Great Migration (African American)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Great Migration was the movement of 1.75 million African Americans out of the Southern United States to the North, Midwest and West from 1910 to 1930. Precise estimates of the number of migrants depend on the time frame. African Americans migrated to escape racism and seek employment opportunities in industrial cities. Some historians differentiate between the First Great Migration (1910 40), numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and the Second Great Migration, from 1940 to 1970. In the Second Migration, 5 million or more people relocated, with the migrants moving to more new destinations. Many moved from Texas and Louisiana to California where there were jobs in the defense industry. From 1965 70, 14 states of the South, especially Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, contributed to a large net migration of blacks to the other three Census- designated regions of the United States. Since then, scholars have noted a reverse migration underway that gathered strength through the last 35 years of the 20th century.