The Great Migration

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"Also known as the Great Northward Migration and the Black Migration, this movement of more than six million African Americans from America's rural southern regions to its urban northern regions oc...

"Also known as the Great Northward Migration and the Black Migration, this movement of more than six million African Americans from America's rural southern regions to its urban northern regions occurred over more than 50 years, from 1916 to 1970. Some historians separate this great move into two periods--the first from 1916 to 1940, during which 1.6 million people moved from the rural south to the industrial north, and the second following the Great Depression, from 1940 to 1970, which saw more than 5 million people, many with urban skills, move north and west. Two main causes for this massive migration were poor economic conditions and racial segregation and discrimination in Southern states when Jim Crow laws were upheld. The Great Migration was historic for its sheer number, called 'the largest and most rapid internal movements in history.' It also brought historic change to the cities the migrants moved to, where African Americans established influential communities of their own at a time when these cities were already exerting cultural, social, political, and economic influence in the country. This set, Defining Documents in American History: The Great Migration, offers in-depth analysis of fifty-eight documents, including speeches, court rulings, legal texts, legislative acts, essays, newspaper and magazine articles, and interviews. These selections help define events concerning the migration of African Americans across the country, and how those events have helped shape history. The first volume of this set focuses on the first wave of migration with Guinn v. United States and the Chicago Race Riots, as well as the early second wave of migration in America with Morgan v. Virginia and Brown v. Board of Education. The second volume is dedicated to the latter half of the second wave of migration with Shirley Chisholm's 'The Black Woman in Contemporary America' and Loving v. Virginia, and the post-migration decades on how things have been since with the Rodney King case and Black Lives Matter. The material is organized into three sections, each beginning with a brief introduction that examines the waves of African American migration in the United States through a variety of historical documents." -- Publisher's website.

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