Great Migration

The Great Migration of the early 20th century is part of a historical continuum of the story of black movement and mobility. Primarily initiated by the international slave trade, the movement of blacks throughout the Western Hemisphere has been a persistent theme in African American history. However, it was not until the Civil War and emancipation that massive numbers of blacks moved on a voluntary basis. Foreshadowed by World War I and running a course that lasted for nearly 20 years, the Great Migration changed forever the population distribution of blacks in the United States. This movement transformed blacks from a predominantly rural to a predominantly urban population. It not only reflected the long river of the black quest for freedom, jobs, and social justice but also contributed to profound social, economic, demographic, cultural, and political changes throughout the United States.

Following emancipation in 1865, the first wave of black mass movement was their resettlement within and throughout the south. A significant portion of this movement was that of farm laborers. Generally dissatisfied with stifled work opportunities, between 1890 and 1910, black farm laborers set in motion three migration streams that initiated a larger web of black movement in the 20th century. In one stream, black farm laborers moved to towns in search of industrial employment; another stream migrated to the southwest to Texas and Oklahoma for higher seasonal wages; and a final stream migrated to the newly opened iron and coal mines in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee.

Researchers have estimated that 1.5 to two million blacks fled the south during the period from 1910 to 1930. Estimates suggest that over 500,000 left between 1910 and 1920. Following the migration streams of farm laborers, a variety of factors underlay massive black population movement. Most historical accounts have explained the rapid population shift in terms of a set of concurrent push-pull factors. The primary argument for black movement and resettlement was their desire to seek alternatives to the racial injustices of the south that included physical terror and violence, political disenfranchisement, and limited educational and economic opportunities. Plantation agriculture and the sharecropping system operated as an extension of enslavement, which relegated most rural blacks to landless tenants. Within this system, they had little to no opportunity to improve their livelihoods or change their economic plight.

World War I and the U.S. adoption of more restrictive immigration laws served as the impetus that forced northern employers to consider southern blacks (and whites) as a source of inexpensive labor to replace European immigrants. As a result, it was these newly created economic opportunities combined with a desire to escape Jim Crow laws that provided the motivation for many blacks to migrate throughout the United States. Additionally, greater access to the rights of citizens, improved wages in northern industries, and access to better health care, schools, and the vote all encouraged the movement of blacks into northern cities.