Library of Congress, Manuscript Division [The Carter G. Woodson Collection of Negro Papers and Related Documents]

On April 2, 1918, one Mrs. J. H. Adams, from Macon, Georgia, wrote a letter to the Bethlehem Baptist Association of Chicago. She had read about the group in the Chicago Defender and hoped its members could help her "get out there as I am anxious to leave here and everything so hard here." Black newspapers were a lifeline for the potential migrants who not only found encouragement to leave the South and information on jobs and housing, but could also try to get assistance from the migrant and religious networks already established in the North.