AFRICAN AMERICANS MIGRATE NORTH

Wearing their Sunday best and carrying the rest of what they owned in two suitcases, this southern family waits to board a northern-bound train in 1912. In Chicago, the League on Urban Conditions among Negroes, which became the Urban League, sought to ease the transition of southern blacks to life in the North by distributing cards such as the one shown here (front and back). Photo: Schomburg Center, NYPL/Art Resource, NY; Card: “If You are a Stranger in the City” card, ca. 1916–1925. Aldis Family Papers, AFP_0001_0006_01a and AFP 000_0006_02a, University of Illinois at Chicago Library, Special Collections.