The Migration was the movement of approximately seven million Africans out of the Southern United States to the North, Midwest and West from 1916 to 1930. Precise estimates of the number of migrants depend on the time frame.African Americans migrated to escape racism, seek employment opportunities in industrial cities, and to get better education for their children, all of which were widely perceived as leading to a better life.
Some historians differentiate between the Great Migration (1910-1940), numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and the Second Great Migration, from 1940-1970.In the Second Migration 5 million or more people relocated and migrants moved to more new destinations. Many moved from Texas and Louisiana to California where there were jobs in the defense industry. From 1965-1970, 14 states of the South, especially Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, contributed to a large net migration of blacks to the other three Census-designated regions of the United States.
Causes of migrationa) African-Americans left to escape the discrimination and racial segregation of late 19th century constitutions and Jim Crow laws.b) The boll weevil infestation of Southern cotton fields in the late 1910s forced many sharecroppers and laborers to search for alternative employment opportunities.c) The enormous expansion of war industries created job openings for blacks—not in the factories but in service jobs vacated by new factory workers.d) World War I and the Immigration Act of 1924 effectively put a halt to the flow of European immigrants to the emerging industrial centers of the Northeast and Midwest, causing shortages of workers in the factoriese) The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 displaced hundreds of thousands of African-American farmers and farm workers.Effectsa) Demographic changesThe Migration of African-Americans created the first large, urban black communities in the North. The African American population in the city grew from 280,000 to 800,000.
The South Side of Chicago was considered the black capital of America.Other cities, such as St. Louis, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, also experienced surges in their African-American populations. b) Discrimination and working conditionsThe migrants discovered racial discrimination in the North, even if it was sometimes more subtle than the South. Populations increased so rapidly among African-American migrants and new European immigrants both that there were housing shortages, and the newer groups competed even for the oldest, most rundown housing. Ethnic groups created territories they defended against change.
Discrimination often kept African Americans to crowded neighborhoods, as in Chicago.c) Integration and non-integrationAs African Americans migrated, they became increasingly integrated into society. As they lived and worked more closely with European Americans, the divide existing between them became increasingly stark. This period marked the transition for many African Americans from lifestyles as rural farmers to urban industrial workers.During the migration, migrants would often encounter residential discrimination in which white home owners and realtors would prevent migrants from purchasing homes or renting apartments in white neighborhoods.
