Migrating North

Between 1910 and 1940 over half a million Black Americans moved from the rural South to the urban North in a mass migration known today as the Great Migration. Chicago, Detroit, and New York City were all transformed during this era. In Chicago alone, the Black population grew from 44,000 to 234,000 in just thirty years. 

Segregation, racist violence, and economic insecurity were the three main factors that drove Black Americans to move during this time, but Black women were pushed to move by specific additional factors. Black women workers sought more varied job opportunities in Northern cities. Black mothers sought better educational opportunities for their children. Young Black women sought to escape sexual and physical exploitation by white landowners. There was hope in moving away. 

Life in the urban North was not perfect and racism was still ever-present, but it was often an improvement over life in the South. Women and young girls could earn up to twice as much in the North than in the South for the same work. More girls had access to public education, and Black women’s clubs offered social services and opportunities for political involvement.

This is a set of three photographs from the Chicago Commission on Race Relations’ report. In 1919 a white mob targeted Chicago’s Black community in a vicious riot. The Commission was established by the governor of Illinois to determine why the riot had happened. In 1922 the Commission published its findings, including recommendations for how to prevent future outbreaks of racial violence. The Commission’s report continues to be an important source for studying the daily experiences of Black Americans during the Great Migration.

The first image shows a Black American home on a plantation in the rural South. It is an example of the types of homes many migrant families left behind. 

The second image shows a migrant family newly arrived in Chicago after leaving the rural South. It is an important reminder that men, women, and children often migrated together. For women, this often meant continuing to be the primary caretaker for the family without the support network of family and friends they had left behind. 

The final image shows women and girls working in a hat-making factory. Although the caption describes the work environment as “unattractive,” many of the women in this image may have considered themselves lucky. The vast majority of Black women workers in Chicago were domestic servants because most factories only hired white workers. But as this photo attests, there were exceptions.

• commission: A group of people assigned a specific task or project. A term often used in government work.
• domestic work: Work necessary to care for a home, including cooking, cleaning, laundry, and childcare. 
• interracial: Including people of different races.
• lynching: The extralegal execution of a person by a mob.
• migration: Movement from one place to another.

• Connect these images to Fannie Barrier Williams’s article in the Chicago Defender and discuss the lives of Black women in Chicago in the early 1900s.
• Pair these photographs with the life story of Ida B. Wells to learn more about the racial violence many Black Americans sought to escape during the Great Migration. 
• Combine this resource with an article about Black suffragists and a photograph of the NAACP’s Silent March to understand how women of the Great Migration found opportunities to be politically active.
• Connect these images with the photograph of Black college students attending a football game and the life story of Madam C. J. Walker. Consider how young migrants embraced beauty and consumer culture as a way of celebrating their new urban lives.

IMMIGRATION, MIGRATION, AND SETTLEMENT