A Short Story Of America's Great Migration

The Red Summer was an extremely violent and significant movement in America’s history, and it intensified racial tensions significantly in Chicago. “Drawn by the promise of employment and dignity, Chicago's black population more than doubled from 1916 to 1918” (Armstrong, 2016). This resulted in multiple instances of competition for jobs and housing, creating lots of tension between black and white people. Whites tried to prove their superiority in each neighborhood and created race riots that were the “...most severe of approximately 251 race riots throughout the U.S. in the ‘Red Summer’ (meaning “bloody”) following World War I; a manifestation of racial frictions intensified by large-scale African American migration to the North, industrial

“In the late 1930s, Tennesseans and many American continued to struggle against economic

The United States, during the 19th century, was a growing nation with much promise to prosper and urbanize. An integral aspect that contributed to the nation's expansion were immigrants, Individuals who were seeking more opportunities came from countries such as China, Germany, Ireland, etc. to work in the United States and earn a better living. In 1830, John Downe, an immigrant from England, is an example of a individual emigrating their home country to improve their life. John, in a letter to his wife trying to persuade his family to emigrate as well uses a mixture of tone, atmosphere, and pathos to envoke an overall hopeful but yet melancholy mood.

The “Black Great Migration” represents one of the greatest social, political, and economic alterations in American history.

The hopes formed by the Kansas Exodus of living a normal, free life were shattered as many couldn’t afford to take up farming and resumed their role on the lowest rung of society. The North also sparked false hope, as industry expanded at an intangible rate, it also created countless jobs, but factory owners “refused to offer jobs to blacks in the expanding industrial economy, preferring to hire white immigrants” (Foner 523). Consequently, African Americans fought to obtain any job they could. Moody’s stepfather, Raymond, was tired of looking for menial work in the South and decided to head west in search of a job that could provide for his family. He had been hard set on making it as a Mississippi farmer, but continued failure left him no choice than to go see his family in Los Angeles for work.

(Summer of 1879) As an African American wife who recently joined the western migration, along with my husband, I am optimistic about the opportunity we have to become landowners. Thanks to the new addition of the 13th amendment, my husband and I are considered lawful freedmen. We now have the right to live a lifestyle opposite of the suffering we endured back in the South.

In the first few chapters of Black Metropolis, St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton provide historical context on the early development of Chicago as the site for an emerging city, which became the American Midwest epicenter that incited significant social, economic and political changes that transformed the country. The authors also establish a foundation that helps to understand the allure of the Windy City, which contributed to the mass exodus of African Americans from the South during the Great Migration that ultimately created the “black metropolis.” While examining the text, what specifically stood out was the following quote: “The distinctive thing about the Black Belt is that while other such “colonies” tend to break up with the passage of time, the Negro area becomes increasingly more concentrated.” This quote indirectly references the

6 million African Americans moved from the rural South to the cities of the North during The Great Migration. The blacks wanted to escape the oppressive economic conditions in the south and the promise of greater fortune in the north. Some blacks was being paid to migrated from the south to the north for work and their expenses was being paid. The Pennsylvania Railroad paid the travel expenses of 12,000 blacks.

Jim Crow laws were still prevalent and continued to restrict their freedom (Doc D). During the 1920s, the American economy took a giant step forward. Economic prosperity put the “roar” into the twenties. A new

The Dust Bowl, beginning in the 1930s, added to the struggle of American farmers as lands out west in states such as Oklahoma and Kansas were over-plowed, causing the topsoil to become uprooted, creating massive dust storms. These dust storms left the land unusable to farm, displacing many Americans in the agricultural industry. Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies displays the struggles these farmers faced when moving west to California, hoping to find some sort of work. Many displaced farmers lived in squatters’ camps, temporary dwellings for those looking for work. Steinbeck described these camps as having awful living conditions, saying that “From a distance it looks like a city dump, and well it may, for the city dumps are the sources for the material of which it is built.”

The Great Migration was a time of change it was a time where African-Americans had the chance for a nice life. During this time people of color were moving to the northern half of the USA, in order to get a new start. During this they had to leave the only life they knew in hopes for something better in a different place. To begin with, after World War 1 began in 1914 industries lacked the laborers in their urban cities.

What Made Migration Great? The Great Migration refers to the movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North and West between approximately 1910 and 1970. The Great Migration was great because of its important impact. There were several factors that made this migration "great" in terms of its importance and impact; Industrialization and the growth of urban areas, Jim Crow laws, societal inequality that followed the migration, and lastly the unhealthy circumstances that waited for the migrants in the North.

From 1966 to 1981 San Antonio, Texas, was a segregated city ruled by Anglos and important business people. The people who lived in the west and south sides of this city fell under housing. Gangs were really popular and broke out frequently. Then farm workers broke out in the strike and marched through the city’s streets forming a movement to get rid of the Anglos who took advantage of them. David Montejano, in this book, uses sources that are not open to anyone unless asked for.

Between 1870 and 1900, an estimated 25 million immigrants had made their way to the United States. This era, titled the Gilded Age, played an extremely important role in the shaping of American society. The United States saw great economic growth and social changes; however, as the name suggested, the Gilded Ages hid a profound number of problems. During this period of urbanization, the publicizing of wealth and prosperity hid the high rates of poverty, crime, and corruption. European immigrants who had come to the United States in search of jobs and new opportunities had fallen into poverty as well as poor working and living conditions.

Americans had rarely accepted outsiders as equals, and that was the case with immigrants coming to the U.S in the 1840s to the 1920s. A time in America where immigrants were not considered inferior to native white Americans did not exist. The hatred of anything non-American, especially with the coming of World War I in 1914, would only cause more Americans to despise immigrants. Part of this was rooted simply in racism, which existed towards groups other than African Americans, but much of it was simply that Americans considered themselves the chosen people while everyone else was below them. Thus, despite immigrants being accepted into America, those immigrants were still treated far worse than white citizens between the 1840s and 1920s, for the prejudice against them was obvious even in the laws created.