Betty Joyce Nash

English

Research Papers in Economics

The Great Southern Migration
J
ames Macbeth moved to New
York from Charleston, S.C., in the
boom years of the Great
Migration. It was the 1950s, a decade
when some 1.1 million blacks left the
South. His father had departed many
years before, too many for him to
remember just which year it was. The
elder Macbeth worked for the postal
service in New York City. By the time
Macbeth was ready for college, he
moved to Pennsylvania and his mother
later joined his father in New York.
The elder Macbeths also worked at the
Carolina Chapel of Mickey Funeral
Service in Harlem, founded in 1932, far
from its original Charleston, S.C.,
home base. Macbeth works there now.
Macbeth is but one of 8 million
black and 20 million white
Southerners who streamed to cities in
the North or West, with the heaviest
flows between about 1915 to 1970.
Blacks migrated in higher percentages
than whites, and so this “Great
Migration” redistributed the racial
population. It changed job markets,
politics, and society. And culture. For
blacks, the exodus urbanized a former-
ly agricultural and dispersed people,
allowing them visibility in accomplish-
ing social goals. Effects of white
migration were less dramatic and, 
in many cases, tempo-
rary, coinciding with
the wartime and post-
war industrial boom.
Migration: A
Sorting Mechanism
People migrate in
search of better living
conditions. Sometimes
freedom from war and
oppression supplies
the necessary energy
required to overcome
the inertia inherent 
in the status quo.
Sometimes it’s a better job. Or both.
Migrations affect jobs, wages, 
geography, housing, education — all
economic activity. Migrations also
reveal how workers sort themselves
into jobs in different locations. 
“It’s a complex process in which
workers and employers match up, and
it’s absolutely essential in an economy
that changes rapidly over time,” 
says economist William Collins 
of Vanderbilt University. “In other
words, migration — the movement of
workers from place to place — is a 
key part of the story of how labor 
markets work.” 
The Great Migration ebbed and
flowed with the world wars. The first
period dated from about 1915 to 1930
— World War I and after — and
slowed with the Depression.
Migration picked up again as military
production — steel and aluminum
plants, shipyards, aircraft plants, and
military installations — for World War
II created jobs in the Great Lakes 
corridor from New York to Chicago 
as well as on both coasts. People kept
moving even after the war, as the 
economy grew. 
While the migration north and
west from Southern states began in
earnest in the century’s first decade,
more than 40 years before Macbeth’s
personal odyssey, the exodus was
growing even stronger at the time of
his departure. 
Macbeth, like most black immi-
grants, laughs when he says his father
headed north because “everybody said
the streets were paved with gold.” But
the laughter subsides when he talks
about segregation, the “Jim Crow” 
laws that prevented blacks from voting
and more.
In all former Confederate states,
less than 5 percent of eligible blacks
were registered to vote as late as 1940,
according to historian David Kennedy.
36 Region Focus • Fall 2007
ECONOMICHISTORY
BY BETTY JOYCE NASH
Throughout much
of the 20th century,
people streamed
out of the South,
rearranging the
social, political, and
economic landscape 
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The Great Migration brought families 
like this to Chicago and other industrial
economic magnets in the Midwest and
Northeast. For blacks, the migration 
promised not only job opportunities but 
also escape from the segregated South.(Women, black and white, did not
receive voting rights until 1920.) 
By 1900, Southern states had instituted
racial separation: drinking fountains,
schools, waiting rooms. Few industrial
jobs existed in the South, and Jim Crow
affected those too. For instance, in 1915,
South Carolina required segregated
workrooms in textile mills. Infant mor-
tality rates for blacks were nearly
double those for whites in 1930 (10 per-
cent and 6 percent, respectively).
Blacks could expect to live 15 fewer
years than whites, 45 compared with 60.  
Moving destinations varied.
Southerners aimed for meccas like
Chicago or Detroit if they were from
Mississippi or Alabama. But the goal
was New York, Philadelphia, or
Boston if they hailed from the
Carolinas and elsewhere along the
Eastern Seaboard. Historian Spencer
Crew, who has studied the migration,
says that blacks in the early years fol-
lowed whatever rail routes crossed
their towns. Trains pulled into
Southern stations filled with goods
and pulled out filled with the people
who could afford to go.
Economists have been curious
about why blacks waited some 50 years
after the Civil War to exit the South in
significant numbers. By the early
1900s, only a couple hundred thousand
blacks (and about 716,000 whites) were
leaving. The Great Migration peaked
in the 1970s when some 1.5 million
