Let’s flashback to the turn of the 20th century. Just like the dawning of any
new era, times were changing back then. The world was fresh into the
1900’s, the nefarious institution of chattel slavery was abolished some
forty-plus years prior, and all signs in geopolitics were pointing to a World
War. Because of the aforementioned demise of slavery in the United
States, the American South was economically destitute, and took many
years to recover.
The very same people who were directly affected by chattel slavery –
American Blacks (known as “Negroes” back then) were no longer legally
obligated to a life of thankless, penniless toil under the heavy hand of rich
white landowners. However, their then-recent emancipated status in this
country was not without strife and sometimes life-threatening challenges. In
the late 1870’s, lawmakers in the Southern states enacted the “Jim Crow”
laws. These statutes were aimed directly at the millions of newly freed
Blacks, who were collectively picking up the pieces of the life that they had
always known as slaves, and began forming highly productive communities
around the U.S. that would eventually become competitive with the
communities of their white counterparts.
The effects of Jim Crow proved to be demoralizing, disenfranchising, and
outright deadly to countless Black people across the South, and because of
this, many of the victims of such oppression would grow weary of how they
were being treated.
Fast forward back to the early 1900’s, and we find that the major cities of
the American Northeast, Midwest, and West began to bypass the fiscally
broken South – forming booming industries which included manufacturing,
construction, and logistics, to name a few. The economic explosion that
these regions experienced naturally called for the manpower to build up
and maintain such industries in these places.
Around 1910, Blacks across the South began to become aware of the
tremendous economic, educational, and political opportunities that resided
in other regions of the country. Thus, the First Great Migration was born.
Meanwhile, in the South, the crushing reach of Jim Crow ensued,
prompting approximately 2 MILLION Blacks to relocate to Northern cities.
These cities included New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee,
and Cleveland, to name a few.
As if the number of Blacks relocating from 1910-1940 weren’t staggering
enough, there were reports that showed several more million Blacks
migrated away from the South from around 1940-1970. During the second
wave of The Great Migration, Black people were not only relocating to the
cities of the North, but this time, the migration saw Blacks moving to the
cities of the West, such as Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Portland,
and Seattle.
A number of decades after The Great Migration ended in the 1970’s, the
U.S. witnessed yet another migration of Black Americans – this time BACK
to the South. The 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta has been said to be
one critical point in enticing Blacks to moving back. Since the 1990’s, other
Southern cities that have welcomed the repatriation of Blacks include
Charlotte, Houston, and Dallas, to name a few.
The Great Black Migration of the 20th century was a significant era in Black
American history, highlighting our resilience as a people, as well as our
ability to adapt and make the most out of any situation we’ve been faced
with as people…no matter how dire the circumstances may be.
By Bryson Clark