What were the major push factors that led to African Americans wanting to come to the North?
What inspired African Americans to leave their homes during the Great Migration?Historians often explain migration as some combination of "push-pull" factors. Oppressive conditions at home like poverty, government persecution, military conscription, high taxes, systemic racism or lack of opportunity might be sufficient to persuade people to seek better conditions elsewhere. Likewise, economic opportunity, religious and political freedom, family ties or a desire for adventure could induce some to pack their bags for a new location. Show
End of ReconstructionAfrican Americans in the 50 years after the Civil War responded to both push and pull factors. At the end of Reconstruction and federal oversight of southern states, white majorities resumed control of the government and enacted laws severely discriminating against African Americans. They were denied the right to vote or to serve on juries. Extra-legal, racially-motivated organizations like the Ku Klux Klan terrorized African Americans with threats and incidents of lynchings and other forms of violence. Schools and public accommodations were strictly segregated, and any African American who protested or failed to obey the restrictions ran the risk of retribution, legal or otherwise. The U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the principle of "separate but equal" facilities, but the African-American institutions were never "equal." African-American schools were in poor facilities with inadequate textbooks with poorly paid and prepared teachers. The Great MigrationAt the turn of the 20th Century, southern African Americans began moving North in larger numbers seeking a better living (pull) and leaving southern segregation (push). The rapid growth of northern cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Boston opened up new job possibilities and better schools. While they were often segregated, legally or informally, into African-American neighborhoods and denied the opportunity to live elsewhere, those neighborhoods often developed vibrant Black culture. The Harlem Renaissance produced outstanding music, art and literature in the 1920s. On the other hand, African Americans faced push back from recently arrived immigrant groups who were also seeking jobs. The rapid growth of the cities put a premium on housing, and in this also, African Americans found themselves competing with other ethnic minorities. While African-American professionals might develop successful practices within the Black community, they rarely found their services welcomed in the larger society. As they had done in the South, African-American women found work as domestics, cooks and laundry workers. If white middle-class women rarely worked outside the home, economic necessity forced African-American women, married or not, to seek outside employment. Labor shortages in World War I created new opportunities for African-American workers, and the Great Migration picked up speed. African-American struggles did not end when they arrived in the North, but they did escape the entrenched segregation of the post-Civil War South. Supporting QuestionsWhy did African Americans migrate?
What issues did African Americans face in the South in the beginning of the 20th century?
What benefits did African Americans find in northern cities?
What difficulties did African Americans find in northern cities?
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Iowa Core Social Studies Standards (9th-12th Grade)Listed below are the Iowa Core Social Studies content anchor standards that are best reflected in this source set. The content standards applied to this set are middle school-age level and encompass the key disciplines that make up social studies for 9th through 12th-grade students.
What was the main reason African Americans moved to the North?Driven in part by economic concerns, and in part by frustration with the straitened social conditions of the South, in the 1870s African Americans began moving North and West in great numbers.
What were the push and pull factors for African Americans?A variety of push factors and pull factors were the cause of this massive migration. Blacks were “pushed” by Jim Crow law, rampant discrimination, segregation, and disenfranchisement, and lack of employment in the South and “pulled” by growing employment rates, industrialism and relative tolerance in the North.
What factors helped push African Americans North during the Great migration?Other factors that helped lure migrants northward were the region's relative greater racial safety, its better educational opportunities, the specific urgings to come North by the black northern press, especially Robert Abbott's Chicago Defender, and labor recruiters sent South by northern companies to persuade African ...
What were the pull factors for African Americans during the Great migration?“Pull” factors included encouraging reports of good wages and living conditions that spread by word of mouth and that appeared in African American newspapers.
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