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"So, I made about three days on this ship, this particular ship, an outsider, never been there before." -Abraham Moses Business at the Port of Philadelphia reached an all time high in the early 1900s. Due to the increase in business, many African Americans migrated from the South, drawn by high paying jobs. By 1920, Black workers held six out of every ten jobs on the Philadelphia waterfront. With the excess of workers, competition for jobs increased. After being promoted to a gang boss by Jarka, other employees did not like to see Moses's overwhelming success because they felt that their jobs were threatened. When interviewed in 1980, Moses shared how he attempted to help someone who wanted him fired.
In their own words
“He wasn't, he wasn’t ready for it. And if he just had of let me know it, I could've saved him… Yeah. You know, but I always, all of my life, I was always anxious to be a help to anybody any way that I could.” |
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“I settled up my account, packed up my stuff, and I grabbed a train to Philly. And, instead of going straight home, I went to city hall to see what civil service jobs were open.” –Joseph Marshall With an exploding Black population due to the Great Migration and African-American loyalty to the Republican Party waning, political bosses had to offer incentives, like civil service jobs including firemen and policemen, to African-Americans to encourage them to remain dependable voters. After attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, Marshall was determined, even in the face of adversity, to make a good living with a stable retirement option, and landed a civil service job thanks to Republican Mayor Hampy Moore desegregating one engine company of the fire department.
In their own words
”I had applied for summer work, and I didn't get it because I was colored. I had three months to go before graduating, and I went to the Head of the Department, Dr. Cook, whose name I'll never forget. And I wanted to be placed with G.E. or Western Electric, as they were grabbing those graduates…I was taking electrical engineering... and they would feed them through their various departments for four years, you know. I mean, just like… intern work-- and if you left at the end of four years, or if you stayed with him, you were just about tops, you know. I wanted that. So, Dr. Cook looked at me, he listened to my story, and, he said, "Well," he said, "you can go South and teach." He might as well have spit in my face…So that hurt. So I made up my mind… I says, ‘I'm gonna go home… get a job, and stay there. And I did just that--same day." |
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"We canvassed neighborhoods, spoke in a number of churches like that, make them--them aware of what banks can do for them." - Charles Ealy Unlike the White banks of the time which charged Black Philadelphians such high interest rates on loans, Citizens' and Southern Bank charged very fair rates. In fact, Ealy had people take the paperwork home and think about it, if necessary, before signing anything. He wanted people to feel comfortable with what they were doing and truly wanted to see the citizens of Philadelphia prosper. He admired the fellow southern newcomers to the city who prospered by diligently saving money.
in their own words
"Well, it was hard, to get them to understand, but they had, they mostly had been living in another world, so to speak... Dealing with institutions that charged them a tremendous high rate of interest on their loans that they had been given... Well, the thing of this, some of them didn't hardly believe they'd earned it at the beginning, we haven't, we sent a many people home, went over things very carefully and throughly with them, to see the contrast." |
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"You was afraid to join a union because they was fighting against the union themselves, the company. So they would, you know, practically tell people, say, 'Well look, you join the union, we're going to get rid of you, you know.'" - Leon Grimes For African Americans before the successes of the Civil Rights movement, job security was an almost nonexistent notion. Just the simple act of asking for a promotion could put their jobs on the line, as demonstrated in this excerpt from Leon Grimes's 1984 interview, which concisely sums up the experience of many African-American workers in Philadelphia and elsewhere. Yet like Grimes, through determination and resolve they were able to overcome discriminatory employment practices.
In their own words
“I protested one -- one time I protested too much, almost got fired. But, I wasn't. I was scared to, because I had children. I had a wife, and two children by that time. I was scared, in a way. And I told them I wanted a better job, because I got a family, I said, "I've got to have a promotion." They said, "What you want to be?" one of the head men, says, "What you -- what you want?" I says, "I can be a manager." I said, "I've been around this company many years." I said, "I can manage, something like that." He cut me off, you know he didn’t want to hear that. "Well Grimes," he says, "we'll see what we can do." You know, but I never did hear no more from him. And they -- they tried their best to -- to uh, I think they tried to get enough on me so they could fire me.” |