African American Migration

Improved Essays
During the first few decades of the twentieth century there was an upsurge in African American mobility in the United States. Scholars refer to this demographic shift as the “Great Migration” of African Americans, in which African Americans moved out of southern states to northern cities, and to a lesser extent to the west coast, between 1910 and 1970. According to studies on the Great Migration, the mass exodus of blacks from the South was propelled by Jim Crow policies that exacerbated the black experience of racial oppression, racial violence, and economic hardships. In other words, black migrants who fled the South did so with the belief that social and economic opportunities waited for them in places like Chicago and Detroit. Although …show more content…
According to the historian Gerald Horne, many African-American colonization schemes of this period were unsuccessful due to the exploitation of black immigrants by colony boosters and developers. In the late 1800s, the New York Times reported that blacks were immigrating to Mexico and settling in agricultural colonies to escape Jim Crow policies and racial violence. However, according those reports, the colonies proved to be nothing more than a ploy by U.S. labor contractors to attract laborers to plantations in Mexico. According to one historian, three thousand black men from Alabama migrated to Durango with the impression that they would be colonists of an agricultural colony. However, rather than becoming colonists working toward social and economic prosperity, the men became sharecroppers in a cotton plantation with poor living conditions. Many men in the plantation died of small pox, and the surviving immigrants returned to the United …show more content…
The article in El Imparcial intended to alleviate Mexican concerns regarding the arrival of black immigrants to Mexican soil. On 11 February 1911, the Chicago Defender printed a translated version of that story, which assured Mexican citizens that arriving black colonists were “not be pernicious vagabonds.” Rather, these men and women could “bring small capital” with them to cultivate their fields. More importantly, African-American immigrants would “invest their money in our country, will work honestly, and that is all that is necessary.” However, plans for African-American colonies in Mexico were disrupted by the violence of the Mexican

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Throughout History, African Americans have faced multiple hardships and tough events in their lives that they did not deserve. After slavery and the civil war was over, many African Americans did not have anywhere to go. They had no money, no property, and no way of living. This introduced many of these newly freed people into a horrible life of sharecropping and other hard jobs just so they could survive. Because they could not leave the South, these African Americans faced many forms of racism and segregation, making their lives a living hell. Around 1916, these African Americans finally decided it was time to leave behind this horrid life that was the South and the Great Migration began.…

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Despite these restrictive laws, millions of people immigrated to America. They provided a cheap and plentiful workforce for American industries, so much so that industry became depended on European immigrants for labor. When World War One started, immigration from Europe slowed down significantly, and there was a labor shortage in northern factories. As a result, many African Americans moved to cities in the North during the early 20th century, looking to work in those vacant jobs. This mass movement of millions of African Americans has come to be called the Great Migration.…

    • 1100 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    African-Americans moved from the South to the industrial North mainly to escape extreme and overwhelming social conditions that were beyond their control which subsequently forced many African-Americans from the South. The Great Migration was a forceful push for the African-American community throughout the early 1900 's. It was imperative for many…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Between the early 1900’s up until present day, African immigrants ventured into the U.S. as refugees, students, merchants and so many other categories. Africans were filled with optimism, and maintained hope for an opportunity, that often weren’t afforded to them within their native countries. Several Africans were here to take advantage of American capitalistic culture, and achieve financial success through knowledge of trade and networking. However, even with capitalistic gain, or being afforded advantages that their native countries lacked, they were still subjected to several structural policies implemented within the U.S. However, it is because of their own personal heritage, that they are capable of navigate within the racial and intraracial structure, that exist with the United States.…

    • 911 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This fact that black neighborhoods where crowed forced black residents to push on the harsh constraints imposed on them by pitiful white landlords and a racist culture. Black Detroiters tried many ways to manage their community's expansion but Sugrue argues that white people experienced these tactics as threats to their own economic and social well being. Sugrue is quick to point out the white violence against black people, or the fast paced abandonment of beat down areas. Sugrue's knowledge of economic and social history helps us better understand the decisions of Detroit residents in the 1940s through 1960s. Surgues main point of this book is how Detroit transformed from a wartime boomtown to a city struggling with post war recession and how the effect of African Americans fleeing to the city had a toll on the city.…

