{"id":4230,"date":"2022-02-15T16:54:38","date_gmt":"2022-02-15T16:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=4230"},"modified":"2022-09-16T21:09:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T21:09:53","slug":"the-great-migration","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/chapter\/the-great-migration\/","title":{"raw":"The Great Migration","rendered":"The Great Migration"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Describe push and pull factors that contributed to the Great Migration<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Understand the violence enacted against Black people, including race massacres, during the 1920s<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h2>The Great Migration<\/h2>\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"662\"]<img id=\"39501\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cnx.org\/resources\/927f97c3cb7aa83d3445f61027dd7520a1c046eb\" alt=\"The map of the United States, titled \u201cThe Great Migration, 1916\u20131930,\u201d includes three migration corridors from the southern states which include Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. The first migration corridor, \u201cSouth West to Midwest and Far West\u201d starts in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas and heads towards the following destination cities: Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, California; Springfield and Quincy, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; Davenport, Iowa; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The second migration corridor, \u201cSouth Central to Midwest\u201d starts in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee and heads towards the following destination cities: Louisville, Kentucky; Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, and Cleveland, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Indianapolis, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Detroit, Michigan. The third migration corridor, \u201cSoutheast to Northeast\u201d starts in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia and heads to the following destination cities: Richmond, Virginia; Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, and Albany, New York; Newark, New Jersey; New Haven, Connecticut; Providence, Rhode Island; and Boston, Massachusetts. There is a note on the map that states, \u201cMany of the Exodusters eventually left Kansas, and Oklahoma for California.\u201d\" width=\"662\" height=\"408\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 1<\/strong>. This map shows the migrant streams of southern African Americans during the Great Migration from 1916 to 1930. (credit: \u201cGreat Migration\u201d by Bill of Rights Institute\/Flickr, CC BY 4.0)[\/caption]\r\n\r\nSome historians differentiate between a first <strong>Great Migration<\/strong> (1916\u201340) and a second Great Migration (1940\u201370). Both waves of relocation featured Black Americans leaving the South for other regions of the country, typically in search of better-paid work and a less hostile environment. The first Great Migration saw about 1.6 million people move from mostly rural areas in the South to northern industrial cities. From 1910 to 1930, approximately 1.3 million Black southerners moved north and west in several different migrant streams that generally depended on the transportation available to them. African Americans from the East Coast typically went to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and New York. New York City\u2019s Black population more than doubled during those decades, from 152,000 to 328,000. From the middle South, Black residents of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky moved to Chicago and midwestern industrial cities, where car manufacturers and related industries began to employ African Americans. Detroit\u2019s population grew from 41,000 in 1910 to 120,066 in 1920. Arkansans, Louisianians, and Texans went to places like Saint Louis and California. The Second Great Migration (1940\u201370) began in earnest after the Great Depression and brought at least 5 million people\u2014including many townspeople with urban skills\u2014to the North and West.\r\n<h3>Push Factors<\/h3>\r\nA combination of both <strong>push factors<\/strong> and <strong>pull factors<\/strong> played a role in this movement. Despite the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (ensuring freedom, the right to vote regardless of race, and equal protection under the law, respectively), African Americans were still subjected to intense racial hatred. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War led to increased death threats, violence, and a wave of lynchings. Even after the formal dismantling of the Klan in the late 1870s, racially motivated violence continued. According to researchers at the Tuskegee Institute, there were thirty-five hundred racially motivated lynchings and other murders committed in the South between 1865 and 1900. For African Americans fleeing this culture of violence, northern and midwestern cities offered an opportunity to escape the dangers of the South.