THE GREAT MIGRATION- AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

During the first decade of the 20th century, the infestation of Southern cotton crops by insects called boll weevils diminished production and curtailed the need for farm labor. Growing unemployment and

increasing racial violence encouraged blacks to leave the South. Soon after, in 1914, World War I broke out in Europe. Although the United States did not enter the war until 1917, its factories supplied the combatants. American industry needed labor, and the war slowed European immigration. In response, Northern manufacturers recruited Southern black workers to fill factory jobs. From 1910 to 1930 between 1.5 million and 2 million African Americans left the South for the industrial cities of the North. By 1930 more than 200,000 blacks had moved to New York, about 180,000 to Chicago, and more than 130,000 to Philadelphia.

The sudden influx of newcomers to established Northern black communities brought not only new vitality but also new problems. Tensions grew between long-time black residents and the new emigrants, who were generally poor and sometimes illiterate. Cheap taverns and dance halls sprang up to cater to them, and they established new churches (often storefront quarters) that rivaled older more traditional black churches.

As black communities in Northern cities grew, black working people became the clientele for an expanding black professional and business class, gaining in political and economic power. This new black leadership replaced traditional leaders whose status often depended on their connection to influential whites. New leaders were more likely to have power based in the black communities and were freer to express a sense of racial pride and solidarity with working class African Americans.

Under these conditions, many social conflicts gradually gave way to an increasing sense of racial pride and social cohesion. While Jim Crow laws and political terrorism continued to discourage blacks from voting in the South, African Americans in Northern cities became an important political force. Black fraternal orders, political organizations, social clubs, and newspapers asserted an urban consciousness that became the foundation for the militancy and African American cultural innovations of the 1920s.