The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of six million Black Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1910 and 1970. It was substantially driven by poor economic and social conditions due to prevalent racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern states where Jim Crow laws were upheld. In particular, continued lynchings motivated a portion of the migrants, as Black Americans searched for social reprieve. The historic change brought by the migration was amplified because the migrants, for the most part, moved to the then-largest cities in the United States (New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.) at a time when those cities had a central cultural, social, political, and economic influence over the United States; there, Black Americans established culturally influential communities of their own. (with excepts from, Gregory, James. The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America, Chapter 4: "Black Metropolis" (University of North Carolina Press, 2005)

From the earliest U.S. population statistics in 1780 until 1910, more than 90% of the Black-American population lived in the American South, making up the majority of the population in three Southern states: Louisiana (until about 1890), South Carolina (until the 1920s), and Mississippi (until the 1930s). But by the end of the Great Migration, just over half of the Black-American population lived in the South, while a little less than half lived in the North and West. Moreover, the Black-American population had become highly urbanized. In 1900, only one-fifth of Black Americans in the South were living in urban areas. By 1960, half of the Black Americans in the South lived in urban areas, and by 1970, more than 80% of Black Americans nationwide lived in cities. In 1991, Nicholas Lemann wrote:

Some historians analyze the Great Migration in two parts, a first Great Migration (1910–1940), during which about 1.6 million people moved from mostly rural areas in the South to northern industrial cities, and a Second Great Migration (1940–1970), which began after the Great Depression, during which at least five million people—including townspeople with urban skills—moved to the North and West.

Since the civil rights movement, the trend has reversed, with more Black Americans moving to the South, albeit far more slowly. Dubbed the New Great Migration, these moves were generally spurred by the economic difficulties of cities in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, growth of jobs in the "New South" and its lower cost of living, family and kinship ties, and lessening discrimination.

Causes

The primary factors for migration among southern African Americans were segregation, indentured servitude, convict leasing, an increase in the spread of racist ideology, widespread lynching (nearly 3,500 African Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1968), and lack of social and economic opportunities in the South. The Southern sharecropping system, agricultural issues such as cotton boll weevil infestations, flooding, the South's pervasive exclusion of African Americans from political power and representation, and oppressive Jim Crow laws also motivated African Americans to migrate northward.

Some factors pulled migrants to the North, such as labor shortages in Northern factories brought about by World War I, resulting in thousands of vacancies in steel mills, railroads, meatpacking plants, and the automobile industry. Around 1.2 million European immigrants arrived during 1914 while only 300,000 arrived the next year. The enlistment of workers into the military also affected the labor supply. Labor agents were sent by Northern businesses to recruit Southern workers, and Northern companies offered special incentives to encourage Black workers to relocate, including free transportation and low-cost housing. Wages for Northern jobs could be more than twice those of Southern ones.

First Great Migration (1910–1940)

When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, less than 8% of the African-American population lived in the Northeastern or Midwestern United States. This began to change over the next decade to such an extent that a U.S. Senate committee ordered an investigation into the causes of the mass migration of Exodusters from the South during the preceding decade, especially to Kansas, where many sought refuge. In 1900, about 90% of Black Americans still lived in Southern states.

Between 1910 and 1930, the African-American population in Northern states increased by about 40% as a result of migration, mostly to major cities. Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, and New York City saw some of the biggest increases in the early part of the twentieth century. Tens of thousands of Black workers were recruited for industrial jobs, such as positions related to the expansion of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Cities which saw high levels of Black migration also attracted millions of European immigrants, and tensions formed between them as they competed for jobs and scarce housing.

James Gregory calculates decade-by-decade migration volumes in his book The Southern Diaspora. Black migration picked up from the start of the new century, with 204,000 leaving in the first decade. The pace accelerated with the outbreak of World War I and continued through the 1920s. By 1930, there were 1.3 million former southerners living in other regions.

Tensions and violence With the migration of African Americans northward and the mixing of White and Black workers in factories, the tension was building, largely driven by White workers. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) advocated for separation between European and African Americans in the workplace. Though non-violent protests such as walk-outs occurred, building tensions soon erupted in violence.

