Great Migration: Georgia to Milwaukee

Great Migration: Georgia to MilwaukeeIt was October 1945. Eustace Griffin, a farmer from Georgia, and his wife loaded up in the 1938 4-door Oldsmobile Series F sedan. Their youngest c***d, 20 year-old Harry, was back home from serving in Second World War. They were heading up to Milwaukee where three of Harry?s older siblings had made their homes during this Great Migration of African-Americans leaving the rural, agrarian South for the industrialized North and Midwest.Eustace who was born in 1895 to a sharecropper was proud of Harry. The young man had deployed from Hampton Roads, Virginia as a part of the 27th Cavalry Regiment to Alegria. He saw no combat in North Africa, but when the unit was inactivated a few weeks later, he transferred to Europe becoming a driver for the Red Ball Express. This famed group of mostly Negro drivers supplied Allied Forces with fuel, food, munitions, and other necessities all while under assault from air and land enemy fire. Harry was one of the men that the U.S. Army Transportation Corps didn?t have to teach to drive. He had grown up on the family farm driver a truck and a tractor. Unfortunately, Harry was wounded one night while driving in nearly complete blackout conditions when a land mine exploded. Thankfully, he was much better now and did not end up losing a limbs. He did have a noticeable limp.The trip was to take a while with the careful preparation needed by Blacks while traveling by car throughout the American south. Ann Griffin, the family matriarch, had dutifully packed a copious amount of her crispy fried chicken, homemade buttermilk biscuits, recently picked apples, and a sweet potato pie for their roadside lunches. Eustace and Harry planned to share the driving duties so they would not have to stop along the way. It could be difficult, at best, to find lodging during the Jim Crow era and deadly, at worst. They were armed with a copy of the Green Book so they knew which filling stations were friendly to their race.The three Griffins made it to their destination. This was the first time any of them had been. The area where their relatives lived was known as Bronzeville. It had nice houses and Black-owned restaurants, banks, and other establishments. Harry pulled alongside the curb in front of a two-story foursquare house with white siding and dark green shutters. The kit three-bedroom home purchased from Gordon Van Time and financed by Columbia Building