\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\">Impoverished Black farmers began moving to southern cities in large numbers after 1910, and many continued from there to northern cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, New York, and Chicago. Rural southern African Americans worked chiefly as sharecroppers, planting and harvesting crops on White landowners\u2019 farms for a percentage of the profit (often 50 percent). Many sharecroppers ended the year in debt, especially after the boll weevil began to move across the South in 1892, decimating cotton crops. In 1900, nearly half of southern farmers did not own land, and a majority of them were African Americans. Under the thumb of White landowners and in constant debt, many of these sharecroppers compared their living and working conditions to slavery.<\/span>\r\n<h3>Pull Factors<\/h3>\r\nIn addition to this \u201cpush\u201d out of the South, African Americans were also \u201cpulled\u201d to the cities by factors that attracted them, including the opportunity to earn a wage rather than be tied to a landlord, and the chance to vote (for men, at least), ideally without the threat of violence. Although many lacked the funds to move north, factory owners and other businesses that sought cheap labor sometimes provided assistance. Often, the men moved first and then sent for their families once they were established in their new city life.\r\n<div class=\"os-figure\">\r\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\r\n<h3>WATCH IT<\/h3>\r\nIn 1910, 90% of Black Americans lived in the South. By 1940, around 1.5 million Black Americans had left their homes, and 77% lived in the South. By 1970, only 52% of Black Americans remained in the South. People moved away for many reasons, including increased opportunity in the more industrial North and West. They sought a relatively safer life away from the lynchings and violence that were concentrated in the Jim Crow South. This Great Migration shaped 20th-century America in countless ways, but we're going to try to count some of them in this video.\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Woh63FlFDBk\r\n\r\nYou can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/TheGreatMigrationCrashCourseBlackAmericanHist.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cThe Great Migration: Crash Course Black American History #24\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\nThe Black experience during the Great Migration became an important theme in the artistic movement known first as the New Negro Movement and later as the Harlem Renaissance, which would have an enormous impact on the culture of the era. Based in New York City, this cultural movement produced some of the finest and most influential literature, music, and fashion of the twentieth century. The Great Migration also began a new era of increasing political activism among African Americans, who after being disenfranchised in the South found a new place for themselves in public life in the cities of the North and West. The civil rights movement directly benefited from this activism.\r\n<h2>Life in the North<\/h2>\r\nRacism and a lack of formal education relegated most African American workers to many of the lower-paying unskilled or semi-skilled occupations. More than 80 percent of African American men worked menial jobs in steel mills, mines, construction, and meatpacking. In the railroad industry, they were often employed as porters or servants. In other businesses, they worked as janitors, waiters, or cooks. African American women, who faced discrimination due to both their race and gender, found a few job opportunities in the garment industry or laundries, but were more often employed as maids and domestic servants. Regardless of the status of their jobs, however, African Americans earned higher wages in the North than they did for the same occupations in the South, and typically found housing to be more available.\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp39467280\">However, such economic gains were offset by the higher cost of living in the North, especially in terms of rent, food, and other essentials. As a result, African Americans often found themselves living in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, much like the tenement slums in which urban European immigrants had lived at the turn of the century. For newly arrived Black people, even those who sought out the cities for the opportunities they provided, life in these cities could be exceedingly difficult. They quickly learned that racial discrimination did not necessarily vanish at the Mason-Dixon Line.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\r\n<h3>IS LIFE FOR BLACK AMERICANS BETTER IN THE NORTH?<\/h3>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm180059232\">In the summer of 1901, two young, Black, southern women debated the question, \u201cIs the South the Best Place for the Negro?\u201d Addie Sagers, born in Alabama, took the affirmative side of the debate. The South, she argued, gave African Americans the opportunity to succeed in business and the professions. Because of discrimination in northern workplaces, perpetuated by unions as well as employers, a Black person could be only a \u201cbell boy, waiter, cook, or a house maid.\u201d Sagers pointed out that there were only 11 Black teachers in Chicago\u2019s schools. She argued that the disenfranchisement law might serve as a useful motivation for Black youth to seek more education to pass the literacy test that voting required. (She could not have known that the literacy test would be unfairly administered to prevent any African Americans from passing it.)