Any Place But Here.
After reconstruction, white Americans began to take political and civil rights from the black citizens. The first episode sets the historical scene, examining the politics, poverty and aspirations that motivated millions to escape from near slavery and segregation in Mississippi for Chicago, which p...
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| Format: | Electronic Video |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
[San Francisco, California, USA] :
Kanopy Streaming,
2015.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
Full text (Emmanuel users only) |
| Summary: | After reconstruction, white Americans began to take political and civil rights from the black citizens. The first episode sets the historical scene, examining the politics, poverty and aspirations that motivated millions to escape from near slavery and segregation in Mississippi for Chicago, which promised freedom and dignity. Chicago in 1942 was home to a large, respectable black middle class as well as the "New Negroes" emerging from the war. Now it would need to prepare for and accept its new black citizens. "Chicago ... the promised land. It was an idea which fired a generation of Americans in the Deep South - persecution in Mississippi, dignity in Chicago." This introduction sums up the story of this epic chapter of American history. Between the 1930s and 1970s, five million black Americans journeyed from the cotton fields of Mississippi to Chicago. They followed dreams of a new life, far away from segregation, lynchings, shootings, a law belonging to the Whites only, and a deeply unfair agricultural system called sharecropping. Before the American Civil War, slaves provided the labour for the cotton fields. After the war and the ending of slavery, poor rural blacks had to work as sharecroppers on the cotton fields. It was slavery in all but name. They obtained all their needs on credit from the cotton plantation owner. At season's end, he balanced their credit tally against the money they had earned from cotton. Fraud was widespread and all too often workers were told their expenses had exceeded their earnings. Chicago was just a day away by the railroad but, as the first episode of this series explains, it was like time travelling from a feudal state to the heart of industrialised society. "I said when I get grown, I will not stay down here with these people treating us like dogs, " recalls Uless Carter, the grandson of a slave. He went on to become a minister in Chicago. Ernest Whitehead, who also went North, smiles when he remembers how blacks were never allowed to grow up. They were called "Boy" until they were about 50 and then "Uncle" after that. "You never did grow to maturity." The blacks were told: "Don't forget, you're a nigger in a white man's world. Don't you ever forget that the lowest white is better than the highest black person." In 1937, when black American boxer Joe Louis knocked out the white boxer Max Schmeling, the sharecroppers felt so proud, . but no one dared show it when their white bosses were around. The programme uses much long-lost archive film, stills, music of the time and eye-witnesses to help tell this huge story. As Dionne Farris sings "I wish I knew how it would feel to be free" as the first episode ends, a sharecropper says wistfully: "You'd have to be any place but here." |
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| Item Description: | Title from title frames. |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (1 video file, approximately 50 min.) |
| Date/Time and Place of an Event Note: | Originally produced by BBCActive in 1996. |