The great migrations of blacks from the South began during World War I, continued into the 1920s, slowed during the Depression years, and grew immensely during and after World War II. Prior to these migrations, black people were only a small proportion of the population in the northern cities. In some, such as New York and Chicago, they numbered in the tens of thousands; still, whites outnumbered them at least fiftyfold. The black community in Providence numbered some two to six thousand during the years 1880–1925; they were but a tiny fraction of the city's residents.

Nevertheless, the Providence black community was large enough for intensive study. Data were collected on all blacks eligible for the random samples, 125–165 individuals in each of six supplemental samples (boys and girls in 1880 and 1915, boys in 1900 and 1925). Together they form the richest available evidence bearing on the early school patterns of blacks in the North and on the relationship between schooling and economic advancement. Because their school patterns were intimately bound up with poverty, discrimination, and family life, our study will bear on the often subtle connections among all these aspects of black social history.

The first section of this chapter describes some basic social characteristics of the black families from which the sampled children came–the prevalence of southern origin, parental illiteracy, family heads in low-skill, manual-labor occupations, broken families, and working mothers. The second section considers the strikingly low rate of child labor among blacks.