The forced migration of poor Blacks from the Gulf Coast region in 2005, instigated by the effects of Hurricane Katrina, recreated circumstances as dire as some Blacks faced after emancipation from slavery.
Facing an undefined future has been overwhelming for many survivors. Families have been disrupted as individuals seek employment in distant communities, and the unskilled and poorly educated among them have difficulty finding work and resources.
In contrast to the forced migration experienced by Hurricane Katrina survivors, historically Black migration has meant Black progress. But that progress has been dependent upon strong networks of communication, establishment of viable communities, including worship communities, and economic independence. This summary, drawn from the research of social historian Homer C. Hawkins, traces some of the historical reasons and results of Black migration within the United States.
1863 – 1899: The Emancipation Proclamation, End of Slavery and Reconstruction
That Blacks would leave the South in such large numbers after the end of slavery is hardly surprising. Facing an undefined future has been overwhelming for many survivors. Families have been disrupted as individuals seek employment in distant communities, and the unskilled and poorly educated among them have difficulty finding work and resources.
Slavery was physically brutal and had a debilitating psychological hold that would last for generations. In the period immediately following emancipation, many blacks languished. In his book A Century of Negro Migration (1918), Carter G. Woodson wrote, “Emancipation meant to them not only freedom from slavery but freedom from responsibility as well. Thus, during their early years of liberty, large numbers of Negroes moved about almost aimlessly and thoughtlessly and made their way especially to the towns, cities and federal military camps.” Others eked out their lives in the South. But the promise of jobs in the North and the potential for land ownership in the West influenced others to migrate.
Hawkins identifies two major factors influencing Black migration in the West. First there was the extension of railways that made possible the transport of supplies and people who would eventually establish townships. Second, the Black press, specifically the nation’s leading Black newspaper, The Chicago Defender, played a major role in promoting the freedoms and opportunities of the western frontier. Southern Blacks were also drawn west by land speculators who distributed advertisements, such as a placard promoting migration to Kansas that read:
All Colored People
that want to
go to Kansas
on September 5th, 1877
Can do so for $5.00
The placard also announced, “Be it Resolved, That we do now organize ourselves into a Colony, as follows--Any person wishing to become a member of this Colony can do so by paying the sum of one dollar ($1.00), and this money is to be paid the first of September, 1877, in installments of twenty-five cents at a time, or otherwise as may be desired.” Large numbers of these advertisements were hard to resist. The federal government extended homesteading rights to both whites and Blacks in Kansas, meaning that after cultivating the land for a short period, farmers would have a chance to buy it. In his study, Hawkins states that in 1879, from 5,000 to 10,000 blacks migrated to Kansas.
Of course, the greater number of Blacks migrated north, following the direction to freedom already established by the Underground Railroad. Again, the Black press played a major role in spreading the word about opportunity. “More Positions Open Than Men For Them,” read one headline in The Chicago Defender, a sentiment that was largely echoed by other Black newspapers. After three of her well-respected business owner friends were lynched in 1892, Ida B. Wells began a campaign in her newspaper, The Memphis Free Speech, telling backs to leave Memphis. As a result, thousands of Blacks left Memphis and migrated to the West. The massive migration that began in the nineteenth century set the stage for urbanization, housing, employment and quality of life trends that would last through the next century.
1900-1949 The Great Migration. The Depression and Two World Wars
Opportunity was greater in the North, but northern life was not without its problems. Once southerners arrived they found that Northern whites resented the increases in the Black population and already established northern Black workers resented more competition for jobs. Further white resentment came from Blacks’ willingness to work for lower wages and their being used as strikebreakers to undermine white labor.
Additionally, southern migrants discovered that housing for Blacks was often scarce in cities, especially where populations were growing quickly. Newly arrived southerners would have to live with northern relatives and friends; in other words, Blacks and their poverty were concentrated in emerging ghettos. Southern migrants would sometimes use northern cities as stepping-stones. A city such as Baltimore was a resting place for those headed to Philadelphia, and Philadelphia was a resting point for those headed to New York. As they moved progressively north, families often split. Spouses, children and extended family might have to be left behind while others went ahead in search of work. Women found work more easily than men since much of the jobs available to them were centered on the home—cleaning, laundry, cooking, etc.
