The Great Migration, formally spanning the years 1916 to 1917, was deemed in scholarly study as “the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West.” As white supremacy steadily ruled the American south, and the dismal of economic opportunities and extremist segregationist legislation plagued greater America, African Americans were driven from their homes in search of more “progressive” acceptance in the North, or rather, above the Mason-Dixon line. Did you know that in the year 1916, formally recognized by scholars of African-American history as the beginning of The Great Migration, “a factory wage in the urban North was typically three times more than what blacks could expect to make as sharecroppers in the rural South?” In Northern metropolitan areas, the need for works in industry arose for the first time throughout World War I, where neither race nor color played a contributing factor in the need for a supportive American workforce during a time of great need. By the year 1919, more than one million African Americans had left the south; in the decade between 1910 and 1920, the African-American population of major Northern cities grew by large percentages, including New York (66 percent), Chicago (148 percent), Philadelphia (500 percent) and Detroit (611 percent). These urban metropolises offered respites of economical reprieve, a lack of segregation legislation that seemingly lessened the relative effects of racism and prejudice for the time, and abundant opportunity. The exhibition highlights The Great Migration: Journey to the North, written by Eloise Greenfield and illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist, to serve as a near-autobiography highlighting the human element of the Great Migration. “With war production kicking into high gear, recruiters enticed African Americans to come north, to the dismay of white Southerners. Black newspapers—particularly the widely read Chicago Defender—published advertisements touting the opportunities available in the cities of the North and West, along with first-person accounts of success.” As the Great Migration progressed, African Americans steadily established a new role for themselves in public life, “actively confronting racial prejudice as well as economic, political and social challenges to create a black urban culture that would exert enormous influence in the decades to come.”
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