The 6 million people who changed America, 100th Anniversary of the Great African-American Migration

[pampango]

Jacob Lawrence: Great Migration art shows American turning point

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Migration - the massive upheaval of African-Americans from the rural south to the industrial north of the United States.

In all six million people left the south, fleeing segregation under the so-called Jim Crow laws. They were seeking the freedoms offered in major northern cities such as New York and Chicago.

On hand to depict the Great Migration was the young African-American artist Jacob Lawrence, who painted 60 panels capturing the migration in all its facets.

Regarded as a landmark series in American art, these panels are about to go on display in New York's Museum of Modern Art. Curator Leah Dickerman spoke to the BBC about the show.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32141921

The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1910 and 1970. Between 1910 and 1970, blacks moved from 14 states of the South, especially Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, to the other three cultural (and census-designated) regions of the United States. According to US census figures, Georgia suffered net losses in its African-American population for three consecutive decades from 1920–1950.

In 1900, about 90 percent of blacks still lived in Southern states. By the end of the Great Migration, African Americans had become an urbanized population. More than 80 percent of blacks lived in cities. A majority of 53 percent remained in the South, while 40 percent lived in the North (including what we now call the MidWest), and 7 percent in the West. According to Nicholas Lemann, the Great Migration:

was one of the largest and most rapid mass internal movements in history—perhaps the greatest not caused by the immediate threat of execution or starvation. In sheer numbers it outranks the migration of any other ethnic group—Italians or Irish or Jews or Poles—to (the U.S.). For blacks, the migration meant leaving what had always been their economic and social base in America, and finding a new one.

Between 1910 and 1930, the African-American population increased by about forty percent in Northern states as a result of the migration, mostly in the major cities. Cities including Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York City had some of the biggest increases in the early part of the twentieth century. Blacks were recruited for industrial jobs, such as positions with the expansion of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Because changes were concentrated in cities, which had also attracted millions of new or recent European immigrants, tensions rose as the people competed for jobs and housing. Tensions were often most severe between ethnic Irish, defending their recently gained positions and territory, and recent immigrants and blacks.


White tenants seeking to prevent
blacks from moving into the Sojourner
Truth housing project in Detroit
erected this sign, 1942

Because so many people migrated in a short period of time, the African-American migrants were often resented by the urban European-American working class (often recent immigrants themselves); fearing their ability to negotiate rates of pay or secure employment, they felt threatened by the influx of new labor competition. Sometimes those who were most fearful or resentful were the last immigrants of the 19th and new immigrants of the 20th century. In many cities, working classes tried to defend what they saw as "their" territories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_%28African_American%29

[olddots]

1. without African American culture

this country would have no culture .

[jaysunb]

2. my family was a part of that movement in 1950.

From Mississippi to Ohio. I can still remember the train ride. The smells, the people, the different landscapes and most of all the tall buildings. Changing from the " colored car" in St Louis still resonates with me today. I'd never been so close to white people. They were much different than those I'd just escaped from.
Thanks for posting this. If you haven't already, you should read "The Warmth of other Suns" by Wilkinson. It tells mine and millions of others story.

[pampango]

3. Thanks for the personal input on the Great Migration.

My wife is reading "The Warmth of Other Suns" for her book club. I will read it when she is finished. Thanks again.