Summary: Motivation For The Great Migration

THE MOTIATION FOR THE GREAT MIGRATION

The greatest motivation for the Great Migration movement of African Americans leaving the South to move to the North was to explore better economic opportunities. The southern states placed many unjust and unfair restrictions upon African Americans. In addition to these unmerited barriers, blacks in the South were subject to violence and hostility by many white southerners. Even though the strongest motivations for blacks to migrate north were aimed toward achieving better economic opportunities, the discrimination and violence also persuaded blacks to leave the South. The motives the lead to the Great Migration can be sorted into five key categories; Economic, Political, Civil liberties, Segregation,…show more content…
The North suffered major losses of industrial workers to the war. Northern industries were forced to look for a different avenue to find suitable workers for their factories. “The North drew heavily upon a southern reserve of black labor.” African Americans have never experienced a job such as industrial work in the North. Blacks were only familiar with farming crops. Not only was the industrial work less strenuous on African Americans, the pay was much better in the North compared to the pay of a sharecropper in the South. In the North, blacks were able to receive a substantially greater pay compared to southern farming. “Even if the cost of living in the North was much higher, at the end of the day workers returned home with more money in their pockets.” One man states, “The immediate occasion of the migration is, of course, the opportunity in the North, now at last open to us, for industrial betterment.” The initial drive for the great migration was the escape of the oppressive South to anywhere that African Americans could live equally and fair amongst all other…show more content…
As a business man from North Carolina states: There is a silent influence operating in the hearts of the growing class of intelligent Negroes that the insurmountable barriers of caste unnecessarily fetter the opportunities to which every living soul is entitled, namely, a fair chance to earn an honest living and educate his children and be protected by the laws.” African American’s simply want true equality and the only way to achieve this is to escape to the North. Blacks are unable to change their overall status in the South because of the political, economic, and social restrictions placed on them. Also the mob violence and hostility towards blacks helps push them to migrate to the North.

Bibliography
Arnesen, Eric. Black Protest and the Great Migration. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns. New York: A Division Of Random House, INC., 2010.

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[ 1 ]. Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, (New York: A Division Of Random House, INC., 2010), 54.
[ 2 ]. Ibid., 41.
[ 3 ]. Eric Arnesen, Black Protest and the Great Migration, (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003), 3.
[ 4 ]. Ibid., 53.
[ 5 ]. Ibid., 7.
[ 6 ]. Ibid., 9.
[ 7 ]. Ibid.,