Great Migration (African American)

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The Great Migration was the movement of over 1 million^[1] African Americans out of the rural Southern United States from 1914 to 1950. African Americans moved to escape the problems of racism in the South and to seek out better jobs and an overall better life in the North.

[edit] Overview

When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed less than 8 percent of the African-American population lived in the Northeast or Midwest. Even by 1900, approximately 90 percent of all African-Americans still resided in former slave-holding states.^[2]

Most African Americans who participated in the migration moved to large industrial cities, such as New York, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; Detroit, Michigan; Chicago, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; St. Louis, Missouri; Oakland, California and Los Angeles, California, as well as to many smaller industrial cities. People tended to take the cheapest rail ticket possible; this resulted in, for example, people from Mississippi moving to Chicago and people from Texas moving to Los Angeles. The North saw its black population rise about 20 percent between 1910 and 1930. Cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Cleveland saw some of the biggest increases.

African-Americans moved as individuals or small groups. There was for the most part no government assistance. They migrated because of a variety of push and pull factor:the #1 push factor was the racial climate in the South. in the North, there were better schools for African-American children.

Many African-Americans wanted to avoid the racial segregation of Jim Crows laws in the South and sought refuge in the supposed "Promised Land" of the North where there was thought to be less segregation and the boll weevil infestation of the cotton fields of the South in the late 1910s, forced many sharecroppers to search for employment opportunities elsewhere;
The enormous growth of war industries created new job openings for blacks—not in the factories but in the service jobs that new factory workers vacated;
World War I effectively put a halt to the flow of European immigrants to the emerging industrial centers Northeast and Midwest, causing shortages of workers in the factories;
Anti-immigration legislation after the war similarly resulted in a shortage of workers;
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and its aftermath displaced hundreds of thousands of African-American farm workers;
After 1940, as the U.S. rearmed for World War II (see Homefront-United States-World War II), industrial production in the Northeast, Midwest and West increased rapidly.
The postwar economic boom offered additional opportunities for black workers in northern cities.

The scope of the mass migration is best seen in Detroit. In 1910, the African American population of Detroit was just 6,000, but this jumped to 120,000 by 1929, the start of the Great Depression in the United States. Other cities, such as Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore & New York City also experienced surges in their African American population.

[edit] Effects

The Great Migration caused some whites to use mortgage discrimination and redlining in inner city areas of the US after the development of suburbs began after World War II ended. However, it also helped educated African Americans obtain good non-menial jobs as well. In turn allowing many African Americans to rise to the lower middle class.

[edit] References

Arnesen, Eric. Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents (2002).
Grossman, James R. Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (1991).
Lemann, Nicholas. The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (1992), on the 1940-60 migration.
Scott, Emmett J., Negro Migration during the War (1920).
Sernett, Milton. Bound for the Promised Land: African Americans Religion and the Great Migration (1997).