Movement of resistance · 1916–1970
The Great Migration
Between 1916 and 1970, some six million Black Southerners left the Jim Crow South for the cities of the North and West — a mass act of self-liberation that remade America.
Fleeing lynching, disenfranchisement, and the sharecropping trap, roughly six million Black Americans left the South in two great waves. They filled the factories of Chicago, Detroit, and New York and the shipyards of the West, building new communities and a new political power.
The Migration was both an escape from terror and a search for economic opportunity — and it carried Southern Black culture north, seeding the Harlem Renaissance, the Chicago blues, and Motown. Robert Abbott's Chicago Defender urged readers to come; Jacob Lawrence painted the journey. It is one of the largest internal migrations in American history.
What the migration built. The millions who left the South did not only flee — they built. In Northern and Western cities they created new Black metropolises: Harlem, Bronzeville in Chicago, Paradise Valley in Detroit, the Fillmore in San Francisco, Central Avenue in Los Angeles, The Ville in St. Louis, Hough in Cleveland, Five Points in Denver, and Seattle's Central District. And they built the institutions and businesses to match: the Chicago Defender that called them north, Johnson Publishing (Ebony and Jet), Supreme Life Insurance and Binga State Bank in Chicago, North Carolina Mutual and Mechanics & Farmers Bank in Durham's Black Wall Street, Atlanta Life, the Madam C.J. Walker company in Indianapolis, and Golden State Mutual in Los Angeles. Many are now on the map.
On the timeline
- 1916The Great Migration begins
Millions of Black Southerners begin moving north and west, fleeing terror and seeking opportunity.
- July 2, 1917The East St. Louis massacre
One of the deadliest white-mob attacks of the era kills scores of Black residents.
- July 1919Red Summer
White mobs attack Black communities in dozens of cities; Black veterans and residents fight back.
- May 31, 1921The Tulsa Race Massacre
A white mob destroys the prosperous "Black Wall Street" of Greenwood, killing hundreds.
- August 25, 1925The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
A. Philip Randolph organizes the first major Black labor union.
Resources
All 60 panels of the Migration Series, online.
History of the Great Migration and its transformation of American cities.
The web
Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.
- led to·ThreadThe Harlem Renaissance
The Migration carried Southern Black culture north, seeding the Harlem Renaissance and the Chicago blues.
- responded to·ThreadGreed — The Root
The Migration was, in part, Black Southerners voting with their feet against the sharecropping economy and racial terror.