Ayana Mathis once said, “If there had never been the Great Migration there would never have been jazz, there would never have been Michelle Obama. A lot of amazing black people exist in this country because of the Great Migration. That's nation-building.” Ayana Mathis is an African American author who has written a few books on the Great Migration, like The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, so she has a good understanding of the topic. In Mathis’s words, the Great Migration is one of the reasons that we have such great African American leaders today. The Great Migration took millions of African Americans from the South to the North to find better work and equal opportunity. The Great Migration gave African Americans more chances to live as equals in the North. The North definitely wasn’t perfect, but it was a bit better than the South. There were many reasons that someone would leave the South and go to the North. Some of these reasons were the Ku Klux Klan, black codes, Jim Crow laws, segregation, voting restrictions, and sharecropping.
The first cause of the Great Migration was the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK. According to Discovering Our Past A History of the United States, the KKK was a group of Southern whites that terrorized African Americans and whites who would help, and support them (Appleby, 506). The KKK would use violence to get what they wanted, which was for African Americans to not have equal rights (Appleby, 506). The KKK basically replaced the slave patrollers (Appleby, 506). The KKK would be out at night, and African Americans who happened to walk by would beat up and sometimes even kill (Appleby, 506). One way the KKK used violence “was lynching, in which angry mobs killed people by hanging them” (Appleby, 512). This meant that a group of African Americans would be killed by hanging just because they were African American. The members of the KKK never got caught because no one in the South cared about what was happening to African Americans (Appleby, 506). This is definitely one of the important reasons why the Great Migration took place.
The second cause of the Great Migration was the black codes. The black codes, as described in Discovering Our Past A History of the United States, were “laws…designed to help control the newly freed African Americans” (Appleby, 498). This meant that there were laws passed to basically take away a lot of the freedoms that African Americans had recently acquired. The black codes made it impossible for African Americans to rent or own farms in the South (Appleby, 498). The codes allowed white people to take advantage of African Americans looking for jobs in the South (Appleby, 498). These black codes even allowed African Americans to be fined, arrested, or have their children taken away because they didn’t have jobs (Appleby, 498-499). African Americans that were freed said that “life under the black codes was little better than slavery” (Appleby, 499).
The third cause of the Great Migration was Jim Crow laws and segregation. In the words of Discovering Our Past A History of the United States, “Segregation is a separation of the races” (Appleby, 512). This means that both black and whites had separate public facilities. Segregation was common in the South and was enforced by the Jim Crow laws (Appleby, 512). The segregation laws were strongly upheld by the Supreme Court in the Plessy v. Ferguson case (Appleby, 512). The Plessy v. Ferguson case “involved a Louisiana law that required separate sections on trains for African Americans and whites” (Appleby, 512). The Supreme Court said that as long as whites and African Americans had equal access to public spaces, segregation was legal. Even with this ruling, most facilities were not equal for the different races (Appleby, 512). This “‘separate but equal’ doctrine gave legal support to segregation for more than 50 years” (Appleby, 512).
The fourth cause of the Great Migration was voting restrictions. As stated in Discovering Our Past A History of the United States, when the Fifteenth Amendment was first ratified southern states tried to get around it by making voting restrictions (Appleby, 511). The Fifteenth Amendment stated that “state and federal governments could not deny the right to vote to any male citizen because of ‘race, color, or previous condition of servitude’” (Appleby, 503). This meant that all male adults were able to vote because of the Fifteenth Amendment. The Southern states found different ways to counter the Fifteenth Amendment (Appleby, 511). The first was a poll tax and many people, including African Americans and poor whites, could not vote because they didn’t have enough money to afford the tax (Appleby, 511). The second was a literacy test, which made voters explain an article from the Constitution after reading it (Appleby, 512). This approach worked because many African Americans didn’t have any education and could not read, so these literacy tests stopped them from voting (Appleby, 512). The literacy tests and poll taxes prevented not only African Americans from voting, but whites too, so a few states made grandfather clauses (Appleby, 512). The grandfather clauses stated that if your father or your grandfather was able to vote before reconstruction, then you could vote (Appleby, 512). African Americans couldn’t vote before Reconstruction, so they couldn’t vote (Appleby, 512). These restrictions all prevented African Americans from voting (Appleby, 511-512)
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The final cause of the Great Migration was sharecropping. According to Discovering Our Past A History of the United States, sharecropping was a system where “landowners rented land to sharecroppers or farmers” (Appleby, 507). This meant that the richer plantation owners had all this land that they then rented to the poor farmers. In return for the land they had rented, sharecroppers had to give some of the crops they harvested to the landowner (Appleby, 507). These landowners asked for a very large percentage of the sharecroppers’ crops and left the sharecroppers with just enough to survive (Appleby, 507). Many said that “sharecropping was little better than slavery” (Appleby, 507).