<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm214103504\">Sagers\u2019 opponent, Laura Arnold, got the best of the debate. She pointed out that for a Black southerner the \u201cjudges of his illiteracy are his enemies, one of whom recently said, no Negro could explain a clause of the Constitution to\u00a0<em data-effect=\"italics\">his<\/em>\u00a0satisfaction.\u201d Arnold emphasized the wave of violence and lynchings perpetrated against southern African Americans. \u201cMy friends!\u201d she warned, \u201cYou sleep over a volcano, which may erupt at any moment, and only your lifeless bodies will attest that you believed the South to be the best home for the Negro.\u201d Even the economic success that Sagers lauded brought danger, Arnold argued: \u201cDisplease by look, word, or deed a white man and if he so desires, your property is likely to be reduced to ashes, and the owner a mangled corpse.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h3>Why Move to the North?<\/h3>\r\nSo why move to the North, given that the economic challenges they faced were similar to those that African Americans encountered in the South? The answer lies in noneconomic gains. Greater educational opportunities and more expansive personal freedoms mattered greatly to the African Americans who made the trek northward during the Great Migration. State legislatures and local school districts allocated more funds for the education of both Blacks and Whites in the North, and also enforced compulsory school attendance laws more rigorously. Similarly, unlike the South where a simple gesture (or lack of a deferential one) could result in physical harm, life in larger, crowded northern urban centers permitted a degree of anonymity\u2014and with it, personal freedom\u2014that enabled African Americans to move, work, and speak without deferring to every White person with whom they crossed paths. Psychologically, these gains more than offset the continued economic challenges that Black migrants faced.\u00a0Despite persistent discrimination, particularly in employment and housing, Black southerners began to build communities in the North, prompting the chain migration of family members and neighbors.\r\n<h2>The Tulsa Race Massacre<\/h2>\r\nThe iniquities of Jim Crow segregation, the barbarities of America\u2019s lynching epidemic, and the depravities of 1919\u2019s Red Summer weighed heavily upon Black Americans as they entered the 1920s. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, Black Americans had built up the Greenwood District with commerce and prosperity. Booker T. Washington called it the \u201cBlack Wall Street.\u201d On the evening of May 31, 1921, spurred by a false claim of sexual assault levied against a young Black man\u2013nineteen-year-old Dick Rowland had likely either tripped over a young White elevator operator\u2019s foot or tripped and brushed a woman\u2019s shoulder with his hand\u2013a White mob mobilized, armed themselves, and destroyed the prosperous neighborhood in what came to be known as the <strong>Tulsa Race Massacre<\/strong>. Over thirty square blocks were decimated. Vigilantes burned over 1,000 homes and killed as many as several hundred Black Tulsans. Survivors recalled the mob using heavy machine guns, and others reported planes circling overhead, with pilots firing rifles and dropping firebombs. When order was finally restored the next day, the bodies of the victims were buried in mass graves. Thousands of survivors were left homeless.\r\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\r\n<h3>WATCH IT<\/h3>\r\nThe deadliest race massacre in American History started with two people. Find out the origins of this tragic event in this History special, \"Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre.\"\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8197287&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=8ceL0qHVpak&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-2xchf5rc-8ceL0qHVpak\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe>\r\n\r\nYou can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/howthetulsaracemassacrebegantulsaburningthe1921racemassacre.html\">transcript for \u201cHow the Tulsa Race Massacre Began | Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre | History\u201d here (opens in new window).<\/a>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Why is it important as a nation to learn about difficult events in U.S. history like the Tulsa Race Massacre?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Greenwood is described as a \u201ccity within a city\u201d in this documentary. Why did Black Americans have to form a \u201ccity within a city\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>How does the Tulsa Race Massacre fit into larger themes occurring in the United States at the time?<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\r\n<h3>Link to Learning: REVERSAL OF THE GREAT MIGRATION<\/h3>\r\nThe Great Migration is a modern movement that, in many ways, is still unfolding. Massive population movements produced shifts in culture and society across urban centers in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast during the First Great Migration (1910-1940) and the Second Great Migration (1940-1970). However, in recent years the Great Migration has effectively reversed, with many Black Americans moving back to the South for new economic opportunities and to seek a greater sense of community and agency. