From Fields to Factories: The Economic Dynamics of the Great Migration
By: Harish Ganesh
The Boston Economist — The Great Migration in the United States was a mass exodus of African Americans from the rural South to industrial cities in the North that occurred in several waves between 1910 and 1970. Over 60 years, some six million African Americans would leave their homes in the deep South to pursue higher-paying jobs, and greater opportunities, and escape the oppressive, violent reign of Jim Crow laws. Driven by a potent mix of economic necessity and aspiration, the Great Migration reshaped the demographic composition of American cities and fundamentally altered the nation’s economy. This article aims to dissect the causes of the Great Migration from an economic and social standpoint, its long-run consequences, and what can be done to improve the lives of the descendants of those who moved north decades ago.
Origins
Between the earliest known census records of the United States in 1790 and the start of the Great Migration in 1910, over 90% of African Americans lived in the Southern United States. This was due to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, in which Africans were forcibly taken to the Americas to work on plantations producing “cash crops” like tobacco, cotton, and sugar. In the United States, almost all of these slaves ended up in the southern states due to their abundance of cotton plantations. With a long warm season and short winters, moderate rainfall, and rich soil, the American Southeast became a lucrative place to produce cotton, increasing the demand for slaves. By contrast, the northern United States faces longer and harsher winters and erratic precipitation, and most agricultural activity is for food rather than cash. As a result, the black population was heavily concentrated in the American South for centuries — at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, 92% of Blacks lived in the South. Following the liberation of slaves in 1863 and the surrender of the Confederate States of America in 1865, the United States military occupied the Southern States to prevent further rebellion.
In 1877, the United States withdrew its troops from the South. Without federal enforcement of the 15th Amendment, white southerners established the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that intimidated and murdered African Americans for a variety of reasons, including attempting to vote. Some 3500 Blacks were lynched between 1882 and 1968. Without African American voters and with significant violence, most Black state legislators were removed from office, and white supremacists took office. They used a variety of tactics beyond intimidation, such as poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and “literacy tests” to prevent African Americans from voting. Only 633 black state legislators held office in the South from 1870 to 1876, and this number would not recover for over a century.
To survive, many African Americans resorted to sharecropping agreements, a legal arrangement in which a landowner allowed a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Almost all of the land in the Southern states had been seized by the United States government during the war. President Andrew Johnson ordered this land returned to its former owners in 1865. Without property, or federal protection after 1877, many Blacks returned to working for their former owners, often in arrangements where they kept a portion of the crop they produced as a “payment” or in which they were paid but not allowed to keep their production.
First Great Migration
African Americans began to leave the South in 1910, drawn by more lucrative industrial opportunities in the North. With the United States' entry to World War I in 1917, the country's factories went into overdrive and needed labor to continue producing at high levels for the war effort. The tremendous need for industrial output combined with falling immigration from Europe due to wartime restrictions made African Americans needed in the North. The Black population grew as high as 40% in northern industrial cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. African Americans made significant gains in industrial employment, particularly in the steel, automobile, shipbuilding, and meatpacking industries. Between 1910 and 1920 the number of Blacks employed in industry nearly doubled from 500,000 to 901,000. Blacks contributed to the rise in U.S. exports to Europe (from 1.479 billion dollars in 1913 to $4.062 billion in 1917). Mass production strategies implemented during the war became permanent, and the nation’s demand and output continued to grow throughout the 20’s. Many blacks were attracted by greater employee protections and benefits in the North, like Henry Ford’s promise of a wage of $5.00 per day, as opposed to no pay in the South. By 1930, 10,000 black workers were employed by Ford. While the industrial economy boomed in the north, the agricultural industry stagnated, further driving black Americans north. Immigration restrictions passed in the 1920’s like the Johnson-Reed Act and Emergency Quota Act greatly reduced the number of foreign immigrants entering the nation, providing additional opportunities for blacks. However, black Americans in the North still faced discrimination and mistreatment. While some did take industrial jobs, many were forced into much lower-paying positions. Black workers tended to earn less than their white counterparts on average as a result.
With the onset of the great depression in the 1930s and the associated layoffs and cost-cutting, internal migration in the United States slowed significantly. Economic relief agencies like the Agricultural Adjustment Authority primarily helped white landowning farmers, and provided little aid to black farmers. In the North, black workers were often laid off before whites. The unemployment rate of black men was about two to three times that of whites. In cities like Philadelphia and Detroit, 60% of black workers were unemployed. The price of cotton fell from $0.16 to $0.08, exacerbating the situation already faced by black farmers in the south. Still, the lack of opportunity elsewhere deterred internal migration from south to north throughout the 30’s. A mere 390,000 Blacks moved north during the 30’s, compared to the 1.5 million in the 15 years prior.
Second Great Migration
With the onset of World War II in Europe in 1939, the United States remained highly cautious, making significant efforts to stay uninvolved. However, in December 1941, the U.S. was dragged into the fighting with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The war effort required tremendous amounts of industrial output to sustain. In just six months in 1942, the Government produced $100 billion in contracts to mobilize the wartime economy. Additionally, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in wartime industries. This opened the door to many more higher-paying opportunities for African Americans than in the first migration. 1 million African Americans found industrial jobs during the war, and the average black worker in the North earned triple his black counterpart in the South. Between 1940 and 1949, 1.5 million Blacks left the South for greater opportunities in the north.
Following the end of World War II, cotton production in the South had become nearly entirely mechanized with machinery, minimizing the need for labor. This further pushed African Americans to the Midwest to work in factories. However, Between 1947 and 1963, Detroit lost approximately 150,000 manufacturing jobs to suburban factories. Many other cities saw the same. In addition to suburbanization, globalization accelerated the decline of industrial growth in the north, as many products became cheaper to produce abroad and import. Between 1950 and 1980, the Rust Belt, a region where many African Americans had migrated, saw a decline of about 28% of total jobs. At the same time, the region saw its share of manufacturing jobs fall by 34%. With a lack of opportunity in the northern states, the Second Great Migration ended by 1970. Within twenty years of World War II, 3 million Black people migrated throughout the United States.
Looking Ahead
With a lack of opportunities in the northern states, as well as racial segregation due to policies such as redlining and White Americans leaving inner cities for suburban homes as early as the late 1940s, the economic outlook for many cities where African Americans once sought to move to appears bleak. Detroit, Michigan lost 33% of its population between 2000 and 2020. Today, Detroit is about 80% Black and has a median household income of just $37,761.
In recent years, a new great migration has gradually begun, with African-Americans, primarily younger and college-educated moving back to seek economic opportunities in the South, namely Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. African American populations have declined across the Northeast, particularly in New York. Between 2010 and 2020, the Greater Boston area lost approximately 8,800 black residents and Massachusetts lost an average of 11,700 black residents per year from 2015 to 2020, with approximately half moving to Southern states (Georgia and Florida being the most popular destinations).
Conclusion
The long-term consequences of the Great Migration are complex. It led to significant demographic shifts, with major cities in the North and Midwest experiencing substantial increases in their African-American populations. This, in turn, had profound implications for urban development, labor markets, and community dynamics. The migration also played a critical role in the civil rights movement, as the concentration of African Americans in urban centers became a powerful force for social change.
Today, as we observe a reverse migration pattern, with African Americans increasingly moving to the South, it is crucial to reflect on the lessons of the past. The factors driving this new migration trend, including the search for economic opportunities and a sense of community, echo the motivations of the Great Migration, albeit in a different socio-economic context.
The Great Migration is a testament to the enduring spirit of African Americans in their quest for justice, opportunity, and a better life. Its legacy is a key part of American history, reminding us of the ongoing struggle for equality and the importance of creating a society that uplifts all its members.
Sources
https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration
https://www.jstor.org/stable/274413
https://depts.washington.edu/moving1/black_migration.shtml
https://americanexperience.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/The-Second-Great-Migration.pdf
https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/37312/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Migration_(African_American)
