Great Migration

Great Migration, in U.S. history, the movement of millions of African Americans from rural communities in the South to urban areas in Northern and Western states during the 20th century. In 1900 nearly eight million Black people—about 90 percent of all Black Americans—lived in the South. From 1916 to 1970 an estimated six million Black Southerners relocated to the North and West in search of economic opportunities and an escape from racial violence.

Before the Great Migration

On April 9, 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and his forces surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his forces at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, formally ending the American Civil War. Between 1865 and 1877, a period of Reconstruction was enacted to address the inequities experienced by formerly enslaved Black people and to redistribute economic and political power to African Americans. Congress passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution to abolish slavery (except as punishment for a crime), create birthright citizenship, and grant Black men the ability to vote, respectively. Black men entered government positions at a record pace, and social institutions, such as the Black church, and Black communities created hubs of Black wealth and economic power.

However, the increase in Black political and economic might sparked violent opposition and political pushback from racist white Southerners, who formed the Ku Klux Klan, a hate organization, in the 1860s—later revived in the 1910s thanks in part to the film The Birth of a Nation—instituted voting clauses, and struck down Gen. William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order 15, also known as “40 acres and a mule,” which was intended to redistribute to newly freed Black families confiscated Confederate property. Additional use of lynchings, sharecropping, and Black Codes locked Black Americans into poverty and disenfranchisement, keeping them from fully participating in the American Dream. There were few alternatives for Black communities until the 1910s, when a new opportunity in Northern and Western states presented itself.

An exodus to the North

World War I erupted in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, slowing the massive stream of late-19th-century European immigration to the U.S., and a military draft conscripting able-bodied American men was enacted in 1917. After the war ended, the flow of European immigration to the U.S. ground to a crawl because of the Immigration Act of 1924, which established immigration quotas based on national origin. As a result, the urban factories, foundries, and slaughterhouses that fueled Northern industries faced labor shortages.

These factors, combined with the poor socioeconomic conditions for Black Southerners—sharecropping and other forms of debt slavery, farm failures, crop damage from the boll weevil—as well as ongoing racial oppression in the form of Jim Crow laws, institutional racism, and lynchings, created a moment in time that would shape the demographics of the United States for generations. And one Black newspaper—the Chicago Defender—proved to be among its most potent catalysts.

Robert S. Abbott, the founder and first editor in chief of the Defender, published train schedules, songs, and cartoons to encourage Black Southerners to take what they could and leave the South in search of a better standard of living in Chicago. Soon other Black newspapers, such as New York City’s Amsterdam News and the Pittsburgh Courier, would follow suit for their respective cities with advertisements for housing and employment and firsthand stories of newfound success.

Between 1916 and 1970 an estimated six million Black people made this exodus. The bulk of this mass relocation happened between the 1940s—when World War II began and more jobs were being offered in the North and West—and 1970. In addition to Chicago, other cities that absorbed large numbers of Black migrants included Detroit, Cleveland, New York City, and Philadelphia. With new beginnings, there were also new challenges that stemmed from deep-rooted problems.

Pushback against the Great Migration

Many Black people sought and found better civil and economic opportunities by leaving the South. However, American racism knows no geographic limits. In the North segregated housing and redlining, segregated schools, poor working conditions and low pay, and other forms of racial discrimination made life difficult for new Black arrivals. Migrants sometimes also encountered social challenges from the Black establishment in the North, whose members would look down on the “country” manners of the newcomers.

Black people also, at times, experienced outbreaks of violence in Northern cities, and during the 1920s they faced the effects of a surge in membership in the Ku Klux Klan, particularly in the Midwest. This reached a boiling point in the Red Summer of 1919, a period in which racial violence spread throughout at least 26 cities, killing hundreds, injuring thousands, and causing mass displacement.

Root causes of this violence included white suspicion and fears that Black workers were “taking” white people’s jobs or being used as part of a Bolshevik plot to destabilize the United States, and a white unwillingness to live side by side with Black people. One especially brutal instance of racial violence that summer was the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, in which 38 died (23 Black, 15 white), 537 were injured, and 1,000 Black families were left homeless. During this time, the Defender kept a tally of the deaths and injuries of Black and white Americans. However, Black people—especially Black veterans who returned from World War I—fought back, reminding America that they were willing to protect their new homes.

Lasting effects and a new Great Migration

The Great Migration had profound and lasting effects, enshrining itself in the broader arc of African American history and culture. The Great Migration significantly altered urban and rural populations throughout the United States across multiple generations, and it reshaped numerous Northern urban centers. As a result of the concentration of Black people in a place free of Jim Crow and lynchings, the Great Migration arguably spurred Black political action and the civil rights movement.

The Great Migration transformed many specific aspects of American culture. Racial tensions and housing discrimination led Black migrants to form their own communities within the city. As a result, places like Harlem and Philadelphia became predominately Black, which also led to cultural movements such as the Harlem Renaissance. Over time Washington, D.C., also became a predominately Black city, earning the nickname Chocolate City. Desegregation in professional sports and the spread of blues, jazz, and other forms of music through so-called race records are just a few more examples of the lasting effects of the Great Migration.

Since the 1970s a “New Great Migration” has taken place as upwardly mobile, young Black professionals moved from the North back down South, once again in search of economic and political opportunities, jobs, and education.

In the 1970s deindustrialization hit Detroit, Pittsburgh, and other heavily industrialized Northern cities hard, creating neighborhood blight and driving the decline of the Rust Belt. These changes, combined with continued housing discrimination, gentrification, and diminishing job opportunities in the North, disproportionately affected Black Americans. Soon, factory jobs and new economic opportunities moved to Southern and Southwestern states, once again creating similar incentives to those that prompted Black Americans to make their cross-country exodus decades ago.

In addition, the civil rights movement ended legal segregation and solidified voting rights for Black Americans, making Southern states more hospitable for Black people in comparison to conditions after the Civil War. Places such as Harlem, Washington, D.C., and other Black hubs would see Black Americans relocate to Atlanta, Dallas, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

These places, much like the Northern cities from the era of the Great Migration, would experience a boom in Black culture, economic power, and political opportunities. Atlanta earned the nickname Black Mecca, Southern hip-hop rose through the music charts, and Black politicians were elected to Congress and local offices for the first time in many of these Southern states and cities. In a cyclical way, both Great Migrations proved the willingness of Black Americans to move anywhere in search of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.