Black Church Denominations Experience Major Growth During Great Migration

The African Methodist Episcopal Church, AME Zion, and National Baptist Convention experienced dramatic membership growth in the early 1920s as the Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners to Northern cities. Black churches served not only as religious institutions but as community centers, political organizing spaces, employment referral networks, and social service providers—the foundational infrastructure of Black urban life. Membership of major Black denominations grew by millions between 1916 and 1930.