During the Great Migration, starting in 1910 and continuing till the 1970s, many Black citizens in the United States moved north in search of better lives, far away from southern Jim Crow. But, as discussed in one of the earliest blog posts here, while Black Americans found freedom from the harsh de jure segregation of the south, they were not free from de facto segregation in the north. For this post however, we will look to maps for insight on how the Great Migration impacted first the US as a whole, and then Michigan with a focus on Detroit.
The map1 above illustrates the drastic change caused by the Great Migration, and the pattern is quickly apparent at a glance. Overwhelmingly, the majority of increases were in northern cities, while southern cities mostly decreased with only a few major southern cities gaining a higher percent, most likely the result of rural Blacks condensing around urban centers. The pattern may be clear now, but the reasons why this migration occurred remain speculatory without further research. To answer, we will turn to Michigan for a condensed view of how the Great Migration affected one State--focusing on our favorite city.
All the cities from the data source used to create this map2 saw increases in their Black population from 1910-1940, following the trend of northern cities expanding. Detroit saw the largest increase of these cities, and even comparing Detroit to other US cities in the earlier map reveals it was among the top five increased cities in the country--just barely robbed of 3rd place by Gary Indiana's 0.1% lead on it. The one major factor that caused increased migration to Detroit over most other northern cities was, of course, its booming manufacturing industries--primarily automotive manufacturing. Timing also played a key role. The first half of the Great Migration coincided with WWI, during which a ban on most foreign immigration created shortages in Detroit factories, shortages which were then filled by continually increasing Black immigration.3 These new job opportunities, open to all and promising better wages than most, and increasingly hostile living conditions in the south, including de jure segregation, unfair work dynamics such as sharecropping, lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan to name a few, combined to create a very compelling argument for northern migration.4 Despite the de facto segregation which many encountered in the north, especially, as we examined, in Detroit, dreams of a better life for themselves and their families drove the migration north--out of lands heavily tarnished by centuries of slavery and into ones which would hopefully accommodate them better.
Bibliography
Bates, Beth Tompkins. The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=464059&site=eds-live&scope=site.
U.S. Census Bureau and Erin N. Bush, Great Migration City Population Changes Data 1910-1970, University of North Georgia.
- I designed this map to be quickly readable, hopefully without the need for scrolling each data point. To do this, I used green for increases as generally green signals positive things, while red often symbolizes negative things, and is used here to represent decreases. In addition, I used bubbles to represent the cities' data because I feel they are the easiest to read regarding size. The hope is that despite some overlap of the bubbles, especially in the north, the concept of massive change is effectively conveyed to the reader. [↩]
- In truth, I would have preferred this map to be the north eastern US, but could not sort out how to accomplish this. As it stands, this map serves to focus the topic, give a point of reference, and compare other Michigan cities to Detroit--rather than rely on the reader to zoom into the above map to see these differences and the focal point of Detroit, I have done so for them. [↩]
- Beth Tompkins Bates, The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford, 15-16 [↩]
- Bates, Black Detroit, 16-17 [↩]
