Between 1910 and 1970, the proportion of blacks living in the South dropped from 90% to 53%.
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Southern whites feared the migration would deprive them of black labor. Blacks saw the exodus as a fulfillment of God's promise. A Birmingham minister offered the following prayer to his congregation: "We feel and believe that this great Exodus is God's hand and plan. In a mysterious way God is moving upon the hearts of our people to go where He has prepared for them." Among those who migrated were the most creative people in the South. Jazz musicians came from New Orleans to play in Chicago, Kansas City, and New York. Blues players came from the Delta. The NAACP welcomed writers and poets like writer Zora Neale Hurston, poet Langston Hughes, and sculptor Augusta Savage. They, along with poet Countee Cullen and other black artists, created a cultural explosion known as the "Harlem Renaissance." The migration slowed down during the Depression in the 1930s but picked up speed when World War II began. Again jobs opened up in factories. At the same time, mechanization came to the cotton fields, displacing many black farmers. Between the period 1910 and 1970, an estimated six million blacks migrated from the South.
"Great Migration." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.
http://vellastrations.wordpress.com/category/the-great-migration/
"Great Migration." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.
http://vellastrations.wordpress.com/category/the-great-migration/
![Picture](/uploads/2/0/8/6/20867894/5024861.jpg?280)
Lack of Employment Opportunities
Theories of migration suggest that geographical mobility is significantly affected by labor market conditions. Consistent with this proposition, several major long-distance migrations of the early 20th century United States were evidently influenced by the lack of employment opportunities. White and black southerners who were displaced by the wholesale loss of agricultural jobs in the 1920s often moved to northern cities, looking for work in these industrial centers (Berry, 2000; Fligstein, 1981; Grossman, 1989). In the following decade, protracted drought and soil erosion created a gigantic Dust Bowl in the Great Plains, causing many bankrupt farmers in the re- gion to abandon their lands and seek better prospects in California and neighboring states (Gregory, 1989). The heavy influx of the destitute migrants into these western states, moreover, coincided with the widespread joblessness of the Great Depression.
Boyd, Robert L. "A Migration Of Despair": Unemployment, The Search For Work, And Migration To Farms During The Great Depression." Social Science
Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell) 83.2 (2002): 554-567. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
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Parkin, Arkansas
The families of evicted sharecroppers from the Dibble plantation were legally evicted the week of January 12, 1936. The plantation was suggested to have been engaged in a conspiracy to retain the sharecroppers' homes. This type of contention was being granted by the court. The evictions, though at gun point, were quite legal.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998023835/PP/
The families of evicted sharecroppers from the Dibble plantation were legally evicted the week of January 12, 1936. The plantation was suggested to have been engaged in a conspiracy to retain the sharecroppers' homes. This type of contention was being granted by the court. The evictions, though at gun point, were quite legal.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998023835/PP/
![Picture](/uploads/2/0/8/6/20867894/6316634.jpg?308)
Cotton Plantations
The 1930s had everyone in an economical squeeze, especially African-Americans. The cotton plantations lost money and couldn’t almost give the cotton away. Cotton dropped from thirty cents a bale to about seventeen cents a bale in the late 1920s. After the crash in about 1931, farmers would be happy to receive six cents a bale. Hence the reason for the “Great Migration”, when African Americans raced out of the south to northern and western places in hopes of finding work with a fair wage. (The Warmth of Other Suns)
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. New York, NY: Random House, 2010. Print.
Evicted sharecroppers along Highway 60, New Madrid County, Missouri http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a10602
The 1930s had everyone in an economical squeeze, especially African-Americans. The cotton plantations lost money and couldn’t almost give the cotton away. Cotton dropped from thirty cents a bale to about seventeen cents a bale in the late 1920s. After the crash in about 1931, farmers would be happy to receive six cents a bale. Hence the reason for the “Great Migration”, when African Americans raced out of the south to northern and western places in hopes of finding work with a fair wage. (The Warmth of Other Suns)
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. New York, NY: Random House, 2010. Print.
Evicted sharecroppers along Highway 60, New Madrid County, Missouri http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a10602
![Picture](/uploads/2/0/8/6/20867894/3028814.jpg?340)
Forrest City, Arkansas, FLOOD
In January of 1937 Arkansas was hit with one of the worst floods of all time. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, "Arkansas’s floodwaters inundated 1,037,500 acres of agricultural land and 756,800 acres of other land, affecting 40,916 families and their livestock. To shelter the evacuees, the ARC established seventy-five camps (tent cities) and concentration centers (existing structures) equipped with special livestock corrals. Twenty-nine field hospitals staffed by 166 nurses tackled the needs of patients and performed immunizations against typhiod and diphtheria, among other diseases. A tent city near Jonesboro was the only refugee location where disease broke out. Meningitis appeared there on February 5 in a child. An emergency isolation hospital was prepared to house the eventual thirty-six cases that resulted in eleven deaths."
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=4878
Negroes in the lineup for food at meal time in the camp for flood refugees, Forrest City, Arkansas. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-f8a9-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
In January of 1937 Arkansas was hit with one of the worst floods of all time. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, "Arkansas’s floodwaters inundated 1,037,500 acres of agricultural land and 756,800 acres of other land, affecting 40,916 families and their livestock. To shelter the evacuees, the ARC established seventy-five camps (tent cities) and concentration centers (existing structures) equipped with special livestock corrals. Twenty-nine field hospitals staffed by 166 nurses tackled the needs of patients and performed immunizations against typhiod and diphtheria, among other diseases. A tent city near Jonesboro was the only refugee location where disease broke out. Meningitis appeared there on February 5 in a child. An emergency isolation hospital was prepared to house the eventual thirty-six cases that resulted in eleven deaths."
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=4878
Negroes in the lineup for food at meal time in the camp for flood refugees, Forrest City, Arkansas. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-f8a9-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
![Picture](/uploads/2/0/8/6/20867894/1447846.jpg?142)
"The Promised Land" by Nicholas Lemann
"A New York Times bestseller, the groundbreaking authoritative history of the migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North. A definitive book on American history, The Promised Land is also essential reading for educators and policymakers at both national and local levels."
http://www.amazon.com/The-Promised-Land-Migration-Changed/dp/0679733477
http://0-books.google.com.libcat.uafs.edu/books?id=FnlIhqBBEMkC&lpg=PA3&ots=hV5qSmoxmd&dq=great%20depression%20narratives%20by%20african%20americans&lr&pg=PP1&output=embed
"A New York Times bestseller, the groundbreaking authoritative history of the migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North. A definitive book on American history, The Promised Land is also essential reading for educators and policymakers at both national and local levels."
http://www.amazon.com/The-Promised-Land-Migration-Changed/dp/0679733477
http://0-books.google.com.libcat.uafs.edu/books?id=FnlIhqBBEMkC&lpg=PA3&ots=hV5qSmoxmd&dq=great%20depression%20narratives%20by%20african%20americans&lr&pg=PP1&output=embed