Visualizing the Great Migration
1910
Jacob Lawrence’s landmark 1941 series tells the story of the Great Migration—one of the largest demographic events of the twentieth century.
This mass movement of black Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the North and West began during World War I. Those departing the South were attracted by job opportunities but were also fleeing the racial humiliations and state-sanctioned violence of the Jim Crow regime.
All told, more than six million African Americans migrated from the South between 1910 and 1970. This map uses United States Census data to illustrate the groundswell of their movement to northern cities during this period.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau. Total Population: Black, 1910-1940 and 1960-1970. New York City: Social Explorer, 2015. socialexplorer.com/59c005a922
U.S. Census Bureau. Total Population: Black, 1950. Minnesota Population Center. National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 2.0. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 2011. nhgis.org
Southern exodus by decade
Over the years, the number of black migrants moving northward ebbed and flowed. By 1915, there was a steady stream; the current surged in 1916. As the northern job market tightened with the financial crash of 1929, the wave of migrants receded, only to rise even higher in the years during and after World War II. The movement of black Americans to the cities of the North and the West did not abate until the early 1970s when, thanks to the civil rights movement, conditions began to improve in the South.
- 1900s
- 1910s
- 1920s
- 1930s
- 1940s
- 1950s
- 1960s
- 1970s
- 300,000
- 600,000
- 900,000
- 1,200,000
- 1,500,000
Source: James N. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). Data taken from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, University of Minnesota.
Population growth by city
The Great Migration altered the country’s social landscape: in 1910, close to ninety percent of the nation’s African Americans lived in the South. By 1970, almost half lived elsewhere. Job opportunities and accessibility by rail meant that New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Saint Louis all became major destinations. Each city’s population of black residents rose dramatically from 1910, in each case shifting not only demographic balances but also cultural landscapes.
1970
Blackpopulation % of total
population
Source: Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung. Population Division Working Paper - Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990. U.S. Census Bureau Working Paper No. 76., February 2005. http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/twps0076.html
Pathways of migration
J.F. Leahy. Leahy's Railway Distance Map of the United States. 1934. Chicago: American Hotel Register Co. Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection
Greyhound Lines. Transcontinental Routes of Pacific Greyhound Lines. 1935. Cleveland: The Greyhound Lines. Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection
The widespread development of the American railway system by the turn of the twentieth century made trains a natural conduit for the first wave of the Great Migration. In fact, migration trended along principal train routes: southeastern migrants from Florida and the Carolinas could take the Atlantic Coast Line up to Richmond to connect to destinations northeast, while Mississippi Valley residents might take Illinois Central up to St. Louis or Chicago. The railroads were also a plentiful source of jobs for African-American workers. This map comes from a series of atlases that catalogued hotels and railroads serving American towns, along with the railway distance between them.
Greyhound Lines. Transcontinental Routes of Pacific Greyhound Lines. 1935. Cleveland: The Greyhound Lines. Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection
Sustained federal investment in a national road system began in 1921, which gradually opened the door to interstate bus travel. In 1929, more than 100 regional bus lines were consolidated under the name Greyhound Lines, becoming the country’s largest interstate bus system. By 1935, national bus ridership surpassed rail travel for the first time, and migrants were increasingly likely to make the trip from the South on a bus. The centrality of bus travel came into dramatic focus during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, during which high-profile protests against segregation—from Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Freedom Riders—were staged on buses rather than trains.