The Great Migration is known as the nation’s largest movement of African-Americans from the rural south to cities located in the West, Midwest and urban North of the United States during 1916-1970. This exodus was the result of many harsh indignities experienced by blacks in the South, but even more so, the dreams of freedom and hopes of a people seeking equality, jobs and educational opportunities with promise of a better life in the industrial ember sky of Chicago. It has been noted that this mass demographic shift of one tenth of the country’s black population greatly altered the social, political, and economic fabric of America. Even setting the stage for what is now known as the Civil Rights movement of 1955.
At the start of the 20th century, almost ninety percent of African-Americans were residents of the south. Life as a black citizen in a post Civil War Reconstruction era was not easy and one could expect to experience segregation (also known as legally sanctioned racial discrimination) in the “separate but equal”, Jim Crow south. Black Americans in the South were forced into a deplorable and inequitable system where there were one set of rules for whites and another more restrictive set for African-Americans. With no right to vote these statutes locked blacks into situations of social and economic oppression and many blacks found themselves forced to use special sections on public transportation, in restrooms, at restaurants, and in theaters. Tenant farmers or “sharecroppers” found themselves hopelessly indebted to landowners due to bad crop years which were a result of boll weevil infestations, floods, low crop prices and the disadvantages and limited opportunities of owning the land they labored so unsparingly for. As time passed, African-Americans became very dissatisfied with the many discouraging circumstances coupled with such few opportunities that when images of Chicago and the opportunities available there began circulating through the South, largely from publications such as the Chicago Defender, it peeked the curiosity of many which precipitated a movement.
In 1914, at the start of World War I immigration from Europe into the United States was stopped. This immediate freeze of European labor into urban cities such as Chicago, caused a labor shortage and sent factories on a recruiting binge, seeking out and drawing the black labor supply. Companies were said to have provided reduced fare tickets and special accommodations to those men seeking work in the North. Approximately, 200,000 African-American men who left the South went off to war and those who didn’t, took jobs as unskilled laborers (cooks, janitors, porters, cleaners, and servants) in the factory industry. For African-American women, job occupations were limited to domestic servants and service related occupations; very few found employment in the garment and steam laundries industry.
Between 1919 and 1920, black populations soared in major cities in the North. Chicago’s black population saw an increase of a whopping 148 percent. This astounding increase in numbers within such a short period of time placed a significant strain on housing and living space resulting in overcrowded cities and housing tension. The cost of living was higher in Chicago than in the South resulting in higher rents for housing payments which led families to take in other family members or, boarders, to ease the burden financially. And while segregation was not legal in the North, racism and prejudice were ever prevalent resulting in racially biased housing ordinances. White owners were said to have created covenants with community members agreeing not to sell to blacks. Then, in 1948, the U.S. Supreme court ruled against this practice making it illegal.
Rising tensions between whites and the new black migrants would eventually come to a head in the Chicago Riot of 1919 better known as “The Red Summer”; as word of a man accidentally shooting another man became amplified which led to a disturbing and violent event that lasted 13 days, claimed 38 lives and left 537 people injured.
The black experience during the Great Migration was met with mixed feelings from those who actively migrated to those watching the migration happen. It will be forever known as the journey that established Chicago’s African-American industrial working class, but also, the stirring of a future time where rights and opportunities for black citizens would be a reality and no longer a hope or a dream.