Population+Change+In+Cities

The Black Migration Where It Comes Together 2

The Great Migration was the movement of millions of African Americans out of the rural South from 1914 to 1950. Most of them moved to large industrial cities in the North. They moved as individuals or small groups. The government did not help them move.



Almost 95% of all African Americans lived in the South in 1890 and some 90% of them lived in rural areas. By the 1960s, 90% of all African Americans lived outside the South and 95% lived in urban areas. The population change came in two different times. The first was with World War I, when European immigration slowed to almost a complete stop leaving northern businessmen without enough workers. African Americans came north to fill those jobs. Laws and injustice in the South made others move as well. For example the Jim Crow laws and the decline of Southern farming also led African Americans to move north. Leaving the south provided an opportunity to start new and make better lives for themselves. The second wave began at the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II. Still a country to city migration, some of the destinations now included the cities of the West Coast as well as the older urban centers.

. The span of the big migration is best seen in Detroit, Michigan. In 1910, the African American population of Detroit was just 6,000, but this jumped to 120,000 by the time of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Other cities, like Chicago and New York City also experienced huge rises in their African American population.

The Great Migration created the first large, urban black communities in the North. The North saw its black population rise about 20 percent between 1910 and 1930. Cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Cleveland saw some of the biggest increases.