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?time_continue=1&amp;v=VCdTyl141bA&amp;feature=emb_logo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch this Vox video to learn more<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\r\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/09f3c34a-57f3-441e-bdbc-7390227431d4\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/6f7c234d-50a3-44d6-97b5-2ee748845b2d\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/bbe59077-7caa-4e4a-b5ac-0c6614418a37\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<section id=\"fs-idm172607792\" data-depth=\"1\"><section id=\"fs-idm214482880\" class=\"ap-practice\" data-depth=\"2\">\r\n<div id=\"fs-idm166120768\" class=\"os-hasStimulus\" data-type=\"exercise\"><section>\r\n<div id=\"fs-idm204156448\" data-type=\"problem\">\r\n<div class=\"os-problem-container \">\r\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\r\n<strong>The Great Migration:\u00a0<\/strong>the movement of Black Americans from rural areas of the South to urban areas in the North between 1916 and 1970\r\n\r\n<strong>pull factors:\u00a0<\/strong>the combination of circumstances that pulled Black Americans toward the North\r\n\r\n<strong>push factors:\u00a0<\/strong>the combination of circumstances that pushed Black Americans out of the South\r\n\r\n<strong>Tulsa Race Massacre: <\/strong>the deadliest race massacre in United States history, where a White mob destroyed the prosperous \"Black Wall Street,\" killing several hundred Black Tulsans\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/section>","rendered":"<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Describe push and pull factors that contributed to the Great Migration<\/li>\n<li>Understand the violence enacted against Black people, including race massacres, during the 1920s<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h2>The Great Migration<\/h2>\n<div style=\"width: 672px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"39501\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cnx.org\/resources\/927f97c3cb7aa83d3445f61027dd7520a1c046eb\" alt=\"The map of the United States, titled \u201cThe Great Migration, 1916\u20131930,\u201d includes three migration corridors from the southern states which include Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. The first migration corridor, \u201cSouth West to Midwest and Far West\u201d starts in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas and heads towards the following destination cities: Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, California; Springfield and Quincy, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; Davenport, Iowa; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The second migration corridor, \u201cSouth Central to Midwest\u201d starts in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee and heads towards the following destination cities: Louisville, Kentucky; Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, and Cleveland, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Indianapolis, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Detroit, Michigan. The third migration corridor, \u201cSoutheast to Northeast\u201d starts in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia and heads to the following destination cities: Richmond, Virginia; Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, and Albany, New York; Newark, New Jersey; New Haven, Connecticut; Providence, Rhode Island; and Boston, Massachusetts. There is a note on the map that states, \u201cMany of the Exodusters eventually left Kansas, and Oklahoma for California.\u201d\" width=\"662\" height=\"408\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 1<\/strong>. This map shows the migrant streams of southern African Americans during the Great Migration from 1916 to 1930. (credit: \u201cGreat Migration\u201d by Bill of Rights Institute\/Flickr, CC BY 4.0)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Some historians differentiate between a first <strong>Great Migration<\/strong> (1916\u201340) and a second Great Migration (1940\u201370). Both waves of relocation featured Black Americans leaving the South for other regions of the country, typically in search of better-paid work and a less hostile environment. The first Great Migration saw about 1.6 million people move from mostly rural areas in the South to northern industrial cities. From 1910 to 1930, approximately 1.3 million Black southerners moved north and west in several different migrant streams that generally depended on the transportation available to them. African Americans from the East Coast typically went to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and New York. New York City\u2019s Black population more than doubled during those decades, from 152,000 to 328,000. From the middle South, Black residents of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky moved to Chicago and midwestern industrial cities, where car manufacturers and related industries began to employ African Americans. Detroit\u2019s population grew from 41,000 in 1910 to 120,066 in 1920. Arkansans, Louisianians, and Texans went to places like Saint Louis and California. The Second Great Migration (1940\u201370) began in earnest after the Great Depression and brought at least 5 million people\u2014including many townspeople with urban skills\u2014to the North and West.