At the turn of the century most Black migrants heading north were unskilled and uneducated laborers. Northern Blacks, those already with families established and working in cities, often sought to distinguish themselves from their newly arrived, poor, rural cousins. Migrants adapted to the pressures of the north—social alienation, unemployment, and racism—by establishing strong routes of communication between themselves and those they left behind. Through letters and word of mouth, migrants kept southern relatives well informed of when and where opportunities and hardships existed.
Despite the hardships, Black migration continued to increase beyond the turn of the century resulting in the period known as the Great Migration (1906-1930). The Great Migration, as well as the economic conditions brought about by World War I (1914-1917), would work in Blacks’ favor. During the Great Migration, cities in the North and Midwest saw a strong influx of Black southerners. Hawkins observes that from “1910 to 1920 the black population of Chicago rose from 44,000 to 109,000; of New York from 91,000 to 152,000, and of Philadelphia from 85,000 to 135,000.” Because of the war, European immigration decreased dramatically, and some black men found opportunity in northern industries replacing white men who were serving abroad. With the shear number of Blacks entering northern cities, a strong and identifiable Black urban culture developed.
In New York, the Harlem Renaissance (1922-1929) took hold. Harlem became America’s Black cultural mecca attracting Blacks as well as whites to witness the genius of jazz musicians, singers, actors, dancers, writers, and visual artists. Chicago, Memphis, and St. Louis and New Orleans became similar Black cultural capitals.
The large increase in the northern Black population also brought Blacks greater social and political presence. The dawn of organizations such as the NAACP (1909) and the Urban League (1911), as well as Marcus Garvey’s Negro Universal Improvement Association (1917) were reflections of the large numbers of urban Blacks, a better educated community, and more widespread prosperity. Less than fifty years after slavery, there was a growing sense of black political agency.
However, with the Second World War, the country’s economy once again changed. The wartime economy needed Black labor, and agencies such the Fair Employment Practices Commission made employment easier to obtain. Migration patterns followed wartime metal, rubber, and chemical industries to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego in the West. The Black population of southern cities, such as Charleston in North Carolina, grew because of its shipping industry. Blacks benefited from industrial jobs, which for the most part paid well over long periods of time and, therefore, helped them build economically stable Black communities. Industrial jobs also created a skilled Black labor force who could take their skills and experience to different parts of the country as they searched for better living conditions.
Not all migration occurred in North. Many Blacks, some who had initially migrated to Kansas and Oklahoma, for example, later migrated to California. Some of these western migrants had fallen victim to the false hopes of sharecropping, while others felt the desperation of the Dust Bowl. Of western migrants’ fate many years later, the Los Angeles Times reported that, “Between 30,000 and 40,00 Black Okies, as they still call themselves, arrived [in California] in the years after World War II. In a land rolled out flat and never ending, they could be free from Jim Crow and the forever debt that had turned tenant farming into a new form of slavery.” Remarkably, as late as 2002, about 1,500 members of the original Black Okie families still lived together as a community and had “advanced in only the barest of ways,” for example, living in tarpaper roofed shacks.
In the 1940s, many westerners left states such as Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas for California where they planned to make a good living picking cotton. Once in California, their fortunes were not guaranteed. Many found that they had traded sharecropping for picking cotton in company towns where wages were paid in tickets instead of cash. The Black Okies attempted to stay together to maintain their culture, build towns, and engage in politics, but their small numbers, isolation, and systemic racism defeated them.
1950-1999
The largest number of Blacks migrating north occurred between 1950 and 1960. During this period Hawkins said “the south lost 1.5 million Negroes by migration while the North gained one million and the West nearly 400,000.” In some areas, southern migrants outnumbered Blacks already established in urban areas. White flight from cities, better access to education, and a growing white-collar job industry led to job growth and continued prosperity for Blacks. Just as industrial skills made it easier for Blacks to move from one urban center to another, mid-century, technical and white-collar job skills made migration even more possible.
The 1970’s began a noticeable reverse migration of Blacks returning to the South that continues today. Cities like Atlanta, GA and Charlotte, NC are the new Black meccas. A northern Black “brain drain” has been the South’s advantage as black professionals are fleeing northern cities in search of better education for their children, less crime, cultural roots and a slower pace. Again, economics and quality of life factors prevail.
Susan M. Monroe teaches college writing at Southern Connecticut State University and is the executive editor of Devotion: A Journal of Cultural and Christian Perspectives.
