*A video of a meeting between some (“Boujee-Boujee”) middle and upper-class Black people taken in the 1960s has resurfaced and gone viral. In the meeting, the attendees are adamant they don’t want to see far too many lower-class Black people from the South migrating to Los Angeles where they are.
For historical context, the matter here is the Great Migration that occurred first in 1910 and then in 1970. The Black people talking in the video footage also seemed to insinuate that they didn’t identify as a negro.
The video is certainly from the archive of an organization, judging by the faint watermark on it. Actually, a closer look revealed that Huntley Film Archives is the org behind the film.
The gist of the video is: “A Group Of Wealthy Black People Discussing How They Felt It Was Bad That Low-Income Black People From The South Began Migrating To Los Angeles In The 1960s.”
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In the video, one concerned Black woman says, “By 1970, there’ll probably be a million negroes in this city and I know that people are concerned about this.”
She adds that though the people may not talk about it very often, she certainly heard them shudder in church when someone said that there would be a million negroes in Los Angeles.
A man in the meeting then responds, “We shudder because we’re saying, in essence, the majority of these people are not like we are. Maybe some of us felt we left the South because we were getting away from this problem. We are part of this exodus too, but we are a little, maybe, embarrassed by the fact that we’re going to have a mass of them come in that’s going to create a tremendous social problem in the community to which we find a great deal of difficulty relating to.”
But another woman in the meeting tried to view the matter from a positive angle. She mentioned the good that could come from more Black people moving to LA. However, she still didn’t use kind words to describe fellow Blacks migrating from the South.
“Well, I might sound like a do-gooder, but I really am not, and I’m somewhat of a snob; but I do think that with these people coming in who are not our intellectual equals nor are they of our sociological bracket … They don’t have to be a handicap to us,” she said, before adding that those Blacks from South will find their own level.
“Now I do sound like a snob, but I don’t mean it this way; but they’re used to living a certain way and they too might rise up above their origin and might one day be our associates,” she continued.
Another man, equally uneasy with the news that Southern Black people were steadily streaming to Los Angeles, put his jaws to work.
“The whole tone of this meeting is a way of setting ourselves up as little puppet Jesuses … We can’t help anyone else until we help ourselves,” he quipped. “The negro has had two professions … Many of us have come out here to escape from this second profession of being a negro and we are out here a while and we’re working in our own field and then we find out that here are these same problems falling on the heels of 1600 negroes a month that come into Los Angeles! Now this gives us problems!”
The woman who had spoken first then came in again, and this time to insinuate that she is not a negro, but a human being just like anyone she associates with.
“When I wake up in the morning, I don’t look in the mirror and say you are a negro; therefore you will face life in a certain way. I see myself as a person just like all the people that I work with and the children that I deal with and they’re all people,” she explained.
In another clip shared by another Twitter user @Northstartv1, a Black man speaking in 1967 in Atlanta supports what the woman says about her identity.
A Black Middle-Class Man Explains His Thought Process And How He Never Considered Himself Black. (1967) (Atlanta, Georgia) pic.twitter.com/JeHwTI6UJj
— Northstar.TV???? (@Northstartv1) September 17, 2021
“All Americans and I am an American, we think this way. There’s no other way to think,” the man confidently says. “I can’t think African. I can’t think Irish. I can’t think Norwegian. I have to think within the structure of the society which I’m in, which is a white society. Their values are imposed on me and I think this kind of way.”
He added that he didn’t think of himself as being a negro, that it was only until recently that he had really been concerned that he was a negro.
“I thought all the while that I was an American,” he stated.
Lord! The delusion. 🙁
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