ECONOMICHISTORY The Great Southern Migration BY BETTY JOYCE NASH
Throughout much ames Macbeth moved to New Sometimes it’s a better job. Or both. York from Charleston, S.C., in the Migrations affect jobs, wages, of the 20th century, Jboom years of the Great geography, housing, education — all Migration. It was the 1950s, a decade economic activity. Migrations also people streamed when some 1.1 million blacks left the reveal how workers sort themselves out of the South, South. His father had departed many into jobs in different locations. years before, too many for him to “It’s a complex process in which rearranging the remember just which year it was. The workers and employers match up, and elder Macbeth worked for the postal it’s absolutely essential in an economy social, political, and service in New York City. By the time that changes rapidly over time,” Macbeth was ready for college, he says economist William Collins economic landscape moved to Pennsylvania and his mother of Vanderbilt University. “In other later joined his father in New York. words, migration — the movement of The elder Macbeths also worked at the workers from place to place — is a Carolina Chapel of Mickey Funeral key part of the story of how labor Service in Harlem, founded in 1932, far markets work.” from its original Charleston, S.C., The Great Migration ebbed and home base. Macbeth works there now. flowed with the world wars. The first Macbeth is but one of 8 million period dated from about 1915 to 1930 black and 20 million white — World War I and after — and Southerners who streamed to cities in slowed with the Depression. the North or West, with the heaviest Migration picked up again as military flows between about 1915 to 1970. production — steel and aluminum Blacks migrated in higher percentages plants, shipyards, aircraft plants, and than whites, and so this “Great military installations — for World War Migration” redistributed the racial II created jobs in the Great Lakes population. It changed job markets, corridor from New York to Chicago politics, and society. And culture. For as well as on both coasts. People kept The Great Migration brought families blacks, the exodus urbanized a former- moving even after the war, as the like this to Chicago and other industrial ly agricultural and dispersed people, economy grew. economic magnets in the Midwest and allowing them visibility in accomplish- While the migration north and Northeast. For blacks, the migration ing social goals. Effects of white west from Southern states began in promised not only job opportunities but migration were less dramatic and, earnest in the century’s first decade, also escape from the segregated South. in many cases, tempo- more than 40 years before Macbeth’s rary, coinciding with personal odyssey, the exodus was the wartime and post- growing even stronger at the time of war industrial boom. his departure. Macbeth, like most black immi- Migration: A grants, laughs when he says his father Sorting Mechanism headed north because “everybody said People migrate in the streets were paved with gold.” But search of better living the laughter subsides when he talks conditions. Sometimes about segregation, the “Jim Crow” freedom from war and laws that prevented blacks from voting oppression supplies and more. 4, 1920 , SEPT. the necessary energy In all former Confederate states, required to overcome less than 5 percent of eligible blacks CHICAGO DEFENDER the inertia inherent were registered to vote as late as 1940, in the status quo. according to historian David Kennedy. PHOTOGRAPHY: PHOTOGRAPHY:
36 Region Focus • Fall 2007 (Women, black and white, did not receive voting rights until 1920.) Regional Distribution of Black Population, 1900–2000 By 1900, Southern states had instituted racial separation: drinking fountains, 100 schools, waiting rooms. Few industrial South West Midwest Northeast jobs existed in the South, and Jim Crow 80 affected those too. For instance, in 1915, 60 South Carolina required segregated
PERCENT 40 workrooms in textile mills. Infant mor- tality rates for blacks were nearly 20 double those for whites in 1930 (10 per- 0 cent and 6 percent, respectively). 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 Blacks could expect to live 15 fewer SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Demographic Trends in the 20th Century, November 2002 years than whites, 45 compared with 60. Moving destinations varied. Southerners aimed for meccas like until mid-century, they did find lower- “The 1922 harvest season was followed Chicago or Detroit if they were from level jobs, according to Crew, who now by the largest wave of migration in the Mississippi or Alabama. But the goal directs the Underground Railroad history of black Carolina,” according was New York, Philadelphia, or Museum in Cincinnati. “In the North, to Black Carolinians: A History of Blacks Boston if they hailed from the