North to New York: The Great Migration in NY's Capital Region

- [Announcer] Funding for North to New York is provided by the Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region.

Together, making more good possible through the power of collective giving.

(Pensive music, birds chirping) - My dad told me, had he stayed in Mississippi, he would've been killed because he had made up his mind that he was not going to work all of his life for a white man.

- We had the Hanging Bridge at my home, Shubuta, the Hanging Bridge.

They used to take Blacks over and hang 'em, and they hung Black men, Black boys And the people were basically like slaves.

It was as if they were owned by people, and they had no real rights.

- There's a mass outpouring of African Americans from southern states who leave the South and go to the North and the West - They decided, we're not gonna take this anymore.

We're going to seek out a better life.

And we're gonna seek a better life for not only for ourselves, but for our families.

- I just looked at the future.

What am I gonna do?

And then once I had children, I knew it was time to get away from here.

(Pensive music, birds chirping) - Louis Parson was born in 1902 in Buckatunna, Mississippi, and he was a traveling preacher.

So he would preach at different locations, depending on the Sunday of the month.

And he was also a worker in the logging industry.

He was injured on the job, and because of that injury, he received a large cash settlement.

He did not feel comfortable being an African American man and having a large amount of money in the rural South.

So he bought a Buick, and he and his wife, Frances, decided to drive north.

- He was a traveling pastor, which is common in our family, 'cause everyone's a pastor.

And throughout his travels, he found Albany.

How did he find Albany from Shubuta, Mississippi?

- He ended up stopping in Albany and met a group of deeply religious women who were holding prayer circles in the South End.

And he felt a kinship with those four women, and decided to, with them, start a church.

- Elder Parsons, he had came to Albany.

He saw these women worshiping and praying and he decided, this is where I'm gonna build my kingdom.

Like, this is where I'm gonna build my church, and people are gonna come.

And so like any other minister, he felt it was important to get people to Albany for his - He began driving in that Buick, back and forth, between Albany and Shubuta, Mississippi, to personally bring back members of his congregation in Shubuta, and he brought them here to Albany.

- The Great Migration is the massive migration, or movement, of African Americans from multiple different states throughout the American South.

They see the North and the West as this opportunity to escape violence, as a more liberal place where people are living in interracial kind of ways, and they're looking for new opportunities.

- When you speak of migration, past and present, it's for the same reasons.

People trying to go somewhere where they can better themselves have a better place to live, make more money, get a better education, express their ideas, and be able to leave a legacy.

(Pensive music, birds chirping) My dad told me, had he stayed in Mississippi, he would've been killed, because he had made up his mind that he was not going to work all of his life for a white man.

And he knew if he get North, with the skills that he had, with the determination that he had, he would be able to make it.

- My father was unique.

His name was John, but people called him Jack.

Brother Jack.

He came from Shubuta, Mississippi.

In the beginning, he was brought here with Reverend Parson.

- He looked out for his family.

He believed in God.

He believed in helping the community.

And he worked all the time.

He was always up before six o'clock in the morning.

- He had a saying to us, it says "Bam, bam, bam.

hit that floor."

At six o'clock.

Well, we obeyed.

You always obeyed Brother Jack.

And before long, as he went to work, we went back to bed.

- Louis Parson was bringing people from Mississippi.

And when Louis Parson could not bring them, my father picked up the mantle, so to speak, and he saw, he knew the necessity.

- He would always have a big car, drive the big car down.

- My dad bought a 1956 Chevrolet Green and white four-door sedan.

He said, "You always buy a four-door car because you might have to take somebody with you."

When he would get to Mississippi he would get there at midnight.

Whoever was ready to come, they would have to come out when they saw the signal.

He would flash his lights four times.

He would blow his horn four times.

He would wait five minutes.

Then he would go to the next house.

And by the time daylight was coming, he was six to eight hours away from Shubuta, Mississippi.

- He had to get out of town before the sheriff called 'cause they found out that Jack was coming and he was taking people away from 'em, because they needed them on the farms, on the tobacco and type farms and et cetera.

Cheap labor.

- He taught me how to drive.

And he said, "Youre going to have to pay attention.

You got your license, you gotta help me."

And I helped him drive down.

- It was a long journey, sometimes take about 18 hours, and that, 18 hours coming back.

We couldn't get sleep in the hotels because they didn't allow you, Blacks, to sleep in any of the nicer hotels.

A lot of times we had to go to the back door to get food.

On the main street in Shubuta, they had a fountain on the street to drink water.

I'm from the North.

I went and drank some water.

It was a white gentleman- told m to get out from over there, get on out, you know you don't drink on this side of the fountain.

He kicked me in my behind.

I mean, that never left my memory.

- We stopped in Hagerstown, Maryland.

He said, "We're stopping here.

Get you something to eat."

I jumped out.

I went in the front door.

Then the lady came toward me.

She said, "We don't sell to colored people in here."

He came in and got me.

He said, "Son, you're past the Mason-Dixon Line.

You can't do this."

That was the first time I had it so blatantly.

I got mad.

He said, "No, don't get mad now.

