The Adjustment of Southern White Migrants to Northern Urban Norms

H UMAN migration and its concomitants have long been subjects of major interest to sociologists. Important theories in the fields of human ecology, social change, social disorganization and intergroup relations have been derived from migration studies. The Polish Peasant was an early indication that immigrant groups would constitute a rich source of data for social psychologists.' Significant insights into the process of attitude change, the diffusion of attitudes, the formation of new social norms, and the development of new conceptions of self and role have stemmed from "immigrant studies." Furthermore, the physical movement has important implications for reference group theory, involving, as it does, changes of milieu, conflicts of norms, and opportunities for the development of new reference groups. The tide of immigration to the United States from abroad has long since decreased from its former volume. Such studies as The Polish Peasant,2 The Ghetto,3 and Old World Traits Transplanted,4 have been relegated to the dubious status of "classics." Yet opportunities to study the effects of migration, in the context of reference group theory, are still abundant. The migration of people within our borders goes on apace. Since it is the role of the migrant as a newcomer, as well as his particular cultural or racial characteristics, which determines his behavior, the native-born, internal migrant constitutes a profitable subject for research. During the lush years of high industrial productivity, which began about 1940, there has been a fairly steady flow of workers from the rural South to the industrial centers of the North, such as Chicago and Detroit. Between 1947 and 1949 the writer studied certain aspects of the adjustment of a group of rural, southern, white laborers to life in the Near West Side of Chicago. The central questions in this research were: 1) Do these native white migrants come to constitute, to any extent, a distinct sub-group in the area of settlement in Chicago? and 2) To what extent, and in what ways, are they able to resolve the conflict between their "southern" attitudes towards Negroes and northern, urban norms and patterns of Negrowhite relations? During the period of field research, 150 southern white migrants were interviewed and the actual behavior of these and many other southern whites was observed. Non-southerners and Negroes who were part of the social world of the migrants, including plant managers, foremen, policemen, teachers, bartenders, and other workers, were also interviewed. The southern whites were members of many small "clusters" of migrants concentrated in an ethnically heterogeneous portion of the Near West Side. The majority of them came from farms and small towns in the South Central States, especially northwestern Tennessee. Although these people were known as "hillbillies" in Chicago, few of them came from mountainous areas and they regarded the name as a misnomer. The pattern of settlement of the southern whites suggested that they constituted, to some extent, a definite sub-group in the population of the area. Ecological factors partially accounted for their concentration. The Near West Side is an area characterized by the availibility of cheap, furnished flats and easy access to industrial plants, and hence is attractive to in-migrants seeking "blue collar" work. In-group ties, carried over from southern communities of origin, also contributed to the development of spatial concentration, however. Newcomers from the South consistently tended to settle near relatives or friends who had migrated earlier. Often one of the important motives for migration itself was encouragement from earlier migrants. The fact that the somewhat derogatory and often much-resented group label, "hillbilly," was applied to the migrants also pointed to their existence as a distinct group, even as a quasi1 W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1920). 2 Ibid. 3Louis Wirth, The Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928). 4 Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1921).