of outrage, suffering and wrong touched the hearts of
the more fortunate members of their race in the North and
West, and aid societies, designed to afford temporary relief
and composed almost wholly of colored people, were organized
in Washington, St. Louis, Topeka and various other places.[8]

Men still living, who participated in this movement, tell of the long
straggling procession of migrants, stretching to the length at times
of from three to five miles, crossing States on foot. Churches were
opened all along the route to receive them. Songs were composed, some
of which still linger in the memory of survivors. The hardships under
which they made this journey are pathetic. Yet it is estimated that
nearly 25,000 negroes left their homes for Kansas.[9]

The exodus during the World War, like both of these, was fundamentally
economic, though its roots were entangled in the entire social system
of the South. It was hailed as the "Exodus to the Promised Land" and
characterized by the same frenzy and excitement. Unlike the Kansas
movement, it had no conspicuous leaders of the type of the renowned
"Pap" Singleton and Henry Adams. Apparently they were not needed. The
great horde of restless migrants swung loose from their acknowledged
leaders. The very pervasiveness of the impulse to move at the first
definite call of the North was sufficient to stir up and carry away
thousands before the excitement subsided.

Despite the apparent suddenness of this movement, all evidence
indicates that it is but the accentuation of a process which has
been going on for more than fifty years. So silently indeed has this
shifting of the negro population taken place that it has quite escaped
popular attention. Following the decennial revelation of the census
there is a momentary outburst of dismay and apprehension at the
manifest trend in the interstate migration of negroes. Inquiries into
the living standards of selected groups of negroes in large cities
antedating the migration of 1916-1917 have revealed from year to year
an increasing number of persons of southern birth whose length of
residence has been surprisingly short. The rapid increase in the negro
population of the cities of the North bears eloquent testimony to this
tendency. The total increase in the negro population between 1900 and
1910 was 11.2 per cent. In the past fifty years the northern movement
has transferred about 4 per cent of the entire negro populat