Question

What drew African Americans to the cities in the north during the  Great Migration?

Answer 1

Causes Of Great Migration

The Great Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest and West that occurred between 1916 and 1970. It was caused primarily by the poor economic conditions as well as the prevalent racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern states. It was caused primarily by the poor economic conditions as well as the prevalent racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern states.

Causes:

• As millions of young men went to Europe to fight, and as the American economy transitioned from peacetime to wartime production, factories and industries boomed and needed workers. Women laborers filled some of these vacancies, but African Americans moved into these jobs in extraordinary numbers. Northern factory managers sent labor recruiters to the South to bring black Southerners into the war industries of northern cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati.
• African American workers eagerly left their low-paying jobs as agricultural laborers and domestic servants in the rural South and headed north in massive numbers. In the major cities of the Midwest and Northeast, they found relatively high paying jobs in meatpacking plants, shipyards, and steel mills.
• The second significant cause of the Great Migration was the desire of black Southerners to escape segregation, known euphemistically as Jim Crow. Rural African American Southerners believed that segregation - and racism and prejudice against blacks - was significantly less intense in the North.
• Between 1914 and 1920 almost half a million African American Southerners left plantations and farms and Jim Crow and headed north, where they sought higher paying jobs in the war industries and attempted to escape virulent racism. From 1910 to 1920, for instance, the black population of New York increased over 66% to more than 150,000, and the number of Cleveland's African American residents jumped 307% to around 35,000. Extraordinarily, during that same period Detroit experienced a 611% rise in the black population, to over 40,000.
• The Great Migration was aided and facilitated by community and kinship networks within black communities in the North and South. Such networks shared information about employment opportunities, available homes, and other connections in the cities of the North. Black churches and a variety of voluntary associations raised money for the trips of many groups.