    • 1045 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With bloodshed and ashes burning forever in memory from the Civil War, came the Gilded Age of economic prosperity and great migration in the North and West of America. The United States in the late 19th century became successful and an impactful powerhouse due to the expedited industrialization. Railroads, mining, and factories offered numerous opportunities for labor, creating labor unions and migration to increase. The new economic cycle brought the market to be flooded with lower prices so everything had to be cutthroat. These opportunities made America look extremely attractive to people from different countries like Italy, Russia, Germany, Ireland, and China.…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Due to the fact that the labor force transformed from agricultural to industrial, U.S. citizens too benefited from the development of railroads, migrating from rural farmlands to urban cities. During this time period, the labor force went from consisting of seventy percent agricultural to only thirty-seven percent (Takaki 209). A specific group of people who migrated inside the country was the African Americans. This period of time where over six million blacks migrated from southern states to the Northeast, Midwest, and West is know as The Great Migration. Similar to the Japanese and Mexican people, the African Americans were traveling through the country in a search for higher-paying work.…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Great Migration was a massive movement of African Americans from the South of the United States to the North with the largest amount coming in 1915 to 1920 of over 500,000 Blacks. African Americans left the miserable condition of the South that included low wages, racism, and horrible violence, and headed up to “The Promised Land” of the North where it was believed they could find refuge or even start over again. Black Protest and the Great Migration by Eric Arnesen is a history of documents telling the story of the African American searching for equality through the eyes of political leaders, newspapers, and regular civilians of the time between 1916 – 1925. This book teaches how the Great Migration was another source of hope that was…

    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This video portrays the struggles African Americans encountered with segregation between blacks and whites during the Great Migration and Jim Crow era in the Twentieth Century. Henry Louis Gates Jr. talks about the Great Migration, which was the movement of 6 million Africans to the North, Midwest, and West. He also introduces us to leaders Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey who wanted equality with the blacks. Booker T. Washington argues that the political rights for the African Americans could only be won through economic strength and self-sufficiency. W.E.B Du Bois encouraged talented artists to leave the south.…

    • 1017 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    However, one thing that is certain is that the Chicago Defender printed these stories to construct an image of Mexico as a racial sanctuary for African Americans who were in search of securing a better life. For the Defender, Mexico and the republic’s president offered African Americans that opportunity, especially to those who were moving away from the…

    • 1487 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    This migration had made it easier for African Americans to get jobs, housing ,start a family or just start a new life. Great Migration notes “ In the decade between 1910-1920, black population in northern cities grew by large percentages. New york went up 66 percent, Chicago went up 148 percent. Philadelphia went up 500 percent, and finally the city that grew the most with 611 percent was Detroit.” This was good for the blacks, but for everyone already living in these cities, there were fewer jobs and fewer places to live.…

    • 1609 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What is the Great migration? The Great Migration was when African americans moved from the south to urban areas such as Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New York, New York. By World War II the migrants continued to move North but many of them headed west to Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, California, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Most of the…

    • 692 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Great Migration was a response by black citizens fleeing the harsh Jim Crow laws in the south. At the beginning of the 20th century, 90% of black Americans resided in the south, but by the end of the Great Migration nearly half of black citizens migrated to the north and west. This event was huge in the way the African Americans now experienced living in the United States. They went from living in the rural south, the living in overcrowded neighborhoods in which they were limited to in…

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Great Migration, or the migration of African Americans from 1915-1970 to the north, has many similarities and differences to the migration of the Jewish people out of German occupied land during World War II. Both migrations were a massive exodus from where these people were originally due to harsh circumstances, but the comparisons run much deeper than that. Both migrations were somewhat caused by the implementation of laws directed against a minority, which aimed to diminish rights. Additionally, in both areas, the migrants wanted more economic opportunity. However, in the case of the Jewish migration, for the most part, they were not called to a specific place for work.…

    • 1268 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Amistad Case History

    • 397 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Steven Spielberg’s film Amistad has been shown in American classrooms to teach a historical landmark case. Controversy has arisen because some of the facts in the film are misleading. With that knowledge, should the Amistad film continue to be used as an educational tool? Fifty-three Africans were purchased by two Spanish planters and put aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad for shipment to a Caribbean plantation. (“The Amistad Case”)…

    • 397 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays