The Black Belt in America’s deep south is known for its fertile soil. This place is also were 90% of Africa Americans have lived in American history. An enormous migration during the 1900’s saw African American leaving the south for the big norther cities. Traditionally free descendants of slaves would stay in the south to work as sharecroppers. But the job opportunities in the North were growing due to growing factories and the need for skilled laborers during the wars. However, the Great Migration was not without troubles. With so many people now trying to live in the same spaces, tensions grew leading to violence in events like the Red Summer of 1919. But great triumphs come out of the migration. The Harlem Renaissance is perhaps one of the most important cultural movements that America has seen, including things like literature and music. Through out the century, there have definitive mass migrations of African Americans out of the South and each time there has been violent retaliation by the majority. In the 1960’s, to combat this racism, activists like Martin Luther King came in to the spotlight. It is highly unlikely that we will ever see such a migration in the future. There is not the need to escape such persistent violence as there once was.
To be able to put the Great Migration into sociological terms, here are some key definitions. Rural areas are just the opposite of cities. They are often small towns or farming country. Urban areas are cities and are associated with large neighborhoods live known as suburbs. The Great Migration resulted in urbanization, millions of people moved from the rural (small) towns to massive cities. A mass influx of people like this cause the urban density to increase, meaning there are more people living in the same general area and giving each inhabitant, quite literally, less space to live. We measure how dense an area is by the number of people per square mile. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago was the destination for nearly 500,000. The African American population there increased from 2% to 33% by the 1970’s. As a result of the new population size, the suburban areas started to grow, called suburbanization. However, it is important to note that in the 1900’s the movement of white communities out of the city and into the suburbs was because of racist ideas and prejudices held against African Americans. We call this trend of white people leaving white flight.
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