Second Wave of Great Migration: 750,000 Black Southerners Move North 1920–1930

Between 1920 and 1930, approximately 750,000 Black Americans migrated from the South to Northern and Midwestern cities, pushed by Jim Crow violence, sharecropping exploitation, and boll weevil crop destruction, and pulled by industrial jobs and relative freedom. Chicago's Black population grew from 109,000 to 234,000. Detroit's grew from 5,700 to 120,000. Migrants confronted racial covenants confining them to overcrowded neighborhoods, exclusion from most labor unions, and racially stratified wages. The Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier actively promoted migration.