<\/p>\n<h3>Push Factors<\/h3>\n<p>A combination of both <strong>push factors<\/strong> and <strong>pull factors<\/strong> played a role in this movement. Despite the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (ensuring freedom, the right to vote regardless of race, and equal protection under the law, respectively), African Americans were still subjected to intense racial hatred. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War led to increased death threats, violence, and a wave of lynchings. Even after the formal dismantling of the Klan in the late 1870s, racially motivated violence continued. According to researchers at the Tuskegee Institute, there were thirty-five hundred racially motivated lynchings and other murders committed in the South between 1865 and 1900. For African Americans fleeing this culture of violence, northern and midwestern cities offered an opportunity to escape the dangers of the South.\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\">Impoverished Black farmers began moving to southern cities in large numbers after 1910, and many continued from there to northern cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, New York, and Chicago. Rural southern African Americans worked chiefly as sharecroppers, planting and harvesting crops on White landowners\u2019 farms for a percentage of the profit (often 50 percent). Many sharecroppers ended the year in debt, especially after the boll weevil began to move across the South in 1892, decimating cotton crops. In 1900, nearly half of southern farmers did not own land, and a majority of them were African Americans. Under the thumb of White landowners and in constant debt, many of these sharecroppers compared their living and working conditions to slavery.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Pull Factors<\/h3>\n<p>In addition to this \u201cpush\u201d out of the South, African Americans were also \u201cpulled\u201d to the cities by factors that attracted them, including the opportunity to earn a wage rather than be tied to a landlord, and the chance to vote (for men, at least), ideally without the threat of violence. Although many lacked the funds to move north, factory owners and other businesses that sought cheap labor sometimes provided assistance. Often, the men moved first and then sent for their families once they were established in their new city life.<\/p>\n<div class=\"os-figure\">\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>WATCH IT<\/h3>\n<p>In 1910, 90% of Black Americans lived in the South. By 1940, around 1.5 million Black Americans had left their homes, and 77% lived in the South. By 1970, only 52% of Black Americans remained in the South. People moved away for many reasons, including increased opportunity in the more industrial North and West. They sought a relatively safer life away from the lynchings and violence that were concentrated in the Jim Crow South. This Great Migration shaped 20th-century America in countless ways, but we&#8217;re going to try to count some of them in this video.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"oembed-1\" title=\"The Great Migration: Crash Course Black American History #24\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Woh63FlFDBk?feature=oembed&#38;rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/TheGreatMigrationCrashCourseBlackAmericanHist.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cThe Great Migration: Crash Course Black American History #24\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The Black experience during the Great Migration became an important theme in the artistic movement known first as the New Negro Movement and later as the Harlem Renaissance, which would have an enormous impact on the culture of the era. Based in New York City, this cultural movement produced some of the finest and most influential literature, music, and fashion of the twentieth century. The Great Migration also began a new era of increasing political activism among African Americans, who after being disenfranchised in the South found a new place for themselves in public life in the cities of the North and West. The civil rights movement directly benefited from this activism.<\/p>\n<h2>Life in the North<\/h2>\n<p>Racism and a lack of formal education relegated most African American workers to many of the lower-paying unskilled or semi-skilled occupations. More than 80 percent of African American men worked menial jobs in steel mills, mines, construction, and meatpacking. In the railroad industry, they were often employed as porters or servants. In other businesses, they worked as janitors, waiters, or cooks. African American women, who faced discrimination due to both their race and gender, found a few job opportunities in the garment industry or laundries, but were more often employed as maids and domestic servants. Regardless of the status of their jobs, however, African Americans earned higher wages in the North than they did for the same occupations in the South, and typically found housing to be more available.