Great Migration creates ties between Mississippi, Illinois
DANNY MCARTHUR, Daily Journal
FacebookTwitterEmail
TUPELO, Miss. (AP) — It was a near-miss snake bite that finally spurred Clodie Casey to leave his job at a Fulton sawmill and head north.
Not that he hadn’t been considering leaving the South already. Many Black people had for a host of reasons. But nearly being bitten must have caused Casey to re-evaluate his situation, because that same day, he headed for Illinois.
“My dad went up there for opportunity to work, opportunity to, of course, raise his family,” said his son, Jim Casey, who lives in Tupelo. “It was a time of mass migration to the North.”