TURNING POINTS
When Black Families Left the South and Remade American Cities
Between 1910 and 1970, the Great Migration shifted Black life from the rural South to urban America—and changed the country’s politics, culture, and geography.
About six million Black Americans left the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration. Their decisions reshaped American cities while exposing the limits of northern racial equality.
Between 1910 and 1970, about six million Black Americans left the South for destinations in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. The movement was not directed by a single organization. Families weighed danger, work, and the chance to build a different life, then relied on relatives, newspapers, rail lines, and word of mouth to make their way north and west. [1][2]
Their decisions changed the country’s population map. In 1910, 89 percent of Black Americans lived in the South. By 1970, that share had fallen to 53 percent, and more than 80 percent of Black Americans lived in urban areas. [4]
Leaving a System Built on Control
For many migrants, departure was a response to the conditions of Jim Crow: racial violence, disfranchisement, segregation, and an agricultural economy that kept many Black families dependent on white landowners. The pull of industrial wages mattered, but it was only part of the story. Leaving could also mean stepping away from a political and social order that sharply constrained safety, mobility, and independence. [2]
Southern officials recognized the threat that migration posed to that order. As northern employers sought workers, authorities tried to suppress labor recruiters and obstruct travel. The effort to leave could itself bring scrutiny. [2]
That helps explain why the Great Migration should not be reduced to a labor story. It was a mass relocation shaped by economic necessity, but it was also an assertion of agency by people deciding where they could work, raise families, and exercise their rights.
Two Great Waves
The migration unfolded in two major periods. The first, roughly 1910 to 1940, drew an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people toward northern and midwestern industrial cities. World War I increased factory demand while European immigration slowed, opening jobs that employers struggled to fill. [1]
The second wave, from about 1940 to 1970, was larger, involving roughly 4 to 5 million people. World War II defense production created opportunities in established northern destinations and in western cities. In June 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which prohibited racial discrimination in defense industries and federal agencies involved in defense work. The order did not end workplace discrimination, but it mattered as defense contracts and industrial employment expanded. [1]
The result was a broad remapping of Black life in the United States. Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and other cities became home to growing Black communities whose ties to the South remained strong.
How Information Moved
The migration was decentralized, yet people did not leave without information. Family connections, churches, boardinghouses, rail workers, letters, and Black newspapers carried news about jobs, lodging, and conditions in destination cities. [3]
The *Chicago Defender* was especially influential. It published job information, accounts of life beyond Jim Crow, and letters from migrants. Such reporting made faraway cities more tangible to readers deciding whether to leave. [3]
Railroads supplied the routes, but personal networks made those routes usable. One person might find work and send word home; a relative or neighbor could follow later. Across decades, millions of decisions like these became a national demographic transformation. [1][2]
Northern Opportunity, Northern Barriers
Destination cities offered possibilities that were often unavailable in the Jim Crow South, including industrial work and greater access to the ballot. But migrants did not arrive in places free of racial discrimination. They encountered overcrowded segregated neighborhoods, exclusion from housing and jobs, and segregated schools. [3]
In 1919, racial violence swept through cities including Chicago and Washington, D.C., during the period known as the Red Summer. The violence reflected, in part, white resistance to the changing populations and competition of urban life. [1]
Housing became one of the most consequential sites of conflict. In many northern and western cities, racially restrictive covenants, discriminatory zoning, and lending practices limited where Black residents could live. Later redlining reinforced these boundaries by restricting access to mortgage credit in neighborhoods marked as risky, often because Black residents lived there. [5]
The Great Migration did not create these discriminatory systems. White institutions and decision-makers did. But the growth of Black urban communities made the struggle over housing impossible to ignore, and the resulting patterns of segregation shaped city life for generations. [5]
A Different National Center of Gravity
As Black populations grew in northern, midwestern, and western cities, political influence shifted as well. In the South, Black voting had been systematically suppressed. Elsewhere, Black residents could build electoral influence in city wards and congressional districts, even while confronting discrimination and exclusion.
The migration also changed American culture. Growing urban Black communities supported new institutions, audiences, publishers, performers, and political organizations. The cultural effects reached well beyond the neighborhoods where migrants settled, helping make Black urban life central to American music, art, and public debate. [2]
By 1970, the Great Migration had transformed a population that had been overwhelmingly rural and Southern into one that was predominantly urban and nationally distributed. [4]
The Movement Did Not End the Story
Beginning in the late 1970s, many Black Americans and their descendants moved toward growing Southern metropolitan areas in what is often called the Reverse Great Migration. These moves often led to cities rather than to the rural communities earlier generations had left. [4]
The Great Migration remains a story of movement, but also of power: who could choose a home, find work, vote, and claim space in American cities. Six million departures did not end racial inequality. They did, however, redraw the nation’s urban geography and move Black political and cultural life onto a larger national stage. [1][2][4]
Frequently Asked Questions
What caused the Great Migration?
Black Americans left the South for overlapping reasons, including racial violence, disfranchisement, segregation, and limited economic independence in the agricultural South. Wartime industrial demand and opportunities in northern, midwestern, and western cities drew migrants elsewhere. [1][2]
How many people took part in the Great Migration?
About six million Black Americans moved out of the South between 1910 and 1970. Roughly 1.5 to 2 million participated in the first major wave, from about 1910 to 1940, and about 4 to 5 million in the second, from roughly 1940 to 1970. [1]
What was the Reverse Great Migration?
The Reverse Great Migration refers to the movement of Black Americans toward the South beginning in the late 1970s. Unlike much of the earlier migration, it often led to expanding Southern metropolitan areas rather than rural communities. [4]
TIMELINE
Key moments
Sources
- The Great Migration (1910-1970) — National Archives and Records Administration
- The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration — Smithsonian Magazine
- The Great Migration: Classroom Materials — Library of Congress
- The Great Migration, 1910 to 1970 — U.S. Census Bureau
- The Great Migration and Residential Segregation in American Cities during the Twentieth Century — Social Science History (National Center for Biotechnology Information)
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