blacks and 2.6 million whites left 
the South.
Theories have pointed to European
immigration as a “deterrent” to black
migration, especially in those early
years. Data show that blacks “moved
at times and to places where foreign-
born immigrants were less prevalent …
the Great Migration would have got-
ten under way earlier than it did if
strict immigration controls had been
adopted earlier,” Collins wrote in a
paper on the subject. As World War I
stifled that European flow, it simulta-
neously created demand for workers to
fill industrial jobs previously available
only to whites. 
While blacks  were not hired into
skilled jobs in the Northern industries
until mid-century, they did find lower-
level jobs, according to Crew, who now
directs the Underground Railroad
Museum in Cincinnati. “In the North,
because of the war, there was a real
shortage of labor, and as a conse-
quence, opportunities for African
Americans opened up, mostly in the
iron mills and slaughter houses.” Crew
notes that the better-paid, higher-
skilled jobs were not available to blacks
until the post-World War II years —
and even then, they were hard to get.
In 1920, for instance, 70 percent of
Southern black men worked in
unskilled or service jobs compared to
22 percent of Southern white men. 
By 1970, according to historian James
Gregory, that number had fallen to 35
percent for Southern-born black men
and a barely changed 24 percent for
Southern-born white men. 
The agricultural depression of the
1920s, sparked by wartime overpro-
duction and rock-bottom crop prices,
accelerated immigration even further
during that decade. The cotton for
which the Southern states were
famous was devastated by the boll
weevil. In 1920, South Carolina farm-
ers produced 1.6 million bales, the
biggest in the state’s history, but two
years later they counted 493,000, the
fewest since the Civil War. Add to that
an agricultural deflation in which
peanut prices fell from $240 to $40
per ton in one season, corn from $1.50
to 50 cents.
That and mechanization forced
many white and black agricultural
laborers off Southern fields for good.
“The 1922 harvest season was followed
by the largest wave of migration in the
history of black Carolina,” according
to Black Carolinians: AHistory of Blacks
in South Carolina from 1895 to 1968
by I.A. Newby. Some 59,000 blacks
left rural areas of 41 South Carolina 
counties between November 1922 and
June 1923.
Migrant Characteristics
Blacks who migrated tended to be
more educated than those who stayed,
while the reverse was true of whites,
according to Duke University econo-
mist Jacob Vigdor. He has studied
changes in migration patterns and
migrant characteristics. Before World
War II, educated blacks were more
likely to migrate north because they
could better afford it. (Families who
could afford the opportunity costs of
sending their children to school, 
he notes, could more likely pay for 
a move.) 
Plus, they valued the educational
opportunities they heard about up
North. It’s not that the North always
turned out to be a “promised land” for
blacks, Crew says. But there was hope,
the brightest of which was better edu-
cation. “People [were] bringing their
kids with them in the hopes they
[would] have a better future,” he says.
Vigdor reports median years of school-
ing completed among black migrants
from most Southern states as eight or
nine in 1940 among those born from
1913 to 1922.
Early migrants were, on average,
younger as well as better educated
Fall 2007 • Region Focus 37
Regional Distribution of Black Population, 1900–2000
SOURCE:  U.S. Census Bureau, Demographic Trends in the 20th Century, November 2002
0
20
40
60
80
100
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
South West Midwest Northeast
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N
Tthan non-migrants. They could read
newspapers, letters, or flyers that
described the migration. “In each age
cohort, highly educated blacks living
outside their state of birth were more
likely to reside in the North than in
the South,” Vigdor writes. “In the old-
est cohort, highly educated black
interstate migrants were 35 percent
more likely to reside in the North.” In
1940, educated blacks were likely to
choose a Northern destination, but
that trend began to change in 1970,
with more educated blacks turning
back to the South.
These patterns might have implica-
tions for human capital and economic
outcomes of later generations of
native-born blacks. Economics litera-
ture, Vigdor notes, links outcomes
with characteristics of fellow ethnic or
racial group members, especially in
segregated environments. 
As decades passed, life for black
youth who remained in the South was
still tough. An article published in 
1967 in a New York biweekly newspa-
per,  The Reporter, noted that the 
poorest county in South Carolina,
Williamsburg, lost 14,636 blacks from
1950 to 1960. That was more than half
its black population. Among those who
stayed, even black students with some
college lacked opportunity. Here’s how
