In the 50 years following the end of Reconstruction, African Americans transformed American life once more: They moved. Driven in part by economic concerns, and in part by frustration with the straitened social conditions of the South, in the 1870s African Americans began moving North and West in great numbers. In the 1890s, the number of African Americans moving to the Northeast and
the Midwest was double that of the previous decade. In 1910, it doubled again, then again in 1920. In the 1920s, more than 750,000 African Americans left the South--a greater movement of people than had occurred in the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. The large-scale relocation to the Northeast and West brought many other changes with it, as many largely rural people moved into cities for the first time. Housing was difficult to come by, and in many cities the non-African American
residents demanded strict segregation, relegating the new arrivals to self-contained neighborhoods in undesirable parts of town. In addition, most of the available work in the cities was industrial, and many migrating African Americans faced the prospect of learning new trades, generally at lower rates of pay than European Americans received. Tensions between longtime residents and new migrants frequently flared, and during the first decades of the century race riots struck many of the nation's
cities and towns, from Springfield, Illinois, and Rosewood, Florida, to New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Tulsa. The coming of the First World War drew still more African Americans to the nation's cities, both in the North and the South, as workers were attracted by new factory jobs. A university education came within reach for more and more African Americans, and considerable debate emerged about the role of the growing African American professional class. As African American officers
such as Colonel Charles Young attained higher command rank, a career in the military became more appealing. The new century also saw the birth of a new generation of activist organizations dedicated to advancing the cause of equal rights for African Americans, as well as to improving their social and economic conditions. The two most notable of these were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which
was founded in 1910, and the National Urban League, which followed the next year. Both groups were racially integrated, and both were seen by some as too radical in their goals and methods, but they soon emerged as central forces in the struggles of the mid-century. Perhaps the most profound result of the move to the Northeast and West, however, was the shift in electoral power that it brought with it. For the first time since Reconstruction, a substantial number of African Americans were
able to freely exercise their right to vote. This access to the tools of democracy soon resulted in the election of African American political leaders, and it also made the African American electorate a force to be reckoned with on the national political scene-a force whose concerns could not easily be ignored. To learn more about the Great Migration in one city, visit Chicago: Destination for the Great Migration, a section of The African-American Mosaic. Part of
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 Black Family Arrives in Chicago from the South, ca. 1919 Public Domain Image, Courtesy New York Public Library (1168439) The Great Migration was the mass movement of about five million southern blacks to the north and west between 1915 and 1960. During the initial wave the majority of migrants moved to major northern cities such as Chicago, Illiniois, Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New York, New York. By World War II the migrants continued to move North but many of them headed west to Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, California, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. The first large movement of blacks occurred during World War I, when 454,000 black southerners moved north. In the 1920s, another 800,000 blacks left the south, followed by 398,000 blacks in the 1930s. Between 1940 and 1960 over 3,348,000 blacks left the south for northern and western cities. The economic motivations for migration were a combination of the desire to escape oppressive economic conditions in the south and the promise of greater prosperity in the north. Since their Emancipation from slavery, southern rural blacks had suffered in a plantation economy that offered little chance of advancement. While a few blacks were lucky enough to purchase land, most were sharecroppers, tenant farmers, or farm labors, barely subsiding from year to year. When World War I created a huge demand for workers in northern factories, many southern blacks took this opportunity to leave the oppressive economic conditions in the south. The northern demand for workers was a result of the loss of 5 million men who left to serve in the armed forces, as well as the restriction of foreign immigration. Some sectors of the economy were so desperate for workers at this time that they would pay for blacks to migrate north. The Pennsylvania Railroad needed workers so badly that it paid the travel expenses of 12,000 blacks. The Illinois Central Railroad, along with many steel mills, factories, and tanneries, similarly provided free railroad passes for blacks. World War I was the first time since Emancipation that black labor was in demand outside of the agricultural south, and the economic promise was enough for many blacks to overcome substantial challenges to migrate. In additional to migrating for job opportunities, blacks also moved north in order to escape the oppressive conditions of the south. Some of the main social factors for migration included lynching, an unfair legal system, inequality in education, and denial of suffrage. The great migration, one of the largest internal migrations in the history of the United States, changed forever the urban North, the rural South, African America and in many respects, the entire nation. Do you find this information helpful? A small donation would help us keep this available to all. Forego a bottle of soda and donate its cost to us for the information you just learned, and feel good about helping to make it available to everyone. BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. Cite this article in APA format:Christensen, S. (2007, December 06). The Great Migration (1915-1960). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/great-migration-1915-1960/ Source of the author's information:James M. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Florette Henri, Black Migration: Movement North, 1900-1920 (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1975); Carol Marks, Farewell—We’re Good and Gone: The Great Migration (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Alferdteen Harrison, Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991); The African-American Mosaic, A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam011.html What was the great migration and why did it happen quizlet?The Great Migration refers to the movement in large numbers of African Americans during and after World War I from the rural South to industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest. One million people left the fields and small towns of the South for the urban North during this period (1916-1930).
What happened because of the great migration?The Great Migration also began a new era of increasing political activism among Black Americans, who after being disenfranchised in the South found a new place for themselves in public life in the cities of the North and West. The civil rights movement directly benefited from this activism.
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