Great migration (African American)

The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million African-Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1910 and 1970. Until 1910, more than 90 percent of the African-American population lived in the American South. In 1900, only one-fifth of African-Americans living in the South were living in urban areas. By the end of the Great Migration, a bare majority of 53 percent remained in the South, while 40 percent lived in the North, and 7 percent in the West, and African-Americans had become an urbanized population. By 1970, more than 80 percent of African-Americans lived in cities, and by 1960, of those African-Americans still living in the South, half now lived in urban areas. In 1991, Nicholas Lemann wrote that the Great Migration:

was one of the largest and most rapid mass internal movements in history—perhaps the greatest not caused by the immediate threat of execution or starvation. In sheer numbers it outranks the migration of any other ethnic group—Italians or Irish or Jews or Poles—to [the United States]. For blacks, the migration meant leaving what had always been their economic and social base in America, and finding a new one.

Some historians differentiate between a first Great Migration (1916–1930), which saw about 1.6 million people move from mostly rural areas to northern industrial cities, and a Second Great Migration (1940–1970), which began after the Great Depression and brought at least 5 million people—including many townspeople with urban skills—to the north and to California and other western states.

Since 1965, a reverse migration has gathered strength. Dubbed the New Great Migration, it has seen many African-Americans move to the South, generally to states and cities where economic opportunities are the best. The reasons include economic difficulties of cities in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, growth of jobs in the "New South" and its lower cost of living, family and kinship ties, and improved racial relations. As early as 1975 to 1980, seven southern states were net African-American migration gainers. African-American populations have continued to drop throughout much of the Northeast, especially the state of New York and northern New Jersey, as they rise in the South.

...
Wikipedia