1910: The First Great Migration

1900-1999: A New Divide
Written By Stephanie Brizee

Big Idea

African Americans resisted Southern Jim Crow laws and moved north and west seeking to build new lives that allowed for greater freedom and economic flourishing.

Northward Migration

“This is the first time in American history where American citizens had to flee the land of their birth just to be recognized as the citizens they had always been. No other group of Americans has had to act like immigrants in order to be recognized as citizens.”
— Isabel Wiklerson, speaking about the Great Migration

By 1910, White control of southern America, enforced by Jim Crow laws, made life for African Americans in the South intolerable. Hoping to find more freedom and better economic opportunity elsewhere, many African Americans moved with family and friends to the cities, especially northern cities and cities located in border states. This mass movement became known as the First Great Migration (Thompson Fullilove, 2016, p. 23; Tolnay, 2003, p. 210).

Sociologist Stewart Tolnay wrote of the tremendous impact of the Great Migration: 

As the Great Migration proceeded, the South suffered substantial losses of its native-born black population, with over 2.5 million southern-born blacks living outside of the region by 1950 and over 4 million by 1980… Thus, in purely demographic terms, the Great Migration produced a dramatic geographic redistribution of the African American population. (p. 210) 

Many African Americans seeking a better life in the North wrote about their experiences in the Great Migration. Some of the more well-known books about this are:

  • James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)

  • Langston Hughes Not Without Laughter (1930)

  • Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952)

  • James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

“Letters of Migrants” is a digital archive of letters written by Black Americans moving northward. It was originally published in the Journal of Negro History in 1919. Explore those letters here.

Students

Want to learn more? Listen to the Seizing Freedom podcast about the Great Migration. This episode explores the story of one African American family moving west to California.

Watch the video below of Isabel Wilkerson talking about the Great Migration in a TED Talk:

Isabel Wilkerson TED Talk about the Great Migration.

Map of Great Migration

Source: “The Great Migration,” Professor Caroline Mellinger

Segregation in St. Louis

As a Southern border city between the north and the south, St. Louis experienced an influx of African Americans during this period. “[T]he African American population of the city of St. Louis grew from about twenty-two thousand in 1880 to almost seventy thousand in 1920” (Gordan, 2019, p. 8). The increased African American presence in St. Louis was not welcomed and harsh zoning ordinances were established to control where Black families could live.

Campbell wrote that,

As in other Southern cities, [in St. Louis] African Americans could not live in white neighborhoods. Segregated neighborhoods provided the foundation for the separate schools and other separate public accommodations that were an essential aspect of the Jim Crow system (2013, p. 21).

As Southern Black families streamed into the city seeking to escape the Jim Crow laws of the south, they were met forced segregation. White communities, led by White political and business leaders, established rules and policies that strictly limited the access of Black people to many parts of the city and county (Cambria et al, 2018, p. 16). Black families were forced to live in areas north of what has become known as the Delmar Divide. White people lived south of the divide in the more desirable neighborhoods (Perry Abello, 2019, para. 3).

Unlike other U.S. cities, St. Louis became home to a higher number of African Americans during the first wave of the Great Migration. Such a sudden and large influx into an already racially charged environment created a strong backlash that “led the city to more aggressively impose segregation policies earlier in its development than other cities” (Cambria et al, 2018, p. 19). As Cambria et al noted, such an aggressive response was “particularly strong and damaging given their intensity and longevity” (p. 19).

The damage enacted through such segregation was not limited to housing. Along with limited housing came fewer resources offered to those living in these “Black ghettos.” Limited access to resources ”reproduce[d] unequal outcomes in health … housing, education, employment opportunities, transportation, and basic services. Access to all of these is patterned along segregated lines in St. Louis” (p. 7). While seeking to escape the deplorable living conditions of the South, many faced equally harsh choices in St. Louis.

Think about It!
Citizens as Immigrants

Isabel Wilkerson’s summation of the Great Migration is powerful. Let’s stop for a minute to think about the reality of her words.

“This is the first time in American history where American citizens had to flee the land of their birth just to be recognized as the citizens they had always been. No other group of Americans has had to act like immigrants in order to be recognized as citizens.”

Life in 2025 America is much more transient than it was in the early twentieth century. But even more than that, when most people move today it’s because they are seeking something better that they want and that benefits them. They also know they can remain in easy contact with friends and family from home through the many forms of digital media we posses.

Black individuals in the 1900s had none of these advantages. Black people did not leave knowing they had a job to move to. They did not move knowing where they would live or even whether they would be able to find work. And because of Jim Crow laws and ongoing racist practices, most Black people could not get gas (if you were lucky enough to own a car), stay at hotels, or eat at restaurants that White people could. They literally were like immigrants in a land where they knew very little and had very little access to anything.

Can you imagine what it would be like to pack up and move to a foreign country not knowing where you would live or what you would do, having very little money, and knowing you would be viewed with suspicion?

Your Turn

What were the consequences of Jim Crow laws in the South? How did this impact African American families seeking lives of freedom and decency?

Stephanie Brizee
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