because of the war, there was a real in South Carolina from 1895 to 1968 Carolinas and elsewhere along the shortage of labor, and as a conse- by I.A. Newby. Some 59,000 blacks Eastern Seaboard. Historian Spencer quence, opportunities for African left rural areas of 41 South Carolina Crew, who has studied the migration, Americans opened up, mostly in the counties between November 1922 and says that blacks in the early years fol- iron mills and slaughter houses.” Crew June 1923. lowed whatever rail routes crossed notes that the better-paid, higher- their towns. Trains pulled into skilled jobs were not available to blacks Migrant Characteristics Southern stations filled with goods until the post-World War II years — Blacks who migrated tended to be and pulled out filled with the people and even then, they were hard to get. more educated than those who stayed, who could afford to go. In 1920, for instance, 70 percent of while the reverse was true of whites, Economists have been curious Southern black men worked in according to Duke University econo- about why blacks waited some 50 years unskilled or service jobs compared to mist Jacob Vigdor. He has studied after the Civil War to exit the South in 22 percent of Southern white men. changes in migration patterns and significant numbers. By the early By 1970, according to historian James migrant characteristics. Before World 1900s, only a couple hundred thousand Gregory, that number had fallen to 35 War II, educated blacks were more blacks (and about 716,000 whites) were percent for Southern-born black men likely to migrate north because they leaving. The Great Migration peaked and a barely changed 24 percent for could better afford it. (Families who in the 1970s when some 1.5 million Southern-born white men. could afford the opportunity costs of blacks and 2.6 million whites left The agricultural depression of the sending their children to school, the South. 1920s, sparked by wartime overpro- he notes, could more likely pay for Theories have pointed to European duction and rock-bottom crop prices, a move.) immigration as a “deterrent” to black accelerated immigration even further Plus, they valued the educational migration, especially in those early during that decade. The cotton for opportunities they heard about up years. Data show that blacks “moved which the Southern states were North. It’s not that the North always at times and to places where foreign- famous was devastated by the boll turned out to be a “promised land” for born immigrants were less prevalent … weevil. In 1920, South Carolina farm- blacks, Crew says. But there was hope, the Great Migration would have got- ers produced 1.6 million bales, the the brightest of which was better edu- ten under way earlier than it did if biggest in the state’s history, but two cation. “People [were] bringing their strict immigration controls had been years later they counted 493,000, the kids with them in the hopes they adopted earlier,” Collins wrote in a fewest since the Civil War. Add to that [would] have a better future,” he says. paper on the subject. As World War I an agricultural deflation in which Vigdor reports median years of school- stifled that European flow, it simulta- peanut prices fell from $240 to $40 ing completed among black migrants neously created demand for workers to per ton in one season, corn from $1.50 from most Southern states as eight or fill industrial jobs previously available to 50 cents. nine in 1940 among those born from only to whites. That and mechanization forced 1913 to 1922. While blacks were not hired into many white and black agricultural Early migrants were, on average, skilled jobs in the Northern industries laborers off Southern fields for good. younger as well as better educated
Fall 2007 • Region Focus 37 than non-migrants. They could read derided “hillbilly” and Southern in Chicago, Detroit, and Harlem, while newspapers, letters, or flyers that accents. Entire blocks of Chicago Ku Klux Klan terrorism and lynching described the migration. “In each age and Detroit were known as little marred life in the segregated South. cohort, highly educated blacks living Appalachia. There is still a faint legacy Black migrants tended to settle outside their state of birth were more of “Bronzeville,” a black district just together, and they organized them- likely to reside in the North than in now undergoing a renaissance of sorts, selves socially, according to Newby. the South,” Vigdor writes. “In the old- also in Chicago. “In every city where significant est cohort, highly educated black Early on, new migrants were often numbers of them settled, there were interstate migrants were 35 percent “portrayed in unflattering terms by Palmetto College Clubs or Palmetto more likely to reside in the North.” In contemporary observers,” according to state societies, which, in purely social 1940, educated blacks were likely to University of