The Great Migration In The 1950's

The great migration was when 6 million African Americans moved from the south to cities of the north. The Midwest and west in the 1950s had a impact on the urban life because so many African Americans were gone. Chicago, New York and other big cities saw their population grow widely. The migrants had to deal with horrible working conditions and competition for new home, due to the fact that they were African American and because they were new-comers. The first biggest movement happened during World War 1, when 454,000 African American southerners move north. Between 1940 and 1960 more than 349,000 African Americans left the south and went to the north and west cities.

The reason for the migration was a combination of both the desire to escape bad economic conditions in their area, and the advantage of greater

opportunities in the north. Southern rural African Americas had suffered in an plantation economy that had offered a little chance of advancement, a few were even able to purchase some land. A lot were share croppers, tenant farmers, or farm laborers, barely making any money month to month. When World War 1 made a big demand for workers at factories in the north, many southern African Americans took this chance to leave the economic conditions in the south.
African Americans migrated by boarding trains straight north or west, or by driving with their families. Their routes were from Alabama to Detroit, both of the Carolinas and Georgia to New York, Philadelphia and Boston. The migrants from Mississippi and Arkansas went up highway 61, or went to the Illinois railroad to Chicago. A lot of the migrants in California came from the southwest and central states like Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. California had experienced a huge growth of their African American population. In 1950 over 50,000 African Americans resided in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland.
The African Americans were also getting away from the Jim Crow laws. They were tired of having their innocent family members getting killed just because of the color of their skin, it wasn’t fair at all to them. “We suffered. We didn’t have. We worked land that we thought we owned and after a while found out we didn’t own it. If we walked up to a counter we had to wait until everybody was gone”. Violence was heavy in the south. African Americans were beat, fired from their jobs, and humiliated in public. There was no hope of change in the justice system, African Americans were abused by employees, landlords, and anybody who felt like they didn’t deserve any rights.
Just like the south, the north also segregated by practice if not by law. African Americans were not welcomed with open arms. They were chosen to work as janitors, cafeteria workers, or other industrial positions. Those who made the trip north or west had much better jobs than they did in the south. Some sent letters to their friends or family who hadn’t made the trip yet, “Hello Dr., my dear old friend. These moments I thought I would write you a few facts of the present conditions in the north. People are coming here every day and finding employment. Nothing here but money-and it’s not hard to get. I have children in school every day with the white children. However are times there now.”(inmotionaame.org)
Even though African Americans were barely welcomed into the north with open arms, the south had much more racism. The north was popularized by talented African Americans, so it kind of did a good thing for the music industry. Muddy waters came from Mississippi to Chicago, bo didley did the same, and ray Charles migrated from Georgia to seattle. R&b was highly known on the south-side of Chicago, with Los Angeles, Harlem, and other cities where the migrants resided in.
During the great migration, there were people of different social classes, age groups, or economic levels. People were being drawn to different places at different times. During that time, the migrants were urban/wage laborers and not just peasants who wanted to live the city life. The urban southern African American population was growing throughout the 1950s. cities like Houston, Birmingham, Atlanta and Memphis had growth rates from 5 to 7 percent. The African American population made Oklahoma and Louisiana all the way urban.
Since there was a huge increase of the African American community in the north, many migrants had access to the networks of communication to jobs. Many of the migrants told their family members about the job opportunity’s, so they all came as well. A war was going on at the time, and African American women were not getting chose to work in the industrial labor. For women the change was happening at a slow pace. In a lot of the cities, the number of black women labor force changed to private domestic work instead. They were doing the same work that they did back at home, but there was a better wage and better benefits.
Most of the migrants were people who had changed to urban life and wage labor, they were most likely better educated than their family and friends who hadn’t moved yet. During the first couple years of the migration, men were more likely to travel further than women. Women wanted to stay closer to the south, but that didn’t last long at all. It didn’t because during this migration, most migrants were married and they felt it would be easier for them to stick together. Some even decided to leave their children at home with their grandparents just in-case something bad happened.
The migration that went on the 1950, was way less dramatic than the ones in the past, probably because the north was almost as racist in the south. Chicago, New York and Detroit were the main resorts where the migrants needed/wanted to live a social-life. As the migrants kept on coming, there was a small amount of housing, and that resulted to the migrants moving much slower than usual. In some cases, single home families had turned into large family households.
During the migration, there was a time when migrants were restricted my segregation to some neighborhoods because no one had planned any new housing. White landlords would even take advantage by raising the amount of money for rent. It was a very long and slow process to get new & affordable housing for the migrants, but certain housing associations took care of that. In most of the popular migrated cities, over 8,000 families applied for city housing. According the Ruth Wells “Realtors would move in a black person with a lot of children. And so the white people in the neighborhood would see all these little black kids running around and they didn’t like that… people were frightened… and they didn’t give them very much for their houses, but they went up on the price” (inmotionaame.org:Ruth Wells)
The federal government was very strict in policies that kept African Americans from getting mortgages outside of the black communities. The government also didn’t care about the segregation of certain households during that time. Government budgeting had a huger role in the expansion of houses and people who were not African American didn’t want them in their neighborhoods. The communities on the west side of the town, were going a large population of African Americans. There was 161,000 on the west during the 1950s, and 63,000 by 1955 , so there was a big change that happened.
Many conflicts that happened throughout the migration, were totally different in the west side of town. There was a thing called pre-fabrication, and this thing leveled down the amount of skills that you need to have a job. This was very beneficial for African American women & men, they were now more capable to take good care of their family. This prefabrication concept even went towards high paying jobs like Aircrafts and managers at certain places. The federal government was even starting to notice that African Americans wanted a change and they needed it now.
In Detroit, there were a huge riots erupting between the migrants and the white people, the riots involved a lot of the young adults, and some older. The Detroit police was forced to get involved in this outbreak, and it was not a pretty outcome. Franklin D. Roosevelt had to force military police to stop the riots and break up everything to put things to an end. But when everything was over, 20 migrants got killed, 9 whites got killed, over 600 people were injured, and 9,000 people were arrested. The migrants had a very tough time adjusting to this.
Years and years before boycotts and debates in the 1950s, African Americans were doing whatever they could do to put a change to everything. There were things call “Don’t buy where you cant work” slogans in the north urban cities, mainly in Chicago and Harlem. It was mostly white owned businesses that supported this slogan, and they wanted to keep the migrants as far away as possible. It wasn’t very a smart decision to keep the African Americans away because they were an important segment in the Democratic party. The democratic party needed them because most of their votes come from where the migrants resided, and without them they could be jeopardizing their presidency.