You're in the South.

It's different."

He brought over a hundred families up.

-It taught us a lot of respect.

It taught us courage that you have to watch it, have some wisdom, but don't stop Don't stop.

(laughs) 'Cause God always makes a way when you're trying to do it the right way.

(Pensive music, birds chirping) - So initially when African Americans begin to move into the capital region, say 1900, 1910, 1920, they're lower in population and there's not a tremendous backlash or pushback to their presence.

But we start to see that develop more in the sense that you start to see redlining.

When African Americans in redlined areas wanted to buy a home, even if they had credit history, even if they were a doctor and they had money, they lived in an area that had been marked as high risk because it was red, and if they tried to buy a home in another area, the deed of the home would have a racial covenant that African Americans could not buy it.

- Housing was a huge issue for African American migrants.

They were relegated to renting the absolute worst properties in downtown Albany.

- There was a lot of difference between living in Shubuta, Mississippi, and then coming to the South End of Albany.

When you're in Shubuta or any rural communities, everybody is separate, there's space between the houses.

You could have farms, you know, nice little mini farms.

People grew their own vegetables But in the city of Albany, it was very cramped.

They also said that there was a lot of gambling going on in the South End.

There was a lot of prostitution.

- The folks that Louis Parson brought and became part of his church were deeply religious and believed in moral rigor.

Raising a family in the South End in this environment, there were a lot of folks that he brought that were really unhappy with life there.

- [Stephanie] And that's when Louis Parson made a decision to take the money he had gotten from a workers' comp case to purchase the land out in Rapp Road.

- There was nothing else around in this area other than pine trees and a few farms.

In 1930, Louis Parson started selling plots of land to his church members only.

- They called it Rapp Road, but we called it the country 'cause it was about five or six miles from Albany.

And he would only sell the houses to the people that would be going to church.

(laughs) - We talk about Rapp Road being the promised land, because to them it was.

You were leaving the South End, and then you're going out to the country, someplace you were familiar with If you wanted to continue to live what they would consider a godly life, you can't be around, you know, things that are ungodly.

So that's what they decided to do.

Elder Parsons gave them that ability to move into that area.

But there was a good group of people who stayed in the South End because they also had their churches there.

- The church really is the centerpiece of the Black community.

It's because it's a one-stop shop for everything for Black people, before the Civil War, and then that tradition lasts, and it becomes even more pronounced when you have to rely on each other as the country's becoming more Jim Crow-ridden, right?

So you're looking to help each other in not only in safety, but also in how to feed each other when you move to a new place, how to find a good landlord so you don't end up in a overpriced kitchenette somewhere with a landlord who doesn't fix anything, right?

So the church becomes everything before you have social welfare programs.

- We had a community, the church community.

They helped one another.

They attended to one another.

And it was easier for that because they were all of the same denomination.

- We built a relationship with God and with that also it made the families come together.

Everybody went to church.

Everybody were helping each other.

And every Sunday morning or whatever, we would have church and dinner, a family dinner there.

- [Stephanie] In the meantime, Jack Johnson decided he would start to fix up the houses in the South End, hoping people would stay.

- When he brought people up from the South, he would have a place for them to stay.

And sometime we had to get outta our beds and let 'em stay there for a little bit.

He would help them find that, get clothing, furniture, and all those kind of things.

- Bro-Jack.

Now, that's a person that I adored and I admired.

'Cause Bro-Jack used to transfer people out of Shubuta, put together homes, renovated homes, and help get them jobs, or gave them jobs working with him.

- He taught them how to build, taught them how to lay bricks, taught them how to plumb, be a plumber.

I know this to be a fact because I helped him.

The first house that he bought, I was 12 years old, and I helped him tear down the sheet rock.

And he wired that house himself.

You could find him sometimes working on one of the houses in his Sunday best.

The basic fundamentals of the Great Migration is family.

I remember I was with him when we brought a family of a mother and a father and their 11 children.

What it does for the people is to give them the opportunity to make a better life.

And that's what Louis Parson did When he couldn't do it no more, my dad started going down to Shubuta, Mississippi, and getting people.

And many of them are doctors, lawyers, writers, newspaper people.

It's because when Louis Parson couldn't do it, my dad picked it up.

(Pensive music, birds chirping) - It's very important to preserve the legacy of Rapp Road not only for the city of Albany and the town of Guilderland, but really for the whole entire United States.

We are a small town where a group of people who currently still live here, their descendants still live here, the houses are still here, that is a part of the Great Migration.

And not many towns can say that.

One of the challenges Rapp Road has had is through outside development.

- Pyramid Crossgates Corporation started planning to build a mall in the 1980s, and that's the time that the Rapp Road community started to kind of really become aware of the impact that development could have on their community.

- So Emma Woodard Dickson became our first president of the Rapp Road Historical Association.

She was responsible for negotiating the traffic mitigation when Crossgates Mall was established.

And she felt it was important for us to be documented as a historic district, and that's what she did by working with Jennifer Lemak.

- Emma Dickson was a force.

She was a pioneer.

