Separate but Equal - The Era of Jim Crow

With an increase of job opportunities available to African Americans, the desire to participate in the industrial production gave many southern blacks hope for a more stable economic life.  Though the liberation of their rights were yet to be brought to fruition, there was an increase in optimism for social progression.  Yurchenco states, “Around the turn of the century, about 1890, three-quarters of the black population lived in rural areas. By 1930 half lived in towns, and this urban population increased as southern blacks sought wartime jobs in the cities in the 1940s. Thousands migrated north to work in the Detroit auto industry, where they found not only jobs that paid good wages but dreams of a new freedom...wives and children back home were often abandoned and left to shift for themselves" (455). 

In “Detroit Bound Blues,” “Blind” Blake (Arthur Phelps) reveals the new sense of economic optimism for African Americans:

I’m goin’ to get me a job, up there in Mr. Ford’s place,

Stop these eatless days from starin’ me in the face.

Because wild women lives in Detroit, that’s all I want to see,

Wil’ women and bad whiskey would make a fool out of me.

Autobiography:
Blake's desire to move to Detroit is filled with optimism.  He wants to leave his days of economic hardships and "eatless days" behind for a more fulfilling existence.  Smith and Watson explain that a Travel narrative is a "broad term [that] encompasses multiple forms: travelogue, travel journal, (pseudo)ethnography, adventure narrative, quest, narrative of exotic escape" (RA 284). Blake's desire to move north reflects the idea of an exotic escape.  The idea of escape here details more than just a physical escape, but an emotional and social escape from the bondage of social prejudice and economic depravity.  

However, not all blues artists were as optimistic as Blake.  Among those who moved north with hopes of a better life, there were others who doubted the promises of equality.  As the Jim Crow laws enforced "Separate but Equal" many African Americans failed to find optimism in its promise.

In “Jim Crow Blues” “Cow Cow” Davenport (Charles Davenport) expresses the doubt that filled the minds of many African Americans of the promise of a better life in the North:

I’m tired of this Jim Crow, gonna leave this Jim Crow town,

Doggone my black soul, I’m sweet Chicago bound,

Yes, I’m leavin’ here, from this ole Jim Crow town.

I’m going up North, where they say money grows on trees,

I don’t give a doggone if my black soul leaves,

I’m goin’ where I don’t need to B.V.D.s

Lord, well if I get up there where they don’t suit –

I don’t start no crying. Go tell ole ma’am of mine,

Lord I’m ready to come back to my Jim Crow town.

Autobiography: 

Davenport's heartfelt lyrics mirror the inability to accept the promise of the North as a means to escape poverty and prejudice.  At first, Davenport feels the need to leave the South due to the boundaries enacted by the Jim Crow laws.  What little optimism he has, however, is easily retracted since  he places little hope in the promise of a better life. After realizing that the north failed to fulfill his economic aspirations, Davenport is willing to accept his social position in a society that belittles his existence as a human being.  Smith and Watson's concept of Positionality is an important idea to consider in reference to Davenport's lyrics.  According to them, "Positionality is a theoretical concept [that] designates how speaking subjects take up, inhabit, and speak through certain discourses of identity that are culturally salient and available to them at a particular historical moment.  These 'subject positions' - for they are always multiple and often contradictory - are effects of social relations whose power is distributed unevenly and asymmetrically across difference" (RA 215).  The idea of power being distributed unevenly and asymmetrically due to race plays a large role in the progression of Davenport's lyrics.  Davenport's dreams are hindered through the social ambiguities imbedded in the Jim Crow laws and the segregation that thwarted African American social and economic progression.