Great Migration

4 Key excerpts on "Great Migration"

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  The Origins of the African-American Civil Rights Movement

  • Ai-min Zhang(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The situation of blacks remaining concentrated in the South changed dramatically after the First World War began in Europe. The war decreased greatly the number of the immigrants from Europe. At the same time, the industrial production capacity of the North was being expanded. This called for many more laborers, and provided blacks with the historical opportunity to move away from the plantations and out the South. They took advantage of it.

  What came about was the First Great Black Migration in America. This migration lasted for roughly 15 years until 1929 when a financial crisis began to spread throughout the world. Many blacks became unemployed and many of them returned to the South, where they were again exposed to exploitation by the plantation system.

  In 1939, the Second World War broke out in Europe. The United States of America was not immediately involved in it, but it began to develop its defense and military industries so that it could product more goods to support the countries that would eventually be its allies in the war. America became the "munitions factory of the republic countries." The factories in the North were again in great need of laborers, and blacks in the South again took hold of the opportunity. The Second Black Great Migration began in 1941. This migration would last until about 1970.

  The two great black migrations in America had profound effects on the fate of African Americans and the entire American historical process. In the course of the migrations, blacks made considerable progress in their economic conditions. The migrations raised levels of political awareness and contributed to a spirit of struggle. All these elements laid an important foundation for the rise of the civil rights movement.

  The Conditions Prior to the First Great Migration

  It is not rare for African Americans to migrate to seek better economic conditions. Blacks originally from the South had appeared in many different parts of America when the American Civil War ended. For instance, there were about 72,500 blacks living in the governmental camps of District of Columbia, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in 1865. During the period between 1865 and 1886, the black immigrants moved mainly within the South, from rural areas to the towns and cities. Very few of them got to the North.1 Meanwhile, more and amore blacks began to move to the newly developed areas, especially Florida, Georgia, parts of Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, which made the center of Black population move gradually to the southwest of the United States.2 In the 1880s, the main destinations of blacks were such industrial states as Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. Nearly thirty thousand blacks migrated to these three states, and the state of Pennsylvania received half of them.3 From 1890 to early 20th

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  Competition in the Promised Land

  Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets

  • Leah Boustan(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  The Great Black Migration is usually dated to 1915, the first year of substantial black in-migration to the North. However, the rate of interstate mobility among southern blacks rose steadily, starting with the birth cohort of 1860. Initially, the majority of these moves took place in the South, with some rural blacks moving to urban areas and others seeking agricultural opportunities further west (Gottlieb 1987, 118; Cohen 1991, 248–73; Cobb, 1992, 47–68). In this long-term perspective, the Great Black Migration appears to be a continuation of previous mobility trends, marked by acceleration (rather than a discontinuous jump) in the rate of interstate migration and a gradual shift toward northern destinations. This long-term trend is not consistent with the view that black southerners were uniquely stuck in place through binding credit relationships with landlords and local merchants (Ransom and Sutch 1977, 194; Berlin 2010, 142).

  Using multiple waves of Census data, I define migration as living outside of one’s state of birth or, alternatively, as living outside of the South altogether. I mostly follow the Census definition of the South, which includes the eleven states of the former Confederacy, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, but I exclude the District of Columbia and the border states of Maryland and Delaware, which experienced net black in-migration in the twentieth century.3 For brevity, I often refer to the non-South as the “North,” even though this region also includes the western states. Migration figures are calculated for blacks and non-blacks.4 In this southern context, “non-black” is nearly synonymous with “white,” and I use these two terms interchangeably.5 For the year 2000, when the Census introduced the option to select multiple races, I group all individuals who report being black and some other race into the category “black.”6

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  The Decline of Laissez Faire, 1897-1917

  • Harold Underwood Faulkner(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Job opportunities chiefly explain the immigrant movement, whereas the exodus from farms was caused by reduced opportunities or the desire to exchange the loneliness, isolation, and drudgery for the excitements and challenge of the city. Mechanization of agriculture released much labor from the farm and the competition of richer lands to the west eliminated marginal farms. A study of the new urban population 1900-1910 (11,826,000 persons) indicates that 41 per cent were alien immigrants, 29.8 rural migrants, 21.6 a natural increase, and 7.6 the result of incorporation of new territories. 11 Negro Migration One of the most important movements of population during the two decades 1897-1917 was the northward migration of Negroes, particularly after the opening of the First World War. This migration was not a new phenomenon, for Negroes, like the white population, have sought new homes and opportunities. What was new about the movement were its predominating direction, its acceleration, and its size. From the days of the “Underground Railroad,” Negroes have moved toward the North but never before had this been the predominating direction. 12 Up until the decade 1910-1920 the direction had generally been toward the West or the Southwest, where new areas had been opened adaptable to Southern crops. Another trend was also obvious. Up to this time Negro migration was almost entirely local, that is, from one state to the next. About half of those who had moved across Mason and Dixon’s line and the Ohio River had come from Virginia and Kentucky. Now the migration began to come from the cotton belt states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. And it was a straight-line movement “roughly along meridians of longitude.” 13 The sudden acceleration of the northward migration of Negroes aroused great interest in the North and also produced exaggerated estimates of its size

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  Realignment, Region, and Race

  • George R. Goethals(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 6

  MIGRATION AND REALIGNMENT: AFRICAN-AMERICANS MOVE NORTH, THE GOP MOVES SOUTH

  6.1. THE Great Migration AND URBAN BLACK VOTERS IN THE NORTH

  The Great Migration that began during World War I was a major factor in the reciprocal attraction between the Democratic Party and African-Americans. As we have seen, in the face of disenfranchisement, imperialism, and opposition to workers, the Party of Lincoln, starting with William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, abandoned African-Americans. But perhaps, there could be a place for blacks within the party of the common man, if that party would open itself to influences other than that of Southern white supremacists. The key that opened that door was African-Americans moving north to American cities. They could vote. And Democratic Party leaders prominent in urban political “machines” could count. They recognized that black votes were worth as much as white votes.

  Ironically, one of the earliest such machines was in the Southern city of Memphis, Tennessee. E.H. “Boss” Crump controlled a Democratic organization in that city that courted black votes for much of the first half of the twentieth century. Crump was willing to recruit both African-American and Republican voters to win in Memphis and statewide. He took such unorthodox, and potentially dangerous, steps as paying the poll taxes of blacks who would vote for him. His relationship with them was highly transactional. In exchange for their votes, he delivered many essential services (Historic Memphis, n.d.).

  In New York, Al Smith, governor in the late teens and mid-twenties, also included African-Americans in his urban-based coalition. During those years Smith drew support from Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and when Smith ran for president as the Democratic Party nominee in 1928, Garvey told the UNIA that “A vote for Al Smith is a vote for Human Rights … and the conservation of the liberty of the Negro throughout the world” (Slayton, 2001, p. 289). That same year the black newspaper The Chicago Defender

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