Black History: The Great Migration

Black people have never had a place of historical reference since being stolen from their native Africa. They were mixed together, people from different tribes, and relegated to a place of Massa’s choice, which was never called home. In order to survive, they made the best of a situation that was the worst evil known to man. However, about forty years after the Civil War when Ol Abe said slavery had ended, but it had not; conditions continued to be as bad as they ever were.

So a search was on to find a better life without the racial hostilities and suffering they were forced to endure. History reports this event as the Great Migration; it was the movement of millions of African American’s out of the rural South to the Northeast, Midwest, and West for most of the 20th century. It has come to be known as a migration, but it was more likely a “Defection” from the south because of the wretched system of Jim Crow and the brutal racism that existed.

Some historians differentiate between the first Great Migration (1910–1930), numbering about 1.6 million migrants who left mostly rural areas to migrate to northern and Midwestern industrial cities. After a lull during the Great Depression, a Second Great Migration (1940 to 1970), in which 5 million or more people moved, including many to California and other western cities.

Between 1910 and 1970, blacks moved from 14 states of the South, especially Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, to the other three cultural (and census-designated) regions of the United States. More townspeople with urban skills moved during the second migration. By the end of the Second Great Migration, African Americans had become an urbanized population. More than 80 percent lived in cities. A majority of 53 percent remained in the South while 40 percent lived in the North and 7 percent in the West.

A reverse migration had gathered strength since 1965, dubbed the New Great Migration, the term for demographic changes from 1965 to the present in which many blacks have returned to the South, generally to states and cities where economic opportunities are the best. Since 1965, economic difficulties of cities in the Northeastern and Midwestern and Midwestern United States, the growth of jobs in the New South with lower costs of living, family and kinship ties, and improving racial relations have all acted to attract African Americans to the Southern United States in substantial numbers.

Please watch this video and never forget our great history. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

FaceBook @ John T. Wills

Like my FaceBook Page

Twitter @ John T. Wills