t that these assumptions are
ill-founded. The efforts that are being put forth to improve rural
conditions and to advance agricultural arts among Negroes are highly
commendable and effective. The thesis of this chapter is that,
notwithstanding improvements resulting from these efforts for rural
districts, wherever similar causes operate under similar conditions,
the Negro, along with the white population, is coming to the city to
stay; that the problems which grow out of his maladjustment to the new
urban environment are solvable by methods similar to those that help
other elements of the population.

In the first place, so far as we know now, the general movement of the
Negroes, speaking for the South, does not seem to have been very
different from that of the whites. Professor Wilcox says,[4]

It is sometimes alleged that the migration to cities, which has
characterized nearly all countries and all classes of population
during the last half century, has affected Southern whites more
than Southern negroes, and that the latter race is thus being
segregated in the rural districts. That such a movement may have
gone on, or may now be in progress, in parts of the South can
neither be affirmed nor denied on the basis of the present
figures, but it may be said with some confidence that, as a
general statement applied to the whole South, it is not correct.
To be sure the negroes constitute 32.6 per cent of the
population of the country districts in the entire South and only
30.9 per cent of the city population, but an examination of the
figures (Census 1900) for the several divisions and states will
show that what is in some degree true of the South as a whole is
not true of most of its parts.

Therefore, it is of importance to note that the movement of white and
Negro populations toward cities tends to be coincident. We may get
some indication of these movements of white and Negro populations
cityward by comparing the growth of their numbers in the principal
Northern and Southern cities from 1860 to 1900.

The Negro population has shown a greater increase than the white in
each southern city taken separately for the entire period, 1860 to
1900, but together the movement of the white and Negro populations was
similar except between 1860 and 1870. That fourteen of the southern
cities show an excessive proportional increase of Negro population
between 1860 and 187