4.1 Migration and Transformation

The Great Migration

Between roughly 1910 and 1970, millions of African Americans left the rural South for cities in the North, Midwest, and West, fleeing Jim Crow segregation, racial violence, and sharecropping poverty while seeking industrial jobs, especially during World War I and II labor shortages. Cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York saw dramatic Black population growth.

Cultural flowering: the Harlem Renaissance

Migration fueled urban Black cultural movements, most famously the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, along with jazz musicians and visual artists, celebrated Black identity, creativity, and pride, challenging racist stereotypes and asserting a New Negro consciousness.

New challenges in the North

Urban life brought both opportunity and hardship: better wages but housing discrimination, redlining, and de facto segregation created crowded ghettos. Competition for jobs and housing sparked racial tensions and violence, including riots. Migration also reshaped Black political power, community institutions, and class dynamics within Black communities.

Key terms

Great Migration

The movement of millions of African Americans from the rural South to northern, midwestern, and western cities (c. 1910–1970).

Harlem Renaissance

A 1920s cultural movement in Harlem celebrating Black literature, art, music, and identity.

Redlining

Discriminatory practice of denying loans/mortgages to residents in certain areas, often segregating Black neighborhoods.

New Negro

A term reflecting a new assertive, prideful Black identity and consciousness during the Harlem Renaissance era.

Push factors for migration

Jim Crow laws, racial violence, and economic hardship in the South that drove African Americans northward.

Try an AP-style question

The Great Migration refers to…

1. Black Americans moving back to West Africa
2. Black Southerners moving to Northern and Western cities
3. Northern families moving to the rural South
4. European immigrants moving to American cities