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idp39467280\">However, such economic gains were offset by the higher cost of living in the North, especially in terms of rent, food, and other essentials. As a result, African Americans often found themselves living in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, much like the tenement slums in which urban European immigrants had lived at the turn of the century. For newly arrived Black people, even those who sought out the cities for the opportunities they provided, life in these cities could be exceedingly difficult. They quickly learned that racial discrimination did not necessarily vanish at the Mason-Dixon Line.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\n<h3>IS LIFE FOR BLACK AMERICANS BETTER IN THE NORTH?<\/h3>\n<p id=\"fs-idm180059232\">In the summer of 1901, two young, Black, southern women debated the question, \u201cIs the South the Best Place for the Negro?\u201d Addie Sagers, born in Alabama, took the affirmative side of the debate. The South, she argued, gave African Americans the opportunity to succeed in business and the professions. Because of discrimination in northern workplaces, perpetuated by unions as well as employers, a Black person could be only a \u201cbell boy, waiter, cook, or a house maid.\u201d Sagers pointed out that there were only 11 Black teachers in Chicago\u2019s schools. She argued that the disenfranchisement law might serve as a useful motivation for Black youth to seek more education to pass the literacy test that voting required. (She could not have known that the literacy test would be unfairly administered to prevent any African Americans from passing it.)<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idm214103504\">Sagers\u2019 opponent, Laura Arnold, got the best of the debate. She pointed out that for a Black southerner the \u201cjudges of his illiteracy are his enemies, one of whom recently said, no Negro could explain a clause of the Constitution to\u00a0<em data-effect=\"italics\">his<\/em>\u00a0satisfaction.\u201d Arnold emphasized the wave of violence and lynchings perpetrated against southern African Americans. \u201cMy friends!\u201d she warned, \u201cYou sleep over a volcano, which may erupt at any moment, and only your lifeless bodies will attest that you believed the South to be the best home for the Negro.\u201d Even the economic success that Sagers lauded brought danger, Arnold argued: \u201cDisplease by look, word, or deed a white man and if he so desires, your property is likely to be reduced to ashes, and the owner a mangled corpse.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Why Move to the North?<\/h3>\n<p>So why move to the North, given that the economic challenges they faced were similar to those that African Americans encountered in the South? The answer lies in noneconomic gains. Greater educational opportunities and more expansive personal freedoms mattered greatly to the African Americans who made the trek northward during the Great Migration. State legislatures and local school districts allocated more funds for the education of both Blacks and Whites in the North, and also enforced compulsory school attendance laws more rigorously. Similarly, unlike the South where a simple gesture (or lack of a deferential one) could result in physical harm, life in larger, crowded northern urban centers permitted a degree of anonymity\u2014and with it, personal freedom\u2014that enabled African Americans to move, work, and speak without deferring to every White person with whom they crossed paths. Psychologically, these gains more than offset the continued economic challenges that Black migrants faced.\u00a0Despite persistent discrimination, particularly in employment and housing, Black southerners began to build communities in the North, prompting the chain migration of family members and neighbors.<\/p>\n<h2>The Tulsa Race Massacre<\/h2>\n<p>The iniquities of Jim Crow segregation, the barbarities of America\u2019s lynching epidemic, and the depravities of 1919\u2019s Red Summer weighed heavily upon Black Americans as they entered the 1920s. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, Black Americans had built up the Greenwood District with commerce and prosperity. Booker T. Washington called it the \u201cBlack Wall Street.\u201d On the evening of May 31, 1921, spurred by a false claim of sexual assault levied against a young Black man\u2013nineteen-year-old Dick Rowland had likely either tripped over a young White elevator operator\u2019s foot or tripped and brushed a woman\u2019s shoulder with his hand\u2013a White mob mobilized, armed themselves, and destroyed the prosperous neighborhood in what came to be known as the <strong>Tulsa Race Massacre<\/strong>. Over thirty square blocks were decimated. Vigilantes burned over 1,000 homes and killed as many as several hundred Black Tulsans. Survivors recalled the mob using heavy machine guns, and others reported planes circling overhead, with pilots firing rifles and dropping firebombs. When order was finally restored the next day, the bodies of the victims were buried in mass graves. Thousands of survivors were left homeless.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>WATCH IT<\/h3>\n<p>The deadliest race massacre in American History started with two people. Find out the origins of this tragic event in this History special, &#8220;Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8197287&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=8ceL0qHVpak&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-2xchf5rc-8ceL0qHVpak\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/howthetulsaracemassacrebegantulsaburningthe1921racemassacre.html\">transcript for \u201cHow the Tulsa Race Massacre Began | Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre | History\u201d here (opens in new window).