She was the one that said, you know what, if we don't do something to try and preserve our history here on Rapp Road, it's gonna be lost to the wind.

It's gonna be gone.

Well, she worked tirelessly to make sure that not only that her family members knew the history but that other people did as well.

It means preserving this incredible, not only family history, but a piece of history that people need to know about.

It means educating others about systemic racism.

It means a legacy of the hard work that these people did to get to where they were.

It means community.

It means working together to achieve a common goal.

And it means being proud of where I come from.

- We got conveyed back into the district six pieces of property Crossgates Mall once owned.

So now we are looking forward to repurposing the property to benefit the entire district.

And we're gonna start brainstorming on what to do with all the parcels of land.

I think the future looks great.

(Bright music) - I truly believe in my heart that if a community embraces something and we all get behind it, there's nothing that can stop us I was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1959.

My dad family lived in Albany, and my mom family lived in Tupelo.

My dad used to always come back to visit, and he asked my mom one time if, you know, I could come back with him.

And I was ready to go, I wanted to go.

And my mom said yes.

I remember sitting in the bus stations, like it would take us 36 hours, literally three days, to get from Tupelo to Albany.

My dad would give me quarters to put in a little TV slot and you would get a half an hour of TV for a quarter or whatever.

But I remember sleeping in those bus stations many, many nights, and I remember getting to Albany bus station and my dad getting a taxi to bring us to my aunt's house.

And I remember everybody sitting outside and waiting for my dad to come.

And you know, once I get there, I can hear the old folks saying, "Hey, James, who's that young man you got with you?"

and stuff.

I mean, those memories will never leave me.

So I grew up in the South End of Albany.

I think it's a homely, lovely area that could use a lot of work.

Back in 2009, I walked out of my door and I see dilapidation, I see trash everywhere, I see buildings falling apart.

And I said, "Is this the community that we supposed to live in?"

Literally, I walked out my door and saw this stuff and I said, "We don't supposed to live in this type of community."

And then I heard a voice say, "Well, then do something about it."

So I ended up starting AVillage, which is a way to bring us out of a hole that we're in, in our community.

AVillage is an organization that made change in the city of Albany.

We made some real major changes.

We started the first farmer's market in the South End.

We met with CDTA on many, many occasions.

We implored them to put a bus in the community in which we won that fight.

In 2012 we said, let's do a big family reunion type thing.

We knew that there was a lot of migrants from Mississippi here in Albany, right?

Ms.

Clara and I said, "How can we bring these people together?

Let's have a party."

- When I first got started with Mississippi Day, I went to Willie White.

He was the executive of the organization.

And I told him, I said, "Willie, "we should have a Mississippi Day."

We all get together, we could have food to eat and have music and everything.

- Our first annual Mississippi Day was in 2012, and we had over a thousand people in the park.

At Mississippi Day, we march into the park.

Reverend Brother Jack Johnson inspired the march because we always wanna bring attention to Brother Jack Johnson and his struggles and the things that he did to bring the community together.

Reverend McKinley Johnson says the opening prayer.

We go into song and dance, playing our local bands.

We have plenty vendors, a lot of service vendors, and a lot of vendors selling products.

We have lots of fun and the food just tops everything off.

Ms.

Clara is the best cook in the city of Albany as for when it comes to Southern and soul cuisine.

Soon as you announce that the food is ready, which is always around about three o'clock in the afternoon, I mean, the lines are historic, I mean, humongous.

- I used to cook a little of everything that I used to have in Mississippi.

Barbecue ribs and fried chicken wings, we had that.

And we had potato salad and we had mac and cheese.

We had to cut back because it was too much work for me.

I'm not getting no younger.

(laughs) I start like on a Friday is when I start.

Friday morning.

And we cook all night, mostly.

Till maybe two or three o'clock in the morning.

My friends, they pitch in and help me.

They been helping me for the last maybe 10 years anyway, at least that.

- I love Mississippi Day because it brings people together.

It's a community effort, and when people come together, the sky's the limit for what we can do together.

(Bright music) - It's important to me that they know what happened back in the past, you know?

'Cause a lot of the young generation, they don't know what lhappened in the past.

- If we don't remind people and teach the history and share the information, then we can quickly go back to where we don't want to be, where people live in fear, where people are segregated, where people are treated differently only because of the color of their skin.

Has nothing else to do with anything else but the color of their skin.

- We didn't come here just to earn a better life.

We come here to make a better life for everyone.

One day this country will spill out and tell the truth about the contributions of African Americans to this country.

One day this country is gonna do that.

They're gonna have the courage to do it.

Right now, they don't have the courage.

Not even good white folks don't have the courage right now.

But one day it's gonna happen.

It's gonna happen.

- I really believe that we ought to play a role in keeping people feeling like they are somebody and they are important.

God has never been into the business of being mean or being nasty.

Or hurting folks.

- These people were fleeing a South that was oppressive.

A lot of those same systemic issues, right, still exist.

The work continues, the work to educate and the work to seek change continues.

(Singers vocalizing) - [Announcer] Funding for North to New York is provided by the Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region.

Together, making more good possible through the power of collective giving.