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Before 1916, more than 90 percent of the African-American population was living in Southern America. Out of this, only a small fraction of the population was living in urban areas. However, between 1916 and 1970 about 6 million people of African-American origin moved out of the rural southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest and the West in what came to be known as the Great Migration. At the end of this migration the African-Americans had urbanized and living in cities by the end of 1960. Half of those who were still living in the South lived in the urban areas. The Great migration is considered as the largest and most rapid internal movement not brought by threats of starvation or other natural calamities but one which the blacks saw as an opportunity for finding new economic and social base. This paper will discuss the reasons for the great migration, the risks faced the African-Americans during the migration and finally an over view of the long term social and economic impacts brought about by the great migration.

THE GREAT MIGRATION

Key words: Great migration, emancipation, African-Americans.

HE GREAT MIGRATION OF THE BLACK POPULATION TO THE NORTH OF UNITED STATES

The great migration of the African-Americans from the rural South took place between 1916 and 1970 and had a big impact on the life style in the cities of the United States. About 6 million Blacks relocated to the cities of North, Midwest and the West from rural South.

The driving force was the unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh laws which took advantage of the need for industrial laborers rising from the First World War (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/02/census-great-migration-reversal/21818127/). This changed when the Great Migration started and the African Americans began to build a new place for themselves in the public life. They confronted social challenges and created a new culture for the black urban that generated an enormous impact in the decades that followed. The towns that were first occupied by the migrants were northern cities such as Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York. Other Migrants headed west to Oakland, Los Angeles, California, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon and Washington (http://www.blackpast.org/aah/great-migration-1915-1960).

Causes of the Great Migration

A combination of economic factors motivated the migration as the blacks desired to escape the oppressive conditions in the south and wanted to take advantages of the great opportunities of prosperity in the north. The rural blacks in the South were engaged in the plantation economy which offered little opportunities for development. They were not able to purchase land and most were tenant farmers, farm labors or sharecroppers. After the World War 1, there was a huge demand for factory workers in the north which offered the southern blacks the opportunity to leave the harsh conditions in the south (http://www.blackpast.org/aah/great-migration-1915-1960). At some point, the need for workers in some sectors of the economy had become so desperate that they would pay for blacks to migrate to the north. The Black newspapers carried advertisements of opportunities that were available in the North and West due to the increased production for war supplies (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration).

In 1876, reconstruction came to an end after the post civil war and there was a return of the white supremacy in the south. Policies that were known as Jim Crow were made the law of the land. The laws segregated the blacks forcing them to work the land as sharecroppers which offered little economic opportunity. The Ku Klux Khan (KKK) continued to be practiced underground even after it had been officially dissolved in 1869 and the southerners continued to be subjected to intimidation, violence and lynching. The feudal system brought racism where blacks and the whites had separate public facilities.

Risks Involved in the Great Migration

The migration to the north was a long difficult experience which was made by train, by road, boat and even by horse-drawn carts. The migrants were confronted with unfamiliar procedures, segregated waiting rooms, train coaches and unfriendly conductors. Many travelers made the journey in stages stopping off, and then resume their journey after working in places in the south as fares were expensive. Food and drinks were also not very readily available.

In the initial stages, employers would provide assistance to the migrants in form of travel passes through their agents; however this changed later where the agents favored those who were in good health, men over women and the young over the aged. Due to poverty, the migrants were to take advantage of the any opportunity and many southerners made their way to the north on their own. The employers would therefore cut back on travel passes making it very for the migrants to lead a good life (http://www.inmotionaame.org/print.cfm;jsessionid=f8301084081507054796754?migration=8&bhcp=1). The jobs that were available were in factories, slaughterhouses and foundries and the working were poor and dangerous. Competition for work became common especially for women and also competition for living space crowded the cities. Racism and prejudice became wide spread in the north just like it was in the south where residential neighbors made covenants requiring white landlords not to sell blacks till this covenants were made illegal by the court in 1948. House rent rose and the relations between the blacks and the whites worsened with the resurgence of KKK activity in 1915. The great interracial strife in the U.S history began in the summer 1919 and the most serious one took happened in Chicago in July the same year (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration).

Long Term Social and Cultural Impacts of the Great Migration

For some time, the great migration drained much of the rural population of the South and reduced population growth in some of the regions which changed the demographics of the South. According to James Gregory, the most striking effect of the great migration was the disappearance of the so called “black belt”. When the population of the blacks increased considerably, housing tension led many of them to create own cities within the big cities. This led to growth of new urban African-American culture like the Harlen in New York City which house about 200,000 Africa-Americans by 1920s. The New Negro Movement came out of the black experience during the Great Migration. This movement would later become the Harlem Renaissance resulting into an enormous impact on the culture of the era (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration). There was an increased political activism among the African-Americans which began as a result of the Great Migration. The blacks were being disenfranchised in the South and the migration gave them a new place in the public life in the cities in the North.

In the new cities, the African-Americans working and living in these cities started being increasingly integrated into the society. This marked a transition for many black from the rural to urban workers giving birth to a cultural boom in the cities like Chicago where Bronzeville neighborhood came to be called the Black Metropolis. In the period from 1924 to 1929, many entrepreneurs were blacks and the first YMCA was founded in Bronzeville which was to help new migrants to find jobs in Chicago (http://www.inmotionaame.org/print.cfm;jsessionid=f8301084081507054796754?migration=8&bhcp=1).

Conclusion

The Great migration was one of the largest internal migrations which contributed immensely to changing the urban North, the rural South and finally the entire United states. The blacks were running away from the harsh conditions they were being subjected to in the rural South to go and take up the opportunities in the north. The migration began in 1916 and continued until 1970 by which time about 6 million blacks had settled in the North and the West. However there was a considerable slow down in the 1930s when the Great Depression rocked the country but with the coming of the World War II it picked up again.

By the end of the migration in 1970, it left an unmistakable impact in the South where half of the country’s African-Americas were living there and only about 25 percent living in the rural areas of the South. The migration had a huge impact in the North and the West and contributed in the growth of new cities, development of political movements and new cultural. The migration was not just about economic opportunities but to majority it was the African-Americans having a new beginning and making sacrifices for the generations to come.