All of these causes made African Americans move from the South to the North, West, and Midwest from 1915-1970 (NA, Great Migration: The African-American Exodus North). Almost 6 million African Americans moved during this time period (NA, Great Migration: The African-American Exodus North ). The Great Migration had many effects on the world like the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and the growth of cities in the North and West.
The first effect of the Great Migration was the Harlem Renaissance. “The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a Black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted” (NA, Harlem Renaissance). This means that, when so many African Americans moved to big cities like New York City, they brought a new way of life, religion, music, and social class. “Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance, and art” (NA, Harlem Renaissance). This meant that African Americans brought a completely new way of life to the big city, and it was impactful because these things still exist today.
The second effect of the Great Migration was that major cities in the North and the West grew. “In the decade between 1910 and 1920, the Black population of major Northern cities grew by large percentages, including New York (66 percent), Chicago (148 percent), Philadelphia (500 percent) and Detroit (611 percent)” (NA, Great Migration: Life for Migrants in the City). This shows that most of these cities have at least doubled in size. The cities got a lot because of new African Americans coming from the South (NA, Great Migration: Life for Migrants in the City). In 1920, African Americans would move to New York and populated the recently all-white towns (NA, Great Migration: Life for Migrants in the City). There would be about 200,000 African Americans in the city of New York (NA, Great Migration: Life for Migrants in the City). These African Americans would later take positions in government, like Barack Obama who became President of the United States, and Michelle Obama who became the first African American First Lady.
The final effect of the Great Migration was the Civil Rights Movement. “The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for Black Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the United States” (NA, Civil Rights Movement). This is basically a movement where African Americans protested for equal rights when it came to voting, equal public space, and other things. One of the most known Civil Rights leaders was Rosa Parks (NA, Civil Rights Movement). In December 1955, Rosa Parks chose a seat in the black section of a bus (NA, Civil Rights Movement). A white man couldn’t find a seat, and when Parks was asked to leave, she refused and was arrested (NA, Civil Rights Movement). She then became one of the most famous Civil Rights leaders at the time (NA, Civil Rights Movement). Following Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was another well-known Civil Rights leader (NA The 1963 March on Washington). “On August 28, 1963, more than a quarter million people participated in the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, gathering near the Lincoln Memorial” (NA The 1963 March on Washington). This meant that you literally had thousands of people marching through Washington, D.C. promoting Civil Rights, and then they stopped at the Lincoln Memorial to hear some people speak. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is most known for giving the “I Have a Dream” speech (NA The 1963 March on Washington). This speech inspired many people to move toward a better future.
The Great Migration was one of the major causes of why we have such great African American leaders today. The Great Migration took millions of African Americans to the North from the South because of the unfair conditions in the South. Some of the causes of the Great Migration were sharecropping, black codes, Jim Crow laws, segregation, voting restrictions, and the Ku Klux Klan. The effects of the Great Migration were the Civil Rights Movement, that many North and West cities doubled in size and the Harlem Renaissance. My world would be very different if the Great Migration hadn’t happened.
Bibliography:
- Appleby Joyce Discovering Our Past A History of the United States McGraw Hill NA
- NA NA Great Migration: The African-American Exodus North NA NPR September 13, 2010 https:www.npr.orgtemplatesstorystory.php?storyId=129827444 November 4, 2021
- NA NA The 1963 March on Washington NAACP NA https: NAACP.orgfind-resources history-explained1963-march-Washington November 4, 2021
- NANA The Great Migration NA History March 4, 2010 https:www.history.comtopicsblack-history great-migration November 4, 2021
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