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The Great Migration is surely one of the most important events that occurred in the United States involving African-American history. This movement, which lasted from 1910 to 1920 (though some stretch it as far as 1915 to 1960) was represented by roughly five million African-Americans who migrated out of the South. Since they had been deprived equal citizenship following the Civil War -- and their deprived status intensified following the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court decision -- they decided to leave the South to find better conditions elsewhere. Any effort by the government to recognize the African-Americans’ citizenship rights was discouraged by the legal segregation that resulted from Plessy vs. Ferguson.
Through the legalized segregation, many reasons to leave the South developed. First of all, work opportunities of war industries in the north (since WW I cut off immigration) were abundant and open for Blacks who migrated. Blacks were also relocating from areas where they had given up hope of bettering their conditions. In addition, use of the myth of white superiority to justify segregation resulted in hostility, often in the form of the KKK. By 1915, the Klan had revived and the resulting violence drove many Blacks elsewhere. The boll weevil destruction of crops in 1916 also ruined many Blacks, who were sharecroppers and farmers. As a result, they left in search of new prospects and professions. Industrialization in the South also forced Blacks to leave in search of non-farming jobs elsewhere.
The general path of the Great Migration was from rural southern areas to the north and west. From 1915 to 1925, over one million Blacks left the South and settled in large cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis. However, the North did not prove to live up to its legend. Blacks discovered that they faced almost as much prejudice in the North as they did in the South. They were forced to live in parts of the cities that became Black ghettoes (i.e.., Harlem, the South Side in Chicago). The ghettoes were often much more crowded than other parts of the city. They also experienced discrimination from the trade unions, and whites resented black competition for jobs.
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