The Second Migration

United States’s southern economy relied heavily on slavery. Southern slave owners begin to feel threatened as they saw

The status of black Americans improved under Reconstruction, and then deteriorated towards a low point by the end of the century. African Americans in many parts of the South were politically powerful in the first years after Reconstruction. The timing and nature of white supremacy in practice was determined by demographics, economics, class, occupation, gender, and even the tone of skin color. The exclusion of black workers from major sectors of the Northern and Western economy during a period of industrialization set a pattern of racial exclusion and oppression at the workplace. This pattern also helps to explain why black migrants in the North fared particularly badly in comparison with immigrant groups. Forced into ‘dirty’ jobs or domestic

During the birth of the Moorish Science Temple of America, the south was home to the racial discrimination, segregation, and the Jim Crow laws. This made it nearly impossible for Blacks to function properly in the south. Being intimidated, brutalized, and murdered, blacks were struggling to stay clear of the racism that controlled the south. Jobs was hard to come by. Some black southerners were forced to work as part of the sharecropping system.1 Barely any opportunities ascended during these harsh times but these conditions would soon come to past for many black southerners.

During the years between 1915 and 1970, some six million black southerners left their homelands in the South to move to the northern and western states looking for a better life.( The Reason why this i so significant to me is during this time period the great moving from one place to another was in effect and during this time period 6 million African Americans from the away from cities South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from 1916 to 1970, affected a lot city based life in the United States. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory money based opportunities and marsh separating people by race, religion, etc.ist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first rose up during

Blackmon, Matthew J. Mancini, Christopher R. Adamson, and William Cohen explored the issues faced by African-Americans throughout the South post-Civil War. Refuting the common narratives propagated by some historians, each author brings a unique perspective to the discussion. In combining numerous documents and personal accounts, Blackmon effectively examines the tactics utilized by states in the South that resulted in conditions mirroring slavery. Countless businesses and persons benefited handsomely from convict laborers as Southern States seemingly had an endless supply of labor. Mancini explored the origin of convict leasing in the American South, noting that it is difficult, but not impossible to explain its existence. Different from others beliefs, he explained the heavy economic incentives resulting from convict labor and it differences from slavery. By his estimation, equating the two systems misrepresents them. Adamson examines the dilemma of ex-slaves living in the South and their precarious situation as they sought to exercise their newly secured rights. Cohen plainly states the issues percolating in the South with respect to labor control. Southerners needed labor and recently freed slaves provided the opportunity for them to exploit them once more under the pretense of legal

The South was a complete mess after the Civil War. The early part of the 20th century brought many changes for African Americans. There was a difficult challenge of helping newly free African American slaves assimilate among their white counterparts. They suffered from crop failures, economic hardships, and the early failures of Reconstruction in the south. So as result many Southern African Americans migrated to northern cities in search of employment and a chance at a better life. However, Southern African Americans migrating to northern cities quickly discovered that they were not able to enjoy the same social and economic mobility experienced by their European immigrant counterparts arriving around the same time. There were many

The Great Migration was a massive movement of African Americans from the South to the North from 1863 to 1960. The largest spike in this migration occurred from about 1910 to 1920.

The different ways of living developed between the 1830s and 1860s (Schultz, 2009). The South’s way of life was considerably dissimilar from that of the North. Cotton played a major role in the south, because they realized with a successful cotton production there was an increased potential to become very rich. However, cotton production required slaves and land resulting in no talks of gradual emancipation. Moreover, because the South lacked cities and jobs to offer immigrants, very few migrated south. Surprisingly, the majority of white southerners did not own slaves. Most were yeoman farmers who sought to be independent. In addition, the slaveowners that did own slaves actually owned very few. Furthermore, the majority of slaves

For blacks that did not want to return to Africa there were very few options for them if they choose to stay. The first main problem was should they stay in the South or go somewhere else to find shelter and a job. The next problem was to find a job. To replace the slaves plantation owner implemented share cropping. Share cropping was a form of paid slavery that gave the families that choose to work on the plantation as share croppers a plot of land to farm and a place to live. The share croppers would give a large portion of what they had farmed to the owner of the land and they would get to keep a small amount of what they had harvested for themselves to live off of. For those who had joined the Union army during the Civil War, they had to try to get what they were promised which was forty acres of land and a mule to plow it. Though promise was rarely met this was an option for some freedmen who choose to stay in the U.S. To help freedmen get what they needed such a job, food, or education the Freedmen’s Bureau was started. This bureau was started to help get recently freed slaves on their feet after the Civil War. Former slaves had a hard time finding jobs but they did it anyway.

America has never been an easy place for Black Americans to thrive economically. Beginning with Atlantic slave trade, where West and Central Africans were enslaved and shipped overseas, African American labor has been continuously exploited. Victims of the transatlantic slave trade did participate in complex, organized and structured market economies in Africa. Pre-colonial African political economies were founded on surplus production, accumulation and redistribution through trade and marketing for both individual and community based profit-oriented entrepreneurial activities (Walker). Meanwhile in the U.S, Africans who survived harsh journeys to slavery had very few economic opportunities. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, millions of previously enslaved Africans were left to their own devices. Some stayed in the South to survive through sharecropping and occasionally farming, while many others participated in another mass migration to the North, in

Since the beginning, the United States` government, racial slavery had conquered various American identities. “Racism sprung early colonial times due the slavery riot incidence misinterpretations, leading full men, women, and children racial slavery of all different ethnic backgrounds” (Hooker 1). African-Americans held a life long work and Caribbean island shipment originating and affective progression to American colonies. “An importation of 4,000,000 Negroes were held in bondage by Southern planters” (Webstine).Advanced time went, and Northern states nurtured a rapid industrial revolution; Factory introduction, machines, and hired workers replaced any agricultural need of existing slaves. Southern states, however, maintained

A black women by the name of Isabel Wilkerson, once stated some very influential words of wisdom to express her feelings toward the Great Migration. She stated,

The wave of immigrants from all over the world were coming to the United States. They wanted freedom that they did not have from their different countries. They also moved for freedom of religion. Some countries came to the west because of years of famine. So they moved west into the new land that was used by Native Americans.

My understanding of human migration was stretched in that I learned a lot about factors that lead to migration and how immigrants are affected by migration. This course taught me that people immigrate to other countries, not because they want to leave their homes, but because they have no other choice. Immigrants are forced to leave behind everything in order to save their lives as they escape from war, violence, poverty, and in search of a better life. Currently in America, whenever people talk about immigration, they often refer to it in terms of a political issue, especially those people in support of Trump 's immigration policy. However, from reading Daniel Groody’s article

What is migration? Why do people migrate? And more importantly, what factors influence where people choose to settle? Migration is a familiar term describing the act of leaving a person’s country of birth in favour of another, and is influenced by factors called a “push” or ‘pull’ factor. A push factor is any factor that causes someone to leave a country, while a pull factor is a factor that attracts someone to a particular country. The reasons for immigration can be put into four basic categories: Economic, social, political, and environmental. In the eyes of many immigrants, Canada is packed to the brim with opportunity for a better life. For those who come from third-world countries, Canada provides superior living conditions, better job opportunities for a chance at financial stability, and an environment in which they can feel safe and free to express themselves. Despite the many reasons for immigration, everyone who makes the decision to leave their country of origin, and part with everything they were ever familiar with, do so in search of one thing: A better life.