The Great Migration [Fourth Installment]

In celebration of Black History Month, The Daily Leap presents the final installation of a four-part series on The Great Migration. The series was excerpted from Spencer R. Crews' article "The Great Migration of Afro-Americans, 1915-1940," which appeared in the Monthly Labor Review in March 1987.

Historic Event

The "Great Migration" of African Americans from largely rural areas of the southern United States to northern cities during and after World War I (1915-40) altered the economic, social, and political fabric of American society. More than one million black Americans left the South to seek opportunity and fuller citizenship in the North.

Types of Jobs

African Americans typically wound up in dirty, back-break­ing, unskilled, and low-paying occupations. These were the least desirable jobs in most industries, but the ones employ­ers felt best suited their black workers. On average, more than eight of every ten African American men worked as un­skilled laborers in foundries, in the building trades, in meat-packing companies, on the railroads, or as servants, porters, janitors, cooks, and cleaners. Only a relatively few obtained work in semiskilled or skilled occupations.

Occupational choices for black women were even more limited because few of them, in concordance with women in general, had access to industrial jobs. While some women found employment in the garment industry, packinghouses, and steam laundries, the majority of African American women worked as domestic servants or in service-related occupa­tions. While none of these jobs paid high wages, they paid more than African Americans could obtain for similar work in the South.

However, the cost of living in the North was higher than in the South. Funneled into certain areas in most northern cities, African Americans have paid nearly twice as much as their white counterparts for equivalent housing. Higher rents made it harder for them to make housing payments and encouraged migrants to take in boarders or other family members to help meet expenses. While the extra income eased financial problems, it resulted in overcrowded living conditions, little privacy, and poor sanitation.

With the ad­ditional financial burden of having to pay higher prices in neighborhood stores for food, clothing, and other necessi­ties, settling in the North was a mixed experience for many migrants. Though they earned better wages in the North, much of the increased income was offset by higher living expenses.

The Great Migration [Third Installment]

In celebration of Black History Month, The Daily Leap presents the first installation of a four-part series on The Great Migration. The series was excerpted from Spencer R. Crews' article "The Great Migration of Afro-Americans, 1915-1940," which appeared in the Monthly Labor Review in March 1987.

Historic Event

The "Great Migration" of African Americans from largely rural areas of the southern United States to northern cities during and after World War I (1915-40) altered the economic, social, and political fabric of American society. More than one million black Americans left the South to seek opportunity and fuller citizenship in the North.

Problems of Leave-taking

Once a decision to depart was made, leaving was often a complicated process. Southern officials tried to slow the tide of migration by arresting or detaining African Americans who tried to leave. Local police regularly searched departing trains for people they thought might be heading North. To escape police scrutiny, many migrants had to steal away late at night or devise elaborate plans to get away safely.

These subterfuges forced the migrants either to sell their property and belongings secretly or to take with them only what they could carry. Most migrants were working people who did not possess great wealth and leaving under these circumstances hurt them financially. Items left behind or given away brought in no money and buyers rarely gave full value for items they knew the owner had to sell.

Many migrants, therefore, did not have enough money with them to tide them over for long periods of time once they reached the North. Consequently, finding a job became a high priority as soon as they arrived.

While job opportunities were readily available in most cities, these jobs were at the lower end of the occupational ladder. Northern labor unions generally did not accept African Americans as members and often threatened to strike companies where nonunion workers performed union jobs. Even when African American workers acquired better paying jobs during the war, many of them had to relinquish these jobs once the war ended.

The Great Migration [Second Installment]

In celebration of Black History Month, The Daily Leap presents the second installation of a four-part series on The Great Migration. The series was excerpted from Spencer R. Crews' article "The Great Migration of Afro-Americans, 1915-1940," which appeared in the Monthly Labor Review in March 1987.

Historic Event

The "Great Migration" of African Americans from largely rural areas of the southern United States to northern cities during and after World War I (1915-40) altered the economic, social, and political fabric of American society. More than one million black Americans left the South to seek opportunity and fuller citizenship in the North.

Local Prod

Socio-economic and political conditions in the South made African Americans likely candidates for migration. After the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction, the Nation's legislators and the Supreme Court had turned their backs on black Americans and left determination of their citizenship rights to local jurisdictions.

In the South, this abdication of authority resulted in the creation of a two-tiered system of citizenship with one set of rules for whites and a more restrictive set for African Americans. In this system of "Jim Crow" laws, black Americans, under penalty of imprisonment or possibly death, were forced to use special sections when they rode on public transportation, ate in restaurants, or attended theaters.

Southern statutes also excluded them from voting through such manipulations of the law as grandfather clauses, poll taxes, or literacy tests which prevented the majority of African Americans from voting while allowing their white counterparts access to the ballot.

Oppressive as the political situation was, the economic situation was even more oppressive in that it locked tenant farmers ("sharecroppers") into an ever-tightening cycle of debt. While the majority of black Americans in the South resided in rural areas, they did not own the land they worked. Most often they rented it from large landowners or worked as farm laborers. Bad crop years, boll weevil attacks, floods, or low crop prices often destroyed profit margins and left sharecroppers in debt to the landlord.

In order to avoid imprisonment, they agreed to work additional years in hopes of paying off their debts. Unfortunately, profits rarely were large enough to wipe out their obligations and African Americans found themselves bound to the landlord who owned their land or controlled the local store where they purchased goods on credit.

Migrating offered a chance to escape the oppressiveness of the South and begin anew.

The Great Migration [First Installment]

In celebration of Black History Month, The Daily Leap presents the first installation of a four-part series on The Great Migration. The series was excerpted from Spencer R. Crews' article "The Great Migration of Afro-Americans, 1915-1940," which appeared in the Monthly Labor Review in March 1987.

Historic Event

The "Great Migration" of African Americans from largely rural areas of the southern United States to northern cities during and after World War I (1915-40) altered the economic, social, and political fabric of American society. More than one million black Americans left the South to seek opportunity and fuller citizenship in the North.

The momentousness of the migration as an event does not alter the fact that the migrants were ordinary people. Like colonial settlers or western pioneers of an earlier day, these migrants were not looking to change the world, only their own status. A mixture of farmers, domestic servants, day laborers, and industrial workers, they came from all parts of the South, hoping for a chance to improve their own station or at least that of their children.

War Trigger

Without the increase in job opportunities caused by World War I, the Great Migration might never have occurred. The fighting in Europe dramatically increased the demands on companies in the United States to produce munitions and other goods to support the war effort.

At the same time, the labor pool these companies normally depended upon immigrants and native-born Americans—was dwindling. The draft siphoned off many of these men, while the turmoil in Europe disrupted the flow of immigrants from that area. Desperately in need of additional workers, northern businesses looked southward for new sources of labor.

Because African Americans made up a large portion of the unskilled workforce in the South and because of social conditions there, they became the targets of aggressive recruitment campaigns. Northern companies offered well-paying jobs, free transportation, and low-cost housing as inducements to African Americans to move North. They also sent labor recruiters into the South who received a fee for every recruit they provided for the company they represented.