Second Great Migration: 5 Million Black Americans Flee South 1940-1970

The Second Great Migration (1940-1970) sees approximately 5 million Black Americans leave the South for Northern and Western cities, driven by wartime industrial jobs, continued racial terror, and mechanization of Southern agriculture. Destination cities — Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Cleveland — become majority-Black in many neighborhoods as white families flee to newly built suburbs with FHA backing. The migration transforms American demography, culture, and politics while transplanting racial inequality from Southern sharecropping to Northern urban poverty.