Blacks Found a 'Land of Paradise' in Buffalo, Says Author
The path to the American Dream has never been without impediments, and particularly for many black Americans. But the nation's growing rail network once created a locale of unique opportunity for blacks in an otherwise unlikely city, says a University at Albany historian in her new book, Strangers in the Land of Paradise (1999, Indiana University Press, $49.95).
The city was Buffalo, N.Y. Lillian S. Williams of UAlbany's Department of Women's Studies chronicles the establishment there, during the first 40 years of the 20th Century, of a strong African-American community held together by faith, family, pride, and hard work.
The community's founders, writes Williams, "were agents in its creation rather than passive, despite the discrimination they experienced."
The book presents a portrait of African-American migration to the western New York city in great numbers after Buffalo was transformed in the late 1800s into the second largest transportation hub in the nation, after Chicago. It describes the neighborhoods where they settled, the jobs they undertook, and the social, civic, and religious organizations they founded.
Supplemented by photographs that capture community members at work and at play, Strangers in the Land of Paradise also features maps that document where blacks and other immigrants settled in the city, and highlights landmarks like the Michigan Avenue Baptist Church.
Williams, a native of Niagara Falls, first became interested in Buffalo as a research subject when working as an undergraduate research assistant at the University at Buffalo under prominent historian Herbert Gutman. She found how the city at the turn of the century afforded African Americans job opportunities with railroads, hotels, and other travel-related industries that were not available elsewhere. The economy was healthy, and many of the city's residents were well-to-do.
"Buffalo was one of the 20 largest cities in the U.S.," said Williams. "The buildings constructed at the turn of the century were beautiful; and the park system, laid out by landscape architect Frank Law Olmsted, was magnificent. It still is. And Buffalo pioneered so many things, including electric streetlights and paved roads. People thought of this spectacularly beautiful city as paradise."
While Strangers in the Land of Paradise was written primarily "for those interested in urban history, sociology, anthropology, public policy, or education," Williams brings to life the inhabitants of a vibrant African American community through excerpts from personal letters and other first-source documentation.
She describes, for instance, Will Talbert, an "enterprising young man" who, as the son of a prominent businessman, "was more privileged than most children in Buffalo, black or white." We experience young Talbert's seven-block walk to school, his curriculum (which included courses in physics, history, grammar, civil government, and music), his active social life, and even his after-school detention for being "mischievous" (he whispered in class).
Further on, the author offers information about the living arrangements, marital status, and jobs of various community residents. This documentation, along with excerpts from letters written by blacks in the North to their families and friends down South, paints a vivid picture of the socioeconomic realities faced by working-class African Americans.
European immigrants also experienced discrimination in housing, jobs, and education, but Williams said it was quite clear that ethnicity seemed to be less threatening than race. "If you look at employment, especially at factories, workers of Anglo background tended to be in managerial positions," she said. "Poles, who were generally laborers, sometimes moved into supervisory positions. There was a distinct attempt to place individuals, based on their ethnicity, into positions."
In response to these inequities, Buffalo's African Americans organized groups to address those disparities. Said Williams: "They were exploited economically, and they experienced political oppression and social ostracism, but they were intent upon bettering their social condition." Those organizations, such as the NAACP, the Urban League, and the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, continue today to carry out the missions for which they were established generations ago.
Williams, a faculty member at UAlbany since 1987, is now at work on another book. Tentatively titled Blacks in Green, it tells the story of African American involvement in Girl Scouting.
September 23, 1999
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