Washington sociologist matters at least, eased the transition to choose a Northern destination, but Stewart Tolnay. Even sociologists like urban living for many migrants.” that trend began to change in 1970, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, of the earliest Until migration picked up in World with more educated blacks turning migrants to Philadelphia, that their War I, there was little separation back to the South. Southern backgrounds were a handicap of the races in neighborhoods. For These patterns might have implica- as they tried to adapt to life in the instance, the 5,000 blacks who lived in tions for human capital and economic Northern city. And, at first, even Detroit in 1910 had lived among other outcomes of later generations of Northern black newspapers such as the immigrants. But with the influx of new native-born blacks. Economics litera- Chicago Defender discouraged blacks migrants, blacks were channeled into ture, Vigdor notes, links outcomes from settling in Northern cities. the city’s slums. Even if migrants could with characteristics of fellow ethnic or But by 1918, the Defender was afford a home, there were the tools of racial group members, especially in selling 130,000 copies, three-fourths zoning and restrictive covenants that segregated environments. of those outside Chicago in cities like prevented them from purchasing in As decades passed, life for black Richmond, Norfolk, and Savannah, certain neighborhoods until govern- youth who remained in the South was Ga., with smaller circulations in towns ment intervened with housing laws. still tough. An article published in dotted throughout the South. Much of 1967 in a New York biweekly newspa- this was in response to the Southern Going Home per, The Reporter, noted that the press, which “built into a crisis story By 1970, blacks who were educated poorest county in South Carolina, about potential labor shortages for were more likely to head for a Williamsburg, lost 14,636 blacks from Southern agriculture,” according to Southern destination than their 1950 to 1960. That was more than half Gregory in The Southern Diaspora. less-schooled counterparts, a trend its black population. Among those who The black-owned newspapers in that continues. Economists and histo- stayed, even black students with some the South warned whites of an rians suggest by way of explanation college lacked opportunity. Here’s how “exodus,” should whites fail to open that discrimination had begun to ease the author describes the situation, doors to change. Meanwhile, white in the South, with conditions for based on interviews with black families: publishers pondered what to do blacks being more hospitable as civil “But when the time came for them to about the out-migration, worrying rights gained ground. It’s also possible find jobs, there were none. One by one, in headlines about labor shortages. that the Northern cities to which they Davis’ four sons and three daughters White-owned Northern newspapers had moved had become less desirable packed up and left for New York.” often focused on the negatives of the as industrial strength of the Great influx, Gregory wrote. Lakes region waned and joblessness Chain Migration Although migrants to Northern eroded neighborhoods. Migrants drew on the help of friends, cities were better educated than their As late as the tail end of the 1960s, relatives, and friends of friends Southern counterparts, their new the 14 states with the largest number in the search for a new life up North. Northern neighbors, white and black, of blacks leaving were all in the South. Sometimes industrial recruiters, described them as illiterate. “And their But a decade later, migration had desperate for labor and sometimes growing numbers were sometimes leveled off, and reversed. strikebreakers as World War I and viewed as a potential threat to the For whites, the entire migration immigration policy choked off the flow racial status quo that offered Northern tended to be more of a “circulatory” of whites from other countries, trolled blacks a relatively comfortable coexis- trend. For instance, in the late 1950s, Southern towns for would-be migrants, tence with whites, if not actual racial according to Gregory, for every 100 some offering free train tickets. equality, ” according to Tolnay. Later white Southerners who migrated Northern cities’ newest Southern anecdotal portraits of migrants, north or west, 54 returned home, and arrivals, white and black, didn’t always however, are kinder — perhaps native that number increased to 78 by the find the welcome they sought, and they Northerners had gotten used to the late 1960s. tended to stick together. Some natives new migrants. Still, race riots erupted “Turnover was the key dynamic of
