African American impact of the Great Migration in establishing Black communities

African American impact of the Great Migration in establishing Black communities

Thesis

The Great Migration was a drastic change on African American culture; however it did not smash all of the racial, social, and psychological impediments that had long obstructed black achievement.

I.Introduction

The Great Migration was a drastic change on African American culture; however it did not smash all of the racial, social, and psychological impediments that had long obstructed black achievement.

The great migration was a mass movement by black Americans in the early twentieth century. African Americans began to move from the predominantly rural, segregated south to the urban north and west. African Americans moved away from the south looking for a better life. Blacks sought greater economic, social, and political freedom. The great migration was caused by push and pull factors. The south lacked economic growth and was filled with prejudice whites whereas in the north there were jobs, opportunity and less violence from whites.

II. What was the cause for the Great Migration?

There were many causes of the great migration. From 1910s to 1915 cotton prices were falling which brought on an economic depression that seriously hurt southern farmers, both black and white. An insect called the boll weevils destroyed much of the cotton crop between 1914 and 1917. In the Mississippi Valley, ranchers suffered an added plaque. Severe floods in 1915 wrecked plantings and homes. African American homes were especially ruined because they lived in the valley's bottomland. The few southern blacks who owned their own farms before 1910 were now largely reduced to sharecropping and tenant farming.

Northern commerce were undergoing an economic boom. This was mainly because of the start of WW1 in Europe. The north and south were experiencing a labor shortage. Between the years of 1915 and 1920 from 500,000 to one-million African Americans left the rural south for the urban north. Thousands more moved west other ones remained in the south but moved from the homeland to the city.

On their arrival in the north migrants found not only higher wages but the freedom to vote. Blacks were less exposed to violence in the north and sometimes better schools for their children. Racism still remained persistent and there was discriminatory real-estate practices found blacked into ill-maintained and segregated housing, contributing to the rise of the urban black ghetto.

III. What type of effects did the Great Migration have on African Americans?

Blacks were regularly omitted from labor unions. Blacks were forced into menial jobs as butlers, waiters, and served as replacements workers during strikes by white unions. With blacks working it increased competition between whites and blacks for jobs and housing. This sparked race riots in dozens of northern cities. There were foremost white on very dark riots in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917 and Chicago, Illinois, in 1919.

Despite problems migrants faced in the north. They still wrote to family and friends in their letters they talked of better living conditions, better jobs and more ...