the author describes the situation,
based on interviews with black families:
“But when the time came for them to
find jobs, there were none. One by one,
Davis’ four sons and three daughters
packed up and left for New York.”
Chain Migration
Migrants drew on the help of friends,
relatives, and friends of friends 
in the search for a new life up North.
Sometimes industrial recruiters, 
desperate for labor and sometimes
strikebreakers as World War I and
immigration policy choked  off the flow
of whites from other countries, trolled
Southern towns for would-be migrants,
some offering free train tickets.
Northern cities’ newest Southern
arrivals, white and black, didn’t always
find the welcome they sought, and they
tended to stick together. Some natives
derided “hillbilly” and Southern
accents. Entire blocks of Chicago 
and Detroit were known as little
Appalachia. There is still a faint legacy
of “Bronzeville,” a black district just
now undergoing a renaissance of sorts,
also in Chicago. 
Early on, new migrants were often
“portrayed in unflattering terms by
contemporary observers,” according to
University of Washington sociologist
Stewart Tolnay.  Even sociologists like
W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, of the earliest
migrants to Philadelphia, that their
Southern backgrounds were a handicap
as they tried to adapt to life in the
Northern city. And, at first, even
Northern black newspapers such as the
Chicago Defender discouraged blacks
from settling in Northern cities. 
But by 1918, the Defender  was 
selling 130,000 copies, three-fourths
of those outside Chicago in cities like
Richmond, Norfolk, and Savannah,
Ga., with smaller circulations in towns
dotted throughout the South. Much of
this was in response to the Southern
press, which “built into a crisis story
about potential labor shortages for
Southern agriculture,” according to
Gregory in The Southern Diaspora. 
The black-owned newspapers in
the South warned whites of an 
“exodus,” should whites fail to open
doors to change. Meanwhile, white
publishers pondered what to do 
about the out-migration, worrying 
in headlines about labor shortages.
White-owned Northern newspapers
often focused on the negatives of the
influx, Gregory wrote.
Although migrants to Northern
cities were better educated than their
Southern counterparts, their new
Northern neighbors, white and black,
described them as illiterate. “And their
growing numbers were sometimes
viewed as a potential threat to the
racial status quo that offered Northern
blacks a relatively comfortable coexis-
tence with whites, if not actual racial
equality, ” according to Tolnay. Later
anecdotal portraits of migrants, 
however, are kinder — perhaps native
Northerners had gotten used to the
new migrants. Still, race riots erupted
in Chicago, Detroit, and Harlem, while
Ku Klux Klan terrorism and lynching
marred life in the segregated South.
Black migrants tended to settle
together, and they organized them-
selves socially, according to Newby. 
“In every city where significant 
numbers of them settled, there were
Palmetto College Clubs or Palmetto
state societies, which, in purely social
matters at least, eased the transition to
urban living for many migrants.”
Until migration picked up in World
War I, there was little separation 
of the races in neighborhoods. For
instance, the 5,000 blacks who lived in
Detroit in 1910 had lived among other
immigrants. But with the influx of new
migrants, blacks were channeled into
the city’s slums. Even if migrants could
afford a home, there were the tools of
zoning and restrictive covenants that
prevented them from purchasing in
certain neighborhoods until govern-
ment intervened with housing laws.
Going Home
By 1970, blacks who were educated
were more likely to head for a
Southern destination than their 
less-schooled counterparts, a trend
that continues. Economists and histo-
rians suggest by way of explanation
that discrimination had begun to ease
in the South, with conditions for
blacks being more hospitable as civil
rights gained ground. It’s also possible
that the Northern cities to which they
had moved had become less desirable
as industrial strength of the Great
Lakes region waned and joblessness
eroded neighborhoods. 
As late as the tail end of the 1960s,
the 14 states with the largest number
of blacks leaving were all in the South.
But a decade later, migration had 
leveled off, and reversed. 
For whites, the entire migration
tended to be more of a “circulatory”
trend. For instance, in the late 1950s,
according to Gregory, for every 100
white Southerners who migrated
north or west, 54 returned home, and
that number increased to 78 by the 
late 1960s. 
“Turnover was the key dynamic of
38 Region Focus • Fall 2007Fall 2007 • Region Focus 39
the white diaspora,” writes Gregory.
“Fewer than half of the nearly 20 mil-
lion whites who left the South actually
left for good. That means that the
white diaspora is best understood 
as a circulation, not as a one-way 
population transfer.”