38 Region Focus • Fall 2007 the white diaspora,” writes Gregory. four decennial censuses. Among other James Macbeth, who is 71 and “Fewer than half of the nearly 20 mil- findings, the South netted black beginning to think about retirement, lion whites who left the South actually migrants from all other U.S. regions may move back to Charleston. left for good. That means that the during the 1990s, completely reversing His parents, both dead, are buried white diaspora is best understood the migration stream. Charlotte, in South Carolina, and his siblings as a circulation, not as a one-way Norfolk-Virginia Beach, Raleigh- have scattered throughout Southern population transfer.” Durham, and Washington-Baltimore cities in a return migration of their own. But black return migration was only were among the 10 most-preferred Over his lifetime, Macbeth wit- about a third of the rate of white migra- destinations during that time. Atlanta, nessed the chain of events that people tion during most decades. Some did however, was the strongest magnet. like his father set in motion. come back even as others departed. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and The migratory tide, once it began For instance, in 1949, some 43,000 San Francisco lost blacks during the going out, forced change as it black Southerners returned, about 1.7 same period. Also noteworthy: Blacks rearranged population, employment, percent of all Southern-born blacks were more likely than whites to pick education, attitudes, art, music, living in the North and West. Southern destinations. Maryland, sports, transportation, recreation, Still, in the 1970s, the return flow of North Carolina, and Virginia were housing, and more. The Great blacks to the South was evident — among the 10 states that gained the Migration was driven by more than more moving in than moving out. most black college graduates during the opportunity to improve working Between 1975 and 1980, Virginia, the the late 1990s. conditions — at least for blacks. James Carolinas, and Maryland were among Black reverse migration reflects Macbeth’s father didn’t leave the states gaining the most black economic growth, improved race Charleston just for a good job in New in-migrants, according to demographer relations, “and the long-standing York at the post office. “He just William Frey. cultural and kinship ties it holds for couldn’t get along with segregation Frey analyzed migration data from black families,” according to Frey. in the South.” RF
R EADINGS Collins, William J. “When the Tide Turned: Immigration and the Gregory, James N. The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations Delay of the Great Black Migration.” Journal of Economic History, of Black and White Southerners Transformed America. Chapel Hill: September 1997, vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 607-632. University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Frey, William. “The New Great Migration: Black Americans’ Vigdor, Jacob L. “The Pursuit of Opportunity: Explaining Return to the South, 1965-2000.” Brookings Institution Center Selective Black Migration.” Journal of Urban Economics, 2002, vol. on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. The Living Cities Census Series, 51, no. 3, pp. 391-417. May 2004.
ARMED AGAINST ARMS • continued from page 20 causing them to lack incentive to going to expect Wall Street investors to somebody. And after you pay your part ensure that borrowers are “mortgage support homeownership counseling?” of the bills, they say get out,” Turner ready.” (It should be pointed out he asks rhetorically. says. “So I was determined to get to the that lenders do carry risk even when Almost three years after her point where nobody could ever tell they sell their mortgages because purchase, Donna Turner is keeping up me to get out again.” over the long term, if defaults are wide- with her monthly payments and Turner did it. Economic research spread, then they are certainly worse tending a small garden out back. She is suggests that, while it won’t come close off in terms of their future ability to the very picture of a happy, responsible to working for everyone, she needn’t be originate loans and sell them.) “Are we homeowner. “I had always lived with the only exception. RF
R EADINGS Campbell, John Y. “Household Finance.” Journal of Finance, August Hartarska, Valentina, and Claudio Gonzalez-Vega. “Credit 2006, vol. 61, no. 4, pp. 1,553-1,604. Counseling and Mortgage Termination by Low-Income Households.” Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2005, Chomsisengphet, Souphala, and Anthony Pennington-Cross. “The vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 227-243. Evolution of the Subprime Mortgage Market.” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, January/February 2006, vol. 88, no. 1, Martin, Matthew. “ALiterature Review on the Effectiveness of pp. 31-56. Financial Education.” Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Working Paper No. 07-03, June 15, 2007.
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