Intellectual Segregation

Over the course of the last century, a series of laws and practices have contributed to both de jure and de facto segregation. De jure segregation is legal segregation and was prevalent in the Southern United States. De facto segregation, on the other hand, is segregation that exists because of where people live. It is often thought to be a more “natural” segregation or segregation by choice, a wholly untrue statement that made the problem even worse. While it was primarily practiced in the North, de facto segregation has separated Americans across the county by race for the last100 years. The main reason that de facto segregation became so prevalent was that a series of laws in the 1930s and 1940s made legal and encouraged discrimination …show more content…
The First Great Migration took place from 1919 – 1930. It is defined as the movement of 1.6 million African Americans from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North. This caused the population of African Americans in the North to grow by 40% in just over ten years. The cities that saw the largest growth were Chicago, New York, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh. (Lecture 4/5) The reasons for the Great Migration varied but included Jim Crow laws and increased racial segregation as well as a major change in the economy of the county. The South was moving away from cotton farming in favor of less labor-intensive crops. Meanwhile, the North was growing as an industrial force, opening up jobs in the railroad, steel, meatpacking, and automobile industries. The promise of better-paying jobs attracted many African Americans at the time, and when it was combined with labor shortages because of World War I and the immigration halt of 1921, it resulted in the Great Migration’s mass movement. While the Great Migration did offer better lives for some people, it also caused problems like crowding and increased racial tensions in urban areas. Attempts to move into white neighborhoods were met with threats, forcing many people to settle in tiny, underserviced, and segregated areas within the city. When coupled with redlining, this made life incredibly financially difficult for many of …show more content…
It brought more than 5 million African Americans to the North and to California. The black populations of Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Newark quintupled during this time and the black population of Los Angeles grew by 42% (Lecture 4/5). Much of this was due to the search for higher paying jobs. Many industrial as well as “white collar” jobs had desegregated at this point, which opened opportunities to African Americans with trained skills. As more people flocked to the cities, housing shortages again became a huge problem. Redlining reached its peak and low-income people of color were targeted and