Reviews
Creative Loafing: "An American Mecca" by Greg Land
The unfortunate reality of most "documentaries" is that, regardless of content, non-fiction narrative easily drifts into a stultifying blend of monotonous voice-overs and wooden interviews. Thus, local filmmaker George King is to be congratulated for the vitality and ingenuity of Goin' To Chicago, an ambitious chronicle of the two waves of 20th-century migration that swept black Americans from the rural, agrarian South to
the industrial North and West.
Centering upon the exodus of Mississippians to Chicago, King backs into his story, opening with a charter bus drawing close to Greenville, Miss.; on board, native Mississippians gaze at the homeland they left decades earlier,seeking relief from grinding poverty and hopelessness in the new promised land: Chicago. "Mama said, 'You'll be eatin' outa the garbage up there,'" recalls the late blues master James "Son" Thomas.
"I said, 'I may have to eat out of the garbage can… but I'm gonna leave here."
King recounts the legacy of segregation, the devastation of the boll weevil and the advent of mechanization that rendered life nearly impossible for the sharecroppers of the Delta. Between World War I and the Great Depression, over one-and-a-half million African-Americans fled Northward; a second wave followed after World War II, continuing into the '60's.
""I came to realize that there was no documentary film that dealt with this subject," says King. "The implications of this migration and the impact it had on America is just colossal. And it's something most white folks know very little about; but it's part of most African-American's lives - most families have connections to it."
Woven into the homecoming of members of the Greenville Travel Club are interviews with those who made the trek; some notable, like Thomas, or fellow blues legend Koko Taylor, who painfully recalls her own early days in the fields; others, the factory hands and stock yard workers who saw the City of Big Shoulders through it's glittering heyday and into the economic slide from which it has yet to recover.
The interviews are exceptional; going beyond disjointed recollections, King has drawn
the spirit of the time from the people who lived it. "I'll never forget that train ride," recalls one woman. "When we got to Decatur, Illinois, the conductor said, 'O.K., you can drop all that "Yassuh" and "Nossuh" now. It's just "Yes" and "No" now' That's what
I remember…."
The music - whether it's Son Thomas playing his ode to the road to hope, 61 Highway or Chicago's New Mount Pilgrim Mission Baptist Church's Mississippi-born congregation joining in Amazing Grace - is an integral part of the film, as it was of the era.
"I wanted to involve musicians both as storytellers, and use their music as well," says King. "I realized that music was an important part of the migration, and certainly an important part of its impact on America. When acoustic musicians went North from Mississippi to Chicago, and plugged their guitars into the wall and started playing electric blues - that's one of the foundations of rock 'n roll… of global pop music, actually."
While King relies on archival photos and old film footage as well as current scenes of daily life to tell the story, he also uses simulated newsreels - like the old Movietone News inserts - to condense portions of the narrative into a manageable form. While certainly original, the effect is also somewhat jarring. "I don't like the "Voice of God" narration," King explains, "and I didn't want to add another chunk of what is often very dry material. So as a device to avoid some narration, the newsreels were created. Historians are concerned by that, but we make it clear that these are simulated newsreels, not genuine
artifacts. Most regular viewers seem to think it's pretty entertaining."
Entertaining enough to have already earned the Council for International Non-Theatrical Events (CINE) Golden Eagle Award, Goin' to Chicago allows King, a veteran producer of documentaries and theater productions, to display a light and innovative touch in a generally ponderous genre.
Booklist: by Irene Wood
Ages 16-adult. A chartered bus trip from Chicago to a reunion of family and friends in Greenville, Mississippi, offers reflection
on the great internal migration of African-Americans from the rural South to Chicago and other Northern cities from 1915 to 1965. Flickering images like old home movies set the homey, intimate
mood of this saga, while accomplished filmmaking and a firm sense of history point to the consequences of these migrants' quest for freedom and opportunity.
Documentary footage of the glorious reunion and interviews with various individuals and their families are mixed with archival footage of both field and city
life and with simulated newsreels to
chronicle the impetus, expectation, and reality of this exodus. Tracing the desperate bus rides North from
sharecropping poverty to the employment mecca and vibrant community that was Chicago, the production also notes the housing conflict, increasing racism, and
decline of manufacturing jobs that led to the ebb of opportunity and the rise of crime and poverty in the urban center. Vertamae Grosvenor's serious narration
and songs spanning the decades, from field calls to street rap, are effectively melded with the varied visual elements. Arrestingly sketching personal vignettes of
Southhern roots, migrant hopes, and both the rewards and disappointments of that promise in the sweeping mural of significant social change, this is an excellent resource for classroom and
library audiences.
Video Librarian
Atlanta filmmaker George King's Goin' to Chicago is a bittersweet ode to Southern blacks who migrated after WWII to the North , many to Chicago (known variously as "the Promised Land" and "Heaven" to those who weren't there yet). Combining interview clips with Chicagoans who have formed a club and take bus trips back to their Mississippi Delta homeland and simulated newsreels which chronicle the struggle for racial integration in Chicago, the film contrasts the miseries of Southern sharecropper life at the turn of the century with the miseries of Northern industrial life during the segregated 1950's.
Though life was a battle-for non-restrictive housing, equal pay, and patronage of local businesses — the interviewees recall many good moments too. Noted blues singer Koko Taylor and her husband left the South with no money and a box of Ritz crackers; shortly after arriving in Chicago, Taylor was making $5 a day as a housekeeper (to Taylor, at the time, an amazing financial bounty.) The most powerful segment traces the rise of "Bronzeville" — Chicago's black neighborhood — and the failed efforts of incoming blacks to purchase housing outside of the circumscribed area, efforts that eventually led to
the "vertical" expansion ofhousing projects. One young boy from the projects says-with haunting seriousness — that he just wants to "get out of here and live my life." A sadly tame aspiration to be sure, but for many inner-city Chicagoans the dream is still being deferred. The powerful central story is diluted a bit by the "home video" footage of the Greenville, MS club which travels from Chicago back to the homeland for frequent reunions; these rambling segments, while warm and funny, seem more like filler than anything else. This quibble aside, Goin' to Chicago is a good film, and very affordably priced.
Recommended. (Available from California Newsreel, 149 Ninth Street, San Francisco,
CA 94103; 415.621.6196.)
Teaching Sociology, Vol. 23 (October: pgs. 429-430)
by Laura M. Hecht and Ann Marie K. Kinnell, Indiana University
This film documents the history of the second wave of black migration from the rural South to the urban North, the largest internal migration in U.S. History, which began just before World War II. The story unfolds through narratives of a few of the women and men who migrated from Greenville, Mississippi to Chicago, Illinois to escape racial oppression and to pursue the American Dream. The men and women interviewed are members of the Chicago-based Greenville Travel Club who are traveling together to a national reunion in their hometown.
Their reminiscences are vividly illustrated by the incorporation of archival film footage which portrays the context of daily life of blacks both in the rural South and in the growing black communities in Chicago.
The narrators' stories begin in Mississippi where they reflect on their early lives as sharecroppers, a situation that they regarded as akin to slavery. They tell of moving to Chicago, the mecca of human rights and economic opportunity. Blacks viewed Chicago, with its steel mills, stockyards, railroads, and thriving service industries, as a place where they could find the economic independence that did not exist in sharecropping. Among the migrants who tell their stories, relocation to the Northwas eased by family and friends already established in Chicago. In some cases, entire communities were eventually reunited on Chicago's South Side.
Nevertheless, for many black migrants, the problems of oppression of inequality did not disappear when they left the South. Blacks who attempted to leave crowed neighborhoods were denied housing in predominantly white neighborhoods, both by the direct refusal to rent or sell to blacks and through the redlining practices of colluding mortgage lenders, insurance companies and developers. Some realtors, however, chose to profit from racism by engaging in "blockbusting." A realtor would sell one home to a black family, then encourage panic selling among resident whites. Realtors would then buy these house at low prices, and resell them to other black families at inflated prices. The black families that did succeed in acquiring housing in white neighborhoods were often greeted with violence.
Most blacks found Chicago to be just segregated as the South they left behind. To deal with housing pressures caused by both unprecedented migration and the return of World War II veterans, the City of Chicago built the Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor housing projects. Initially, they were multiracial communities for all strata of people. Later, however, they were restricted to people with low incomes. During the same period, many of the jobs that had attracted migrants disappeared. Steel mills and stockyards closed, leaving many blacks trapped in the housing projects. Crime and violence followed. Interviews with young children who live in the projects show that the dream of equality and economic prosperity have come full circle. Now it is the rural South that is considered a calm refuge, a place where one can escape the poverty and violence of inner-city Chicago.
The experiences of the migrants interviewed are varied. Some found their American Dream. Others succeeded to a degree. However, pervasive racism kept them from reaching their full potential. For still others, the dream remained outside of their reach entirely.
This film is appropriate for use in a range of sociology courses. For courses on race and ethnicity, the film addresses black-white relations in the South and the North, including economic and political dimensions. The film also illustrates concepts taught in demography and in urban sociology. For example, the film brings to life the structural patterns that describe internal migration patterns. These include a detailed exploration of socioeconomic factors that provide the impetus to leave a particular locale and the factors which influence the choice of destination. Chicago was the destination of choice not only because of the promise of economic opportunity, but also because of extended-family and friendship networks that eased resettlement. Thorough treatment of experiences related to settlement patterns, housing shortages, blockbusting, and issues related to public housing makes the film a useful resource in courses in urban sociology. Finally, the film illustrates the roles of technology (particularly the mechanization of agriculture)and structured inequality in fostering social change.
The following questions could be used as a starting point to initiate class discussion on issues raised in the film:
1.) What factors influence patterns of internal migration, both in terms of why people decide to move, and their destination choices? What role do networks play in migration decisions?
2.) How have the social conditions on Chicago's South Side and in the South changed over the past 50 years? How are these changes related to patterns of return migration?
3.) What was the intended role of the housing projects (Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor Homes) at the time they were built? What led to their deterioration? Is there a role for projects like these today, or should they be abandoned?
4.) Was the American Dream of equality and economic prosperity attainted? How did race relations in the North mirror those in the South?
We feel that the value of Goin' to Chicago is its effectiveness in conveying to students a feeling of what life was life for black migrants, and in helping them to think in new ways about the historical roots of crime and violence in today inner-city ghettos.
Contact the Filmmakers
To comment or ask question about Goin' to Chicago or this website, e-mail us at www.georgeking-assoc.com