The New Great Migration: African American Migration South
By Jacob Lawrence, 1917-2000, Artist (NARA record: 1981548) (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
From 1916 to 1970, more than six million African Americans moved north from the rural South in what was called the Great Migration. Reasons cited for this movement included harsh Jim Crow laws and a lack of economic opportunity. Many people found relief in Northern and Midwestern cities, which had a great need for industrial workers during the beginning of the 20th century, writes Alexis Buchanan in NPQ.
A hundred years later, many of these cities are witnessing an exodus dubbed “The New Great Migration.” Cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and even New York City have lost many thousands of black residents over the last decade, while Southern cities like Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas have seen a surge of black residents during the same period.
This new migration is being led by college-educated people and retirees, some of whom are returning to the very South they left during the height of the original migration. In the early part of the twentieth century, African Americans looking for opportunity headed north. They could earn more working in factories than they could as sharecroppers. The cities embraced them, glad to have workers to meet the industrial demand. Today, the opposite is occurring.
KJ