"I dreamed of going North. The North symbolized to me all that I had not felt and seen; it had no relation whatever to what actually existed. Yet by imagining a place where everything was possible, I kept hope alive in me."

- Richard Wright, Black Boy, remembering his journey from Memphis to Chicago

The Great Migration (HONORS)

Overview

Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Southerners moved to cities in the North and West. Known as the Great Migration, this unprecedented social movement re-shaped the American cultural and political landscape. The first Great Migration occurred during 1916-1920s as two million African Americans headed north in the hopes of a better life. Movement tapered off during the Great Depression as jobs decreased and African Americans were the first to lose their jobs; however, from 1940-1970 during the Second Great Migration an additional 4 million African Americans traveled North.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, nearly 90% of all African Americans lived in the South; three-fourths of these lived in rural areas. By 1970, half of all black Americans lived in the North, nearly all in urban areas. Of those remaining in the South, two-thirds lived in cities.

Leaving the South

Several factors precipitated one of the largest population shifts in the country's history. In 1898 the tiny boll weevil invaded Texas and proceeded to eat its way east across the South. Crops were devastated, thousands of

agricultural workers thrown off the land, and the long reign of King Cotton as the region's economic backbone was finally brought to an end.

Even more important was World War I. Its onset in Europe, in 1914, brought a halt - within three years - to the massive immigration of European industrial workers which had been going on for some sixty years. The North needed workers, and the South had too many.

In addition, the political and social climate was deteriorating. Between 1890 and 1910, most African Americans in the South had lost the right to vote through restrictive requirements such as property qualifications, poll taxes, literacy tests, and the "grandfather clause" that limited the vote to those whose grandfathers were registered voters, thus disqualifying blacks who had gotten the franchise only with the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870.

Intimidation and outright violence were also used not only to disenfranchise the black community, but also to control and terrorize it. At least two to three people were lynched every week. Although lynching had been used for decades, it evolved in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, becoming more sadistic and exhibitionist. People were horribly tortured and mutilated for hours in front of huge crowds that included women and children.

Though economic, social, environmental, and political forces were crucial to the migration, so too was the indomitable will of the African-American migrants, their burning desire to control their own destinies. The decision to pull up one's long planted roots and journey into the unknown is not easily made. For southern migrants, it was a balancing act. Serious questions had to be answered: How bad is it here? How good is it there? Who in the family will make the journey? How will those left behind be cared for? How much will it cost? Where will I live?

Migration Fever

Every conceivable method was used to draw the black labor supply from the South. Labor agents from northern companies stood on street corners offering train passes to the young, male, and strong. It soon sparked a migration fever. Black newspapers carried job advertisements touting good wages and other advantages of living in the North. They also published success stories about recent migrants already making more money than they had ever dreamed possible. Their letters confirming success were read out in churches, barbershops, and meeting halls. Southerners soaked up all the information available: Was this real? Would they pay? What was it like up North?

Rarely did entire families travel together. Young men between eighteen and thirty-five who had worked as unskilled industrial laborers were usually the first to go. Many were married and had children and expected to reunite with their families as soon as they had "made their way."

The migrants headed to the large industrial centers - Detroit, Pittsburgh, New York, and most of all, Chicago.

The Journey North

Getting to "the Promised Land" did not come cheap, so many migrants made the journey in stages, stopping off and working in places in the South, then continuing on their way. This so-called step migration could take a very long time. Painter Jacob Lawrence recalled that his family was "moving up the coast, as many families were during that migration . . . . We moved up to various cities until we arrived - the last two cities I can remember before moving to New York were Easton, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia."

During the early period, northern employers assisted the migrants with transportation. Their agents gave out travel passes whose cost was often deducted from future wages. These agents, who were paid a flat fee for each worker they produced, were selective, favoring those who appeared in good health, men over women, the young over the old.

Meanwhile, local authorities were trying to deny the labor agents access to the black community. Agents could be thrown in jail or fined for coming to the South and petitioning blacks to move up North. Sometimes Northern employer passes were not honored at the depots or train conductors were told to keep driving past stations with African Americans on the platform. On many occasions, travelers were pulled off trains to prevent them from leaving the South.

Networks and Media

Many African-American newspapers were leading players in the epic drama that was the Great Migration. By the turn of the century, the black press was becoming a more effective weapon for the community in its struggle against racism. Robert Abbott's The Chicago Defender was the unquestioned star. The Defender emphasized southern racial injustice and provided African Americans in the region with information they could read nowhere else. Police in several cities confiscated copies, but vendors responded by smuggling them in from rural areas. Pullman porters secretly delivered bales of papers on their trips from Chicago. Copies were mailed in packages that disguised their contents. One Mississippi county declared The Chicago Defender German propaganda and banned it.

