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The Great Migration started in 1910 and continued through 1930. It was a period in time which saw 1.6 million African Americans relocate from the southern states to the northern states(AAME). There are four main which contributed to this occurring. The first was better and more skilled job opportunities available in the north. Many blacks were not allowed to work or hold high paying jobs in the South. The second was the oppression of African Americans in the South. They were treated very poorly and were often victims of racism and crime at a much higher rate than in the Northern states. The third was they wanted to have the right to vote. The Jim Crow laws restricted African Americans from basic rights including voting, in the South, while …show more content…
“According to Tuskegee Institute, more than 4,700 people were lynched between 1882 and 1959 in a campaign of terror led by the Ku Klux Klan.”(GlobalSecurity) Lynching is the killing of someone by a mob for a crime without a fair trial.(Websters) However, in the North, there was hardly any lynchings and African Americans could feel safe. Also in the South, hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan were terrorizing the towns spreading white supremacist propaganda and killing African Americans as they went through.”...during the 1920’s, when its estimated strength was some four or five million members”(GlobalSecurity). With that many members the threat was very real and in most cases in your town. This made it very difficult to be African American and live in the South so therefore millions of African Americans moved …show more content…
In the North, housing for all of the new people was tough. Housing became very hard to come buy and apartments were overcrowded and very unsanitary. Neighborhoods were also turning into areas for one race. On top of living conditions with all of the new workers coming into cities the competition for jobs skyrocketed. However not all changes were bad, without The Great Migration our country would be completely different today. As a result of the segregated neighborhoods the Harlem Renaissance was born which was a literary movement by African Americans from segregated areas. Also, African Americans were able to receive better education, which better equipped them for higher paying jobs. Lastly, they created a more culturally diverse society which led to the eventual equality for
Groups of people soon received new rights. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. It gave black Americans full citizenship and guaranteed them equal treatment. Also, it passed the Fourteenth Amendment to make sure that the Supreme Court couldn’t declare the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional. The amendment made blacks citizens of the United States and the states in which they lived. Also, states were forbidden to deprive blacks of life, liberty, or property without due process. Additionally, blacks could not be discriminated by the law. If a state would deprive blacks of their rights as citizens, it’s number of congressional representatives would be reduced. The Civil Rights Act as well as the Fourteenth Amendment affected both the North and the South.
The population of African Americans from 1865 to 1900 had limited social freedom. Social limitations are limitations that relate “…to society and the way people interact with each other,” as defined by the lesson. One example of a social limitation African Americans experienced at the time is the white supremacy terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK. The KKK started as a social club formed by former confederate soldiers, which rapidly became a domestic terrorist organization. The KKK members were white supremacists who’s objective was to ward off African Americans from using their new political power. In an attempts to achieve their objective, Klansmen would burn African American schools, scare and threaten voters, destroy the homes of African Americans and also the homes of whites who supported African American rights. The greatest terror the KKK imposed was that of lynching. Lynching may be defined via the lesson as, “…public hanging for an alleged offense without benefit of trial.” As one can imagine these tactics struck fear into African Americans and the KKK was achiev...
Eric Arnesen’s book, Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents, successfully portrays the struggles of early life for African Americans as well as why they migrated to the north in the years of World War I. During the first world war, the lives of as many as 500,000 African Americans changed dramatically as southern blacks migrated to the north. The migration escalated a shift in the population from extremely rural people to urban people in the years following the second world war. Those who lived in the south, particularly black southerners, had many reasons for why they wanted to move to the north. Due to the failure of Reconstruction, which was supposed to re-build the South after the Union victory and grant slaves
During the 1980's southern blacks from the United States dedicated to migrate to the north with the belief that the north had more opportunities and advantages blacks. Although, Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington opposed a migration to the north, millions of blacks migrated northward. The industries for the blacks migrating t o the north was what Douglas and Washington feared, black northern workers being placed in the same situation prior to their movement. Blacks were going to experience the same obstacles and disadvantages as they had in the south just with different situations. Northern blacks were going to experience prejudice, riots and murdering.
During 1910-1970 the great migration was taking place, which was the movement of southern African American’s to the north/northern cities. The great migration was an event that seemed as if it was unstoppable and that it was going to happen. In the South African American’s faced racial discrimination, sharecropping, bad working conditions, low wages, racial segregation and political detriments. This is all supported by documents 1-4. The great migration was an event which helped improve the conditions for African Americans in America.
