The Great Migration: Crash Course Black American History #24

In 1910, 90% of Black Americans lived in the South. By 1940, around 1.5 million Black Americans had left their homes, and 77% lived in the South. By 1970, 52% of Black Americans remained in the South. People moved away for many reasons, including increased opportunity in the more industrial North and West. They sought a relatively safer life away from the lynchings and violence that were concentrated in the South. This Great Migration shaped 20th century America in countless ways, but we’re going to try to count some of them in this video. Clint’s book, How the Word is Passed is available now! VIDEO SOURCES Davarian Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Urban Black Life (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Random House, 2010