State Historical Society of Iowa
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.
African 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.
At 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.
| Great Migration Teaching Guide |
| Printable Image and Document Guide |
"What a Colored Man Should Do To Vote" was a pamphlet from 1900 that explained what discriminatory restrictions were being implemented against African Americans when they attempted to vote in the states listed. Most of the states in the pamphlet...
This pamphlet for African Americans was published in 1904, and its author, Archibald Henry Grimke, discusses the disfranchisement of African Americans in the South. He describes that, ultimately, the suppression of African Americans was bad for everyone i...
The 1914 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, given by Chief Justice Edward White, which outlawed the "Grandfather Clause" and any "literacy test" enacted in the Oklahoma State Constitution and its amendments, and affirmed the conviction of elec...
This was a letter drafted by college professors of the University Commission on Southern Race Questions and it was directed to college-age men. The letter discusses a "new reconstruction," how African Americans are able to contribute to the &quo...
This is an illustration in the book The Exodus, which was written by Clyde Randall and Ed Winn in 1919. The illustration depicts an African-American man who is in debt to a white southern man who is holding him at gunpoint. The image speaks to the ongoing...
This is an article written by Frederick Douglass and published in The Christian Educator in 1894. It focuses on the horrible treatment and violent abuse of African Americans in southern states after the end of legal enslavement in the United States and th...
This was a report submitted by the Committee on the Judiciary to accompany House Bill 13, "The Antilynching Bill," which details research and support for passing the bill into law that would make illegal the practice of lynching.
This was a map depicting the number of lynchings by state and county in the United States from 1900 to 1931. The map shows the heaviest concentration of lynchings occurring in southern states.
This is a flyer advertising land available in Kansas for African Americans leaving the south and traveling to the southwest as a part of the Real Estate and Homestead Association in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1878.
William English Walling's exposé about a bloody race riot in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln's hometown and burial site, resulted in the assembly of an interracial group to discuss proposals for an organization that would advocate the civil...
This Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier newspaper article was written by Pat Kinney in 2011 about African Americans who migrated to Waterloo, Iowa, as strikebreakers in the 1911 Railroad Strike. Many had originally been excluded from this line of work by racial...
The photograph shows diners eating at a local, African American-owned Chicago restaurant in 1942. Most diners and employees are African American, and several small businesses in this area of Chicago were owned and operated by African Americans who had mig...
During World War I, industrial opportunities became available to women when workers were needed to replace men drafted into military service. African American women responded to the demand by leaving their often low-status jobs in service industries. . Th...
This mansion drafted in 1918 was designed by an African American architect, Vertner Woodson Tandy, for African American cosmetics magnate Madame C. J. Walker. Madame Walker was the first African American woman to become a self-made millionaire.She invente...
This New York Tribune article written in July of 1919 during the "Chicago Race Riots." On July 27, 1919, an African-American teenager drowned in Lake Michigan after violating the unofficial segregation of Chicago's beaches and being stoned b...
This photograph shows an African-American man standing in a picket line for the Negro Labor Relation League with a sign protesting Bowman Dairy in Chicago, Illinois.
This photograph shows African Americans standing in a picket line outside a midtown business in Chicago, Illinois, in 1941 protesting the discriminatory wage gap between African Americans and white people in the workforce.
This is a photograph of a protest sign placed outside a housing project for African Americans in Detroit, Michigan. Detroit was one of many northern cities African Americans migrated to from the South during the Great Migration.
This is an audio segment of an oral history interview with George Jiggetts. He discusses making no money in the South, so he sought work in the North in places like Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore. While he found "freedom" in some locations...
This webpage features primary sources in the Library of Congress that highlight African-American journeys during the Great Migration
This map, from the Library of Congress, shows the "Distribution of Negro population by county" in 1950.
This booklet from Rev. Francis James Grimke focuses on the brutal action of lynching against African Americans in the South.
This webpage is an overview of the U.S. Supreme Court case, Guinn v. United States, as presented by the Oklahoma Historical Society.
This Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier interview, by Pat Kinney, focuses on the story of John Baskerville, who explains how African Americans migrated to the Waterloo area.
The Chicago Examiner was one of a dozen major newspapers published in Chicago at the turn of the last century. It was known for its sensational news stories.
The BMRC is a Chicago-based membership organization of libraries, universities and other archival institutions. Its mission is to make broadly accessible its members' holdings of materials that document African American and African diasporic culture, history and politics, with a specific focus on materials relation to Chicago.
From the 1920s through the 1950s, Chicago's South Side was the center for African-American culture and business. Known as "Bronzeville," the neighborhood was surprisingly small, but at its peak more than 300,000 lived in the narrow, seven-mile strip.
This 1922 report, "The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot," was created by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations.
This is the 1880 Senate investigation of the beginnings of the African-American migration from the South.
This historical census report includes statistics on population totals by race, from 1790 to 1990 in the United States.
This webpage from History.com provides and overview of the Great Migration in the United States.
This report looks at the statistics, problems and policies relating to the greater inclusion of African-American wage earners in American industry and agriculture.
This pamphlet from Carl Schurz is entitled, "Can the South Solve the Negro Problem?"
This is a speech by Hon. Edward De V. Morrell, a congressman from Pennsylvania, who discusses and refutes the arguments by a Georgia representative that African Americans should be deprived of the franchise.
Starting in 1900, this timeline follows the triumphs and challenges that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This webpage from History.com focuses on the summer of 1919 across the United States where "race riots" broke out in response to the stoning and drowning of a Black Chicago youth by white people at a segregated beach.
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 elementary-age level and encompass the key disciplines that make up social studies for students 9th through 12th grade.
| No. | Standard Description |
| SS-US.9-12.13. | Analyze how diverse ideologies impacted political and social institutions during eras such as Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, and the Civil Rights movement. |
| SS-US.9-12.18. | Analyze the effects of urbanization, segregation, and voluntary and forced migration within regions of the U.S. on social, political, and economic structures. |
| SS-US.9-12.25. | Analyze how regional, racial, ethnic and gender perspectives influenced American history and culture. |
| SS-Gov.9-12.19. | Evaluate the effectiveness of political action in changing government and policy, such as voting, debate, contacting officials, campaign contributions, protest, civil disobedience, and any alternative methods to participation. (21st century skills) |
| SS-Soc.9-12.15. | Distinguish patterns and causes of stratification that lead to social inequalities, and their impact on both individuals and groups. |
| SS-Soc.9-12.16. | Examine and evaluate reactions to social inequalities, including conflict, and propose alternative responses. |
