violence, but also defined the period with their own counteractions. As their expectations for better jobs, housing, and protection from public racial violence were shattered in the North, some black men met these challenges with vice, violence and lawlessness. Combining my analysis of the nadir with the exigencies of migration I have reassigned meaning to illegality and violence as cogent reactions. I also give much of my attention to the Progressive and civic discourse about black men and criminality at the turn of the twentieth century and the belief that their presence in vice districts like Manhattan’s Tenderloin would corrupt and endanger white New Yorkers. Considering these discussions, and the investigations and legislation they produced, I assert that reformers’ efforts to segregate public spaces isolated black men into narrowly defined black districts and forced them to withdraw to a large extent. My work has three principal purposes: first to employ Progressive discourse and investigations, scholarly works, trial transcripts, and court documents in order to insert crime among black men into current historical discussions about black struggles against profound racial circumscription during the nadir in the North. Next, it emphasizes the influence of Southern roots in shaping the lives of black male migrants, and in defining the response of white New Yorkers to a black population influx. Lastly, it combines these two in order to discuss changes in ideas of white and black masculinity and a contest between the two at the turn of the century. With this analysis I conclude that white New Yorkers utilized perceptions of black migrant men as criminal and dangerous to justify racial separation in public spaces, lopsided investigations, and brutal violence on city streets. However, illegality and defensive and offensive violence figured into the response of some black men for whom civic procedures seemed inadequate