The Great Migration was a huge relocation of African Americans from the Southern states of the United States to northern and Midwestern cities. This occurred between the years of 1910 and 1970. Over 6 million African Americans traveled to Northern cities during the migration. Some northern city destinations were Richmond, D.C, Baltimore, New York, and Newark. Western and Midwestern destinations were those such as Los Angelos, San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit. During this time period and previous years, Jim Crow laws in the South were greatly in affect and causing African Americans a rough time due to the racism they faced. After Reconstruction had ended, white supremacy had taken it's toll in the South and Jim Crow had taken over.. The North, Midwest, and West of the United States began to face a shortage in industrial laborers due to World War I beginning and putting an end to immigration of Europeans to the United States. African Americans felt that heading north was their escape from harsh laws and unsatisfactory economic opportunities. Many people, including teenagers, from the South would write letters to the Chicago Defender asking for help to come North and find work because in the South it was hard to make a living. Some migrants already had family members in the North. For example, James Green, an elderly man who migrated at a young age from Goldsboro, North Carolina, had an aunt who lived in New York, who wanted him to be with her. He and his wife moved to New York, after his return from the air force. Because
After the end of the civil war African Americans had more opportunity and freedom since the men were soldiers of the civil war. Most African Americans had the plan to leave the south and move to up north because of the racism still lingering in the south, for example the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court case. This case was about a light-skin colored man sitting in the “white” car of a train. Although he was light-skin he was still considered black and got arrested for sitting in that section of the train. This was an opportunity to express racial equality, but the end result was devastating. The Supreme Court declared that segregation of race was to be still constitutionally acceptable. Also economic status in the south was getting lower and there was not as much labor due to destroyed crops.
During the 1940's, millions of African-Americans moved from the South to the North in search of industrial opportunities. As a result of this migration, a third of all black Americans lived outside the south by 1950.... ... middle of paper ... ... While the war changed the lives of every American, the most notable changes were in demographics, the labor force, economic prosperity and cultural trends.
The Great Migration was the movement in which 6 million African Americans from the South traveled to the North for more work opportunities. The South treated them harshly in terms of segregation and work opportunities. After World War I, segregation policies known as Jim Crow Laws were enforced in the South and forced the blacks to contribute to the sharecropping system. In the meantime, the North was lacking a great number of industrial workers due to the shortage of European immigrants after the Great War. Thus, many of the black southerners left and moved to the North.
After liberation, most of the African Americans operated roles as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. “And Black men’s feet learned roads. Some said goodbye cheerfully…others fearfully, with terrors of unknown dangers in their mouths…others in their eagerness for distance said nothing…” (Takaki 311). The migration to the north guaranteed blacks opportunities toward employment, which led them to obtain sharper wages. Unfortunately, the northern part of the United States was not how immigrants perceived it to be: lack of segregation.
...dation and violence, including lynching, were an ever-present danger. Northern African Americans were not unaffected and suffered the same widespread discrimination and school and residential segregation.
The Great Migration was the movement of two million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast and West between 1910 and 1940. In 1900, about ninety percent of African Americans resided in formed slave holding states in the South. Beginning in 1910, the African American population increased by nearly twenty percent in Northern states, mostly in the biggest cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Cleveland. African Americans left the rural south because they believed they could escape the discrimination and racial segregation of Jim Crow laws by seeking refuge in the North. Some examples of Jim Crow laws include the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks (“The History of Jim Crow). In addition, economic depression due to the boll weevil infestation of Southern cotton fields in the late 1910s and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 forced many sharecroppers to look for other emplo...
When the newcomers came to the north and west Starling, Gladney, and Foster it wasn’t a warm welcome. Wilkerson says that often when immigrants from the southern states came to the north or west mostly people closed the door on them and didn’t want to help. It a long time for them to find there place in major cities of the North and West, but southerners who stayed end up finding their way using elements of the old culture with the new opportunities in the north. Also traveling to the newer states wasn’t easy for African Americans. They usually traveling by train, boat or bus. And it was very dangerous to travel because of the gas station your able to stop at and even stop to get food. Also the long trips ahead. You would never know what troubles would be head of the journey. Typically once the black citizens arrived in the state it was hard to settle and to find a job with leak of skills. Like Ida Mae husband George ended up hauling ice up flights of stairs in cold Chicago and Ida Mae did domestic jobs before finding a decent job. Wilkerson also states that it took them a long time before really get settled in an affordable home in south side of Chicago. Then the journey to south was not cheap to make it far so many African Americans took in mind that having money before leaving would be the
The Great Migration was a time where more then 6 million African Americans migrated North of the United States during 1910-1920. The Northern Parts of the United States, where African Americans mainly moved to was Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia and Cleveland. They migrated because of the work on railroads and the labor movement in factories. They wanted a better life style and felt that by moving across the United States, they would live in better living conditions and have more job opportunities. Not only did they chose to migrate for a better lifestyle but they were also forced out of their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregation laws. They were forced to work in poor working conditions and compete for
While Jim Crow dominated the social landscape of the South for much of the 20th century, formal segregation and acts of racism also existed in the North during this time. Blacks who moved to the North in the Great Migration after the First World War might have been able to live without the same degree of oppression experienced in the South, however the elements of racism and discrimination still existed. Despite the work by abolitionist, life for free blacks was still harsh because of northern racism. Most free blacks lived in overpopulated ghettoes in the major Northern cities such New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. In the Philadelphia Negro, W.E.B Dubois’ does a social study on race, and uncovers many social problems that plagued African