<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Why is it important as a nation to learn about difficult events in U.S. history like the Tulsa Race Massacre?<\/li>\n<li>Greenwood is described as a \u201ccity within a city\u201d in this documentary. Why did Black Americans have to form a \u201ccity within a city\u201d?<\/li>\n<li>How does the Tulsa Race Massacre fit into larger themes occurring in the United States at the time?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\n<h3>Link to Learning: REVERSAL OF THE GREAT MIGRATION<\/h3>\n<p>The Great Migration is a modern movement that, in many ways, is still unfolding. Massive population movements produced shifts in culture and society across urban centers in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast during the First Great Migration (1910-1940) and the Second Great Migration (1940-1970). However, in recent years the Great Migration has effectively reversed, with many Black Americans moving back to the South for new economic opportunities and to seek a greater sense of community and agency. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?time_continue=1&amp;v=VCdTyl141bA&amp;feature=emb_logo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch this Vox video to learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_09f3c34a-57f3-441e-bdbc-7390227431d4\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/09f3c34a-57f3-441e-bdbc-7390227431d4?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_09f3c34a-57f3-441e-bdbc-7390227431d4\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_6f7c234d-50a3-44d6-97b5-2ee748845b2d\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/6f7c234d-50a3-44d6-97b5-2ee748845b2d?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_6f7c234d-50a3-44d6-97b5-2ee748845b2d\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_bbe59077-7caa-4e4a-b5ac-0c6614418a37\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/bbe59077-7caa-4e4a-b5ac-0c6614418a37?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_bbe59077-7caa-4e4a-b5ac-0c6614418a37\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<section id=\"fs-idm172607792\" data-depth=\"1\">\n<section id=\"fs-idm214482880\" class=\"ap-practice\" data-depth=\"2\">\n<div id=\"fs-idm166120768\" class=\"os-hasStimulus\" data-type=\"exercise\">\n<section>\n<div id=\"fs-idm204156448\" data-type=\"problem\">\n<div class=\"os-problem-container\">\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\n<p><strong>The Great Migration:\u00a0<\/strong>the movement of Black Americans from rural areas of the South to urban areas in the North between 1916 and 1970<\/p>\n<p><strong>pull factors:\u00a0<\/strong>the combination of circumstances that pulled Black Americans toward the North<\/p>\n<p><strong>push factors:\u00a0<\/strong>the combination of circumstances that pushed Black Americans out of the South<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tulsa Race Massacre: <\/strong>the deadliest race massacre in United States history, where a White mob destroyed the prosperous &#8220;Black Wall Street,&#8221; killing several hundred Black Tulsans<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n\n\t\t\t <section class=\"citations-section\" role=\"contentinfo\">\n\t\t\t <h3>Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <div id=\"citation-list-4230\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div class=\"licensing\"><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Original<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Modification, adaptation, and original content. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Yasmin Forbes for Lumen Learning. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Lumen Learning. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>The Great Migration. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Wikipedia. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Great_Migration_(African_American)\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Great_Migration_(African_American)<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><li>The African American u201cGreat Migrationu201d and New European Immigration. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: OpenStax. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/19-2-the-african-american-great-migration-and-new-european-immigration\">https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/19-2-the-african-american-great-migration-and-new-european-immigration<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction<\/li><li>The Great Migration. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: OpenStax. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/cnx.org\/contents\/NgBFhmUc@11.2:_TrXiRgs@4\/10-14-%F0%9F%94%8E-The-Great-Migration\">https:\/\/cnx.org\/contents\/NgBFhmUc@11.2:_TrXiRgs@4\/10-14-%F0%9F%94%8E-The-Great-Migration<\/a>. <strong>Project<\/strong>: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Download for free at http:\/\/cnx.org\/contents\/36004586-651c-4ded-af87-203aca22d946@11.2<\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">All rights reserved content<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>The Great Migration: Crash Course Black American History #24. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: CrashCourse. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Woh63FlFDBk\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Woh63FlFDBk<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>All Rights Reserved<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><li>How the Tulsa Race Massacre Began | Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre | History. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: HISTORY. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8ceL0qHVpak\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8ceL0qHVpak<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>All Rights Reserved<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><li>Why African-Americans left the south in droves u2014 and what&#039;s bringing them back. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Vox. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VCdTyl141bA\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VCdTyl141bA<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>All Rights Reserved<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">Public domain content<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>The Great Migration. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: US Census Bureau. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.census.gov\/dataviz\/visualizations\/020\/\">https:\/\/www.census.gov\/dataviz\/visualizations\/020\/<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/about\/pdm\">Public Domain: No Known Copyright<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t <\/section>","protected":false},"author":29,"menu_order":6,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[{\"type\":\"pd\",\"description\":\"The Great Migration\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"US Census Bureau\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.census.gov\/dataviz\/visualizations\/020\/\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"pd\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"The Great Migration\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"Wikipedia\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Great_Migration_(African_American)\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by-sa\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"The African American u201cGreat Migrationu201d and New European Immigration\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"OpenStax\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/19-2-the-african-american-great-migration-and-new-european-immigration\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction\"},{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"The Great Migration\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"OpenStax\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cnx.org\/contents\/NgBFhmUc@11.2:_TrXiRgs@4\/10-14-%F0%9F%94%8E-The-Great-Migration\",\"project\":\"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"Download for free at http:\/\/cnx.org\/contents\/36004586-651c-4ded-af87-203aca22d946@11.2\"},{\"type\":\"original\",\"description\":\"Modification, adaptation, and original content\",\"author\":\"Yasmin Forbes for Lumen Learning\",\"organization\":\"Lumen Learning\",\"url\":\"\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"copyrighted_video\",\"description\":\"The Great Migration: Crash Course Black American History #24\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"CrashCourse\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Woh63FlFDBk\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"arr\",\"license_terms\":\"Standard YouTube License\"},{\"type\":\"copyrighted_video\",\"description\":\"How the Tulsa Race Massacre Began | Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre | History\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"HISTORY\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8ceL0qHVpak\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"arr\",\"license_terms\":\"Standard YouTube License\"},{\"type\":\"copyrighted_video\",\"description\":\"Why African-Americans left the south in droves u2014 and what\\'s bringing them back\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"Vox\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VCdTyl141bA\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"arr\",\"license_terms\":\"Standard YouTube License\"}]","CANDELA_OUTCOMES_GUID":"3a24fd69-b15f-4e8c-bf68-6b8dee705986,8a306e99-fb1c-430f-aa03-3a9b891a6d26,6f1894df-d686-4da4-936d-d515b3414925","pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-4230","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":230,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/4230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"version-history":[{"count":45,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/4230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9454,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/4230\/revisions\/9454"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/230"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/4230\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=4230"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=4230"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=4230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}