But black return migration was only
about a third of the rate of white migra-
tion during most decades. Some did
come back even as others departed.
For instance, in 1949, some 43,000
black Southerners returned, about 1.7
percent of all Southern-born blacks
living in the North and West.  
Still, in the 1970s, the return flow of
blacks to the South was evident —
more moving in than moving out.
Between 1975 and 1980, Virginia, the
Carolinas, and Maryland were among
the states gaining the most black 
in-migrants, according to demographer
William Frey.
Frey analyzed migration data from
four decennial censuses. Among other
findings, the South netted black
migrants from all other U.S. regions
during the 1990s, completely reversing
the migration stream. Charlotte,
Norfolk-Virginia Beach, Raleigh-
Durham, and Washington-Baltimore
were among the 10 most-preferred
destinations during that time. Atlanta,
however, was the strongest magnet.
New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and
San Francisco lost blacks during the
same period. Also noteworthy: Blacks
were more likely than whites to pick
Southern destinations. Maryland,
North Carolina, and Virginia were
among the 10 states that gained the
most black college graduates during
the late 1990s. 
Black reverse migration reflects
economic growth, improved race 
relations, “and the long-standing 
cultural and kinship ties it holds for 
black families,” according to Frey.
James Macbeth, who is 71 and 
beginning to think about retirement, 
may move back to Charleston. 
His parents, both dead, are buried 
in South Carolina, and his siblings 
have scattered throughout Southern
cities in a return migration of their own.
Over his lifetime, Macbeth wit-
nessed the chain of events that people
like his father set in motion. 
The migratory tide, once it began
going out, forced change as it
rearranged population, employment,
education, attitudes, art, music,
sports, transportation, recreation,
housing, and more. The Great
Migration was driven by more than
the opportunity to improve working
conditions — at least for blacks. James
Macbeth’s father didn’t leave
Charleston just for a good job in New
York at the post office.  “He just 
couldn’t get along with segregation 
in the South.” RF
Collins, William J. “When the Tide Turned: Immigration and the
Delay of the Great Black Migration.” Journal of Economic History,
September 1997, vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 607-632.
Frey, William. “The New Great Migration: Black Americans’
Return to the South, 1965-2000.” Brookings Institution Center 
on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. The Living Cities Census Series,
May 2004.
Gregory, James N. The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations
of Black and White Southerners Transformed America. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
Vigdor, Jacob L. “The Pursuit of Opportunity: Explaining 
Selective Black Migration.” Journal of Urban Economics, 2002, vol.
51, no. 3, pp. 391-417. 
R EADINGS
causing them to lack incentive to
ensure that borrowers are “mortgage
ready.” (It should be pointed out 
that lenders do carry risk even when 
they sell their mortgages because 
over the long term, if defaults are wide-
spread, then they are certainly worse
off in terms of their future ability to
originate loans and sell them.) “Are we
going to expect Wall Street investors to
support homeownership counseling?”
he asks rhetorically.
Almost three years after her 
purchase, Donna Turner is keeping up 
with her monthly payments and 
tending a small garden out back. She is
the very picture of a happy, responsible
homeowner. “I had always lived with
somebody. And after you pay your part
of the bills, they say get out,” Turner
says. “So I was determined to get to the
point where nobody could ever tell 
me to get out again.”
Turner did it. Economic research
suggests that, while it won’t come close
to working for everyone, she needn’t be
the only exception.  RF
ARMED AGAINST ARMS • continued from page 20
Campbell, John Y. “Household Finance.” Journal of Finance, August
2006, vol. 61, no. 4, pp. 1,553-1,604.
Chomsisengphet, Souphala, and Anthony Pennington-Cross. “The
Evolution of the Subprime Mortgage Market.” Federal Reserve
Bank of St. Louis Review, January/February 2006, vol. 88, no. 1,
pp. 31-56.
Hartarska, Valentina, and Claudio Gonzalez-Vega. “Credit
Counseling and Mortgage Termination by Low-Income
Households.” Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2005, 
vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 227-243.
Martin, Matthew. “ALiterature Review on the Effectiveness of
Financial Education.” Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Working
Paper No. 07-03, June 15, 2007.
R EADINGS

Economic history : The great southern migration

http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focus/2007/fall/pdf/economic_history.pdf

Economic history : The great southern migration

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