In 1917, the East St. Louis riot, known as one of the bloodiest workplace riots, killed between 40 and 200 African Americans and displaced more than 6,000 from their homes. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) responded to the violence with the Silent March. More than 10,000 African-American men and women demonstrated in Harlem, New York. Conflicts continued after World War I, and African-American labor activism continued.

The late summer and autumn of 1919 came to be known as the Red Summer, as violence and prolonged rioting between Black and White Americans plagued major U.S. cities. Cities affected by the violence included Washington D.C., Chicago, Omaha, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Elaine, Arkansas, a small rural town southwest of Memphis.Chicago Commission on Race Relations. The Negro in Chicago: A Study in Race Relations and a Race Riot in 1919. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1922.

The race riots peaked in Chicago, with the most violence and death occurring there. The authors of The Negro in Chicago; a study of race relations and a race riot, an official report from 1922 on race relations in Chicago, came to the conclusion that there were many factors that led to the violent outbursts in Chicago. Principally, many Black workers had assumed the jobs of White men who went to go fight in World War I. As the war ended in 1918, many men returned home to find out their jobs had been taken by Black men who were willing to work for far less.

By the time the rioting and violence had subsided in Chicago, 38 people had lost their lives, with 500 more injured. Additionally, $250,000 worth of property was destroyed, and more than a thousand people were left homeless. In other cities across the nation many more had been affected by the violence of the Red Summer. The Red Summer enlightened many to the growing racial tension in America. The violence in these major cities prefaced the Harlem Renaissance, an African-American cultural revolution, in the 1920s. Racial violence appeared again in Chicago in the 1940s and in Detroit as well as other cities in the Northeast as racial tensions over housing and employment discrimination grew.

Second Great Migration (mid 1940s–1970)

The Great Depression wiped out job opportunities in the northern industrial belt, especially for African Americans, and temporarily caused a sharp reduction in migration. In the 1930s and 1940s, increasing mechanization of agriculture virtually brought the institution of sharecropping that had existed since the Civil War to an end, causing many landless Black farmers to be forced off of the land.. With the defense buildup for World War II and with the post-war economic prosperity, migration was revived, with larger numbers of Black Americans leaving the South through the 1960s.

This wave of migration often resulted in overcrowding of urban areas due to exclusionary housing policies meant to keep African-American families out of developing suburbs. For example, in the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.

Approximately 1.4 million Black southerners moved north or west in the 1940s, followed by 1.1 million in the 1950s, and another 2.4 million people in the 1960s and early 1970s. By the late 1970s, as deindustrialization and the Rust Belt crisis took hold, the Great Migration came to an end.

Migration patterns

Big cities were the principal destinations of southerners throughout the two phases of the Great Migration. In the first phase, eight major cities attracted two-thirds of the migrants: New York and Chicago, followed in order by Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis. The Second great Black migration increased the populations of these cities while adding others as destinations, including the Western states. Western cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, and Portland also attracted African Americans in large numbers.

There were clear migratory patterns that linked particular states and cities in the South to corresponding destinations in the North and West. Almost half of those who migrated from Mississippi during the first Great Migration, for example, ended up in Chicago, while those from Virginia tended to move to Philadelphia. For the most part, these patterns were related to geography (i.e. longitude), with the closest cities attracting the most migrants (such as Los Angeles and San Francisco receiving a disproportionate number of migrants from Texas and Louisiana). When multiple destinations were equidistant, chain migration played a larger role, with migrants following the path set by those before them.

African Americans from the South also migrated to industrialized Southern cities, in addition to northward and westward to war-boom cities. There was an increase in Louisville's defense industries, making it a vital part of America's effort into World War II and Louisville's economy. Industries ranged from producing synthetic rubber, smokeless powders, artillery shells, and vehicle parts. Many industries also converted to creating products for the war effort, such as Ford Motor Company converting its plant to produce military jeeps. The company Hillerich & Bradsby initially made baseball bats and then converted their production into making gunstocks.