This map shows the 'Black Belt' region of the United States.
Its name comes from the fertile soil associated with the region.
And for most of America’s history, more than 90% of the country’s largest minority
group lived here.
Starting in the early 20th century, nearly half of the African American population left
this region to resettle in emerging Northern and Midwestern cities.
It was one of the largest internal migrations in US history.
And now, data indicates that a new movement is taking shape.
To understand why, let’s go back to 1865.
The Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery and started a new era for colored people in
the states.
Shortly after, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments enfranchised people of color at large.
For the first time, the majority of black Americans controlled their own destinies.
In the years immediately following emancipation, most freed slaves chose to stay in their communities.
After all, the only America they had known was the south.
It was common for their descendants to work as sharecroppers on plantations.
Sometimes their only payment was permission to live on the property.
But that wasn’t the worst aspect of the south for blacks.
The Jim Crow caste system determined where you could eat, what platforms you sat on when
you catch a train.
This was a rigid caste system where any breach could literally mean your life.
That’s author & journalist Isabel Wilkerson-- She spent 15 years compiling the stories of
black exodus to cities in the north, midwest and west.
The movement would come to be known as the Great Migration.
The great migration was really a seeking of political asylum within the borders of our
country.
Many of them were fleeing for their lives.
They were fleeing a rigid caste system known as jim crow in which everything you could
and could not do was based on what you looked like.
In 1915, African Americans began to leave the Black Belt for these new industrial centers.
By 1929, 1.5 million African Americans had resettled in new, northern metro areas.
At the time, America’s participation in World War I drove demand for manufacturing
labor.
But strict immigration laws left Northern factories with a shortage of workers.
Factories in the north started recruiting low-skilled workers from the south.
The workers faced discrimination in their new homes, which culminated in the Red Summer
of 1919.
Migrant blacks, whites, and european immigrants were all competing for limited housing and
resources, which exacerbated relationships in city centers.
The most prominent of these settlements for migrating blacks was in New York City, and
the art, music and theater that emerged from this community became known as the Harlem
Renaissance.
These artistic achievements redefined the cultural image of blacks in America.
But the stock market crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression slowed the influx from the
South and effectively ended the first migration.
A second wave began in the ‘40s when World War II kickstarted manufacturing again, while
agricultural employment in the South plummeted.
Once again, people living in the rural south began to migrate to cities.
Manufacturing hubs in the West were far more prominent in this second movement.
But only a fraction of skilled labor positions went to African-Americans.
That kind of discrimination was a common experience for participants in the great migration.
Throughout history, the segregated neighborhoods that southern blacks flocked to often became
the ground-centers of massive racially motivated rioting.
In most cases, the protesting began in response to perceived unfair treatment of the black
community.
This is a trend that continues today, as seen in modern violent protests in Baltimore, Ferguson,
and Milwaukee.
By the end of the 2nd migration, an estimated 5 to 8 million blacks had resettled outside
of the south.
Moving ahead to the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movements had introduced a new vision of racial
identity in America.
This movement’s leaders argued for the political rights and equality of all people.
Meanwhile, the definition of ‘all people’ was changing.
Changes in immigration policy starting in 1952 started a new era of a skills-based,
multicultural immigration.
This includes African migrants, adding a new black perspective to the American story.
By the 1990s, a new, multicultural American identity had emerged.
During this period, the rise of the black middle class was evident.
You know we're used to thinking about white flight to the suburbs and black segregation,
black concentration in cities.
That’s the voice of William Frey.
He’s been tracking the shifting demographics of America over the past 5 decades.
To some degree that still exist.
But there's also been a noticeable movement of blacks to the suburbs and it's fairly pervasive
it's not just in two or three cities but it's and and a lot of cities across the country.
Northern cities, Southern cities, Western cities.
Starting in 1970 African Americans started to make this move.
Especially in the last 20 or 25 years, really large numbers of blacks moved to the South.
I attribute some of it to the younger generation several generations since the civil rights
laws were enacted in the 1960s who now do have an opportunity to get advanced education's.
At least some college.
Getting that foothold into the middle class, I think is an important part of what's going
on.
Today, the geography established by the Great Migration is beginning to fade away.
Southern states have been leaders in black population growth since the 1970’s.
Still, these states have only captured a 4% increase in the share of the black population
over the last 4 decades.
So while we are seeing a reversal of the trend of African-American migration to cities, it’s
unlikely the movement will be as far-reaching as The Great Migrations of the past.
And it's because this migration is about the search for agency and opportunity -- not about
fleeing violence.
The stakes are not the same now as they would’ve been during the great migration.
They are quite different in character and magnitude.
Many of them were fleeing like refugees, and had no idea of how they would make it in this
alien land.That was a watershed moment in American history, and like many watershed
moments it’s hard to recreate.