of the South. Your being there in the numbers in which you
are gives the southern politician too strong a hold on your
progress.... So much has been said through the white papers in
the South about the members of the race freezing to death in
the North. They freeze to death down South when they don't
take care of themselves. There is no reason for any human
being staying in the Southland on this bugaboo handed out by
the white press.[37]

If you can freeze to death in the North and be free, why
freeze to death in the South and be a slave, where your
mother, sister and daughter are raped and burned at the stake;
where your father, brother and sons are treated with contempt
and hung to a pole, riddled with bullets at the least mention
that he does not like the way he is treated. Come North
then, all you folks, both good and bad. If you don't behave
yourselves up here, the jails will certainly make you wish you
had. For the hard-working man there is plenty of work--if you
really want it. The _Defender_ says come.[38]

The idea that the South is a bad place, unfit for the habitation of
colored folk, was duly emphasized. Conditions most distasteful to
negroes were exaggerated and given first prominence. In this the
_Defender_ had a clear field, for the local colored newspapers dared
not make such unrestrained utterances.[39] In fact, reading the
_Chicago Defender_ provided a very good substitute for the knowledge
which comes through travel. It had the advantage of bringing the North
to them. Without fear of exaggeration it is safe to say its policy was
successful in inciting thousands of restless negroes to venture north,
where they were assured of its protection and the championship
of their cause. There are in Chicago migrants who attribute their
presence in the North to its encouraging pictures of relief from
conditions at home with which they became more and more dissatisfied,
as they read.

The setting of a definite date was another stimulus. The great
northern drive was scheduled to begin May 15, 1917. This date, or the
week following, singularly corresponds with the date of the heaviest
rush to the North, the periods of greatest temporary congestion and
the awakening of the North to the presence of their guests. Letters
to the _Chicago Defender_ and to the social agencies in the North
informed them that they were preparing to come in the great d