History

The African American "Great Migration" and Beyond

Author(s): Stewart E. Tolnay

Source: Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 29 (2003), pp. 209-232

Published by: Annual Reviews

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036966

Accessed: 17-01-2017 15:54 UTC

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BLACK MIGRATION AND MOBILITY

Million

Southem-born

12

OTotal in non-South

10

8

6

4

2

0

1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

Figure 1 Number of African Americans (total and Southern-born) living in no

areas from 1900 to 1990. Data estimated from the Integrated Public Use Micr

available from the Minnesota Population Center (Ruggles & Sobek 2001).

LEAVING DIXIE: WHO WERE THE MIGRANTS AND

WHY DID THEY LEAVE THE SOUTH?

Social scientists have invested much energy in their efforts to establish a pr

of the "typical" participant in the Great Migration. The original and most

ing image of the migrants is that of an illiterate sharecropper, displaced fro

rural South because of agricultural distress or reorganization (e.g., Chicago

mission on Race Relations 1922; Drake & Cayton 1962; Epstein 1918; Frazier

1932, 1939; Mossell 1921; Woofter 1920). This image dominates the many ethno-

graphic studies of black migrants living in northern cities during the early stages

211

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