A New Industrial Landscape

The Great Migration spurred a massive increase in the African-American communities in northern cities. In the decade between 1910 and 1920, New York's black population rose by 66 percent, Chicago's by 148 percent, Philadelphia's by 500 percent. Detroit experienced an amazing growth rate of 611 percent.

Once settled, usually with the aid of family members or friends from "down home," migrants strove to achieve their vision of the American Dream. Long hours and several jobs were not unusual. The great majority was on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Many had been skilled craftsmen in the South but were barred from such jobs in the North by company policy, union regulations, or white-only traditions within various trades.

There was also a wide disparity in pay scales. In Alabama, unskilled foundry workers earned $2.50 for a ten-hour day. The same workers in Illinois took home $4.25. As a result, southern migrants, at times unwittingly, worked for less than the going rate. White workers were decidedly unhappy at being undercut.

The migrants also became easy scapegoats. In the eyes of most whites, low wages, deteriorating factory conditions, unemployed white males, all had but one cause: black workers had been brought in.

After wages, the most common complaint among migrants was lack of opportunity for advancement. The foremen, they stated, favored white workers in the distribution of work, recognition of efficiency, and the opportunity to work overtime.

Picket line at the Mid-City Realty Company, Chicago, Illinois, July 1941 John Vachon, Photographer

Hard Life in the North

Besides the white-black competition for employment in the cities, there was also white-black competition for living space. White opposition effectively closed the market to newcomers, thereby creating ghettos. Soon, the city developed into a black inner-city core with a white suburban ring. With a string of unfair housing policies, City government, banks, and realtors conspired to keep African Americans' residential opportunities constricted.

On a single day in Chicago real-estate brokers had over six hundred black families applying for housing, with only fifty-three units available. When the migrants did find housing accommodations, they were usually dilapidated and barely habitable. Landlords maximized their profits by dividing large units into tiny flats and raising rents. Black neighborhoods became seriously overcrowded as a result.

Apartment building in a black section of Chicago, Illinois, April 1941 Russell Lee, Photographer Gelatin-silver print FSA-OWI Collection Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (126)

The combination of overcrowding, poverty, and poor access to quality medical treatment - even in the North there were few black physicians and hospitals were generally segregated - ensured a variety of serious health problems in African-American communities. Working long, arduous hours in badly ventilated spaces, coming home to equally unhealthy conditions, and getting insufficient rest and nutrition made migrants particularly susceptible to many infectious illnesses. African Americans death rates were consistently higher than those of whites. Children were even more at risk. A shocking number died before the age of ten; more than a quarter of these succumbed before their first birthday. The mortality rate for black infants was twice that of white babies. The deaths soared during the steamy summer months in overcrowded slums.

The black elite sought to distance itself from the newcomers, citing the migrants’ lack of education and rural background. Black migrants responded to social isolation by forming communities that were comprised of people from the southern areas they had left behind. In northern cities, one could find blocks of people from the same general area of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, or the Carolinas. Sometimes entire church communities moved together. Throughout the urban North, the migration brought concentrations of African Americans, and the combination of concentration and hope produced vibrant black communities.

Legacies

Though they faced discrimination, exclusion, and violence, African-American migrants never stopped moving forward. In 1890, 63 percent of all black male laborers worked in agriculture. By 1930, only 42 percent did so. During that period, the number of African-American schoolteachers more than doubled, the number of black-owned businesses tripled, and the literacy rate soared from 39 to 85 percent.

Many newcomers discovered their entrepreneurial talents as storeowners, real-estate brokers, funeral directors, providers of various skilled services to their community and to the larger population. The large numbers of migrants resulted in the formation of new institutions. By the mid-1920s, there were over two hundred black hospitals and twenty-five nursing schools in the United States.

Under the banner of black self-help, several social service organizations were founded to aid migrants and, more generally, uplift the black community from the inside. Many northern churches also established recreation centers and welfare agencies to respond to the needs of their members.

Yet ultimately, leaving the South was not about economic opportunity or living a "higher moral life." Most migrants paid dearly, in some coin or other, for their departure. The Great Migration was about African Americans starting over and making sacrifices for future generations. As W. E. B. Du Bois concluded, the journey north represented not the end of a struggle but only its beginning.

"The Great Migration." AAME :. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2016.