When the migrants arrived in the north, they changed the demographics while being there. They changed the race problem, and the representation of America. When the migrants first came they were loving it, but others saw it as a problem. It had to do with a working, government, and political problem for the first couple of years. The African Americans were being discriminated because the south was segregated, but there was too many whites in the south for there to be any African American culture practiced or shown. Instead, they wanted to show racism towards the blacks and give them no type of respect.
When African Americans started to urbanize the population, everyone started to hate it. Words were starting to be more urbanized, as well as art, literature, history, and just the black urban life in general. The “ghetto” was starting to become much more dominant in certain states, it was becoming more creative. When rural areas were starting to be more urban, it was evident that the great migration had a tremendous impact on America. Even though things were still a little urban before the great migration, this one particularly was seen negative for whites and positive for blacks. Images and art from the Harlem Renaissance proved that the African Americans didn’t care about how anyone felt, they still wanted to influence one another.
There was a huge change and everyone seen it coming, it came very naturally, people referred this change as the negro problem.

Whenever there was a racial conflict, whites named it the rise of the ghetto, or a problem in the inner cities, and lastly, an urban disorder. Urban black communities in different areas, became the center of cultural and political activities. The civil rights movement in the 1950s, all came from these new urban societies that came along in the north. It was came about in the north because they were practicing this movement while they were in the north.

When African Americans relocated, it was considered an dominant and lasting movement. They changed the politics point of view, and went to a much better place than in the rural south. This migration was very hard and sad, most African Americans were from the rural south, but then they converted to the north and west in huge amounts. The suburbs transformed into a more African American migrated area. The 1950s was a perfect time for the African Americans to go to the north, during those years racism was literally practiced in the south, and in some cases people were killed because of

it.
The migrants were aware of the politics prior of coming to the north. They knew how everything was going to be, but they felt that the migration was very necessary. So as soon as they made it to the north, they registered to vote to prove that they are politically aware. Even though there was an horrible after war recession, the cold and Korean war kept the northern states attractive to the migrants.
The great migration really benefited the African Americans and their culture. They went from being in the racist/sural south, to being in the north where there was opportunity’s coming left and right. I feel that the African American community did much better off being in the North. Even though the north was still racist (not as much as the south), it was much safer than being in the south. The great migration of the 1950s even impacted this generation. It showed us that if you really want to make a difference in your life, you have to be the one to make the initiative to do it. Without this huge movement, we could still be located in the south and things wouldn’t be the same. So overall, the movement was very powerful.