When World War I began in 1914, 90% of African Americans lived in the South, and most northern cities had small African American populations. That changed dramatically during the war, as increased war production and a sharp decline in European immigration made available thousands of industrial jobs to African Americans for the first time. This inspired a mass migration. from the South to the North that would last through the 1920s, indeed for over three generations, and come to be known as the Great Migration. Between 1910 and 1920, half a million African Americans left the South, moving to large cities like New York and Chicago, as well as smaller cities such as Akron, Buffalo, and Trenton.
The desire for work and higher wages, education, an escape from the threat of violence, and the right to vote motivated African Americans to participate in the Great Migration. Remarkably, African Americans resettled in largest concentrations not on east coast cities, but in interior cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. This was not wholly unprecedented.
Two generations before, African American farmers trapped at the bottom of an economically stagnant South, migrated by the tens of thousands out West. By one estimate, some 15,000 African Americans lived on homestead farms of 160 acres. Then, in 1879 and 1880, an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 African Americans moved from the South to Kansas, seeking political rights, safety, and economic opportunities.
This came to be known as the Kansas Exodus, and the African American migrants were regarded as exodusters. But undoubtedly, the scale of the Great Migration is what made it noteworthy. While it was half a million over the decade between 1910 and 1920, as the 20th century unfolded, more than 5 million additional African Americans would leave the South for the North.
It was one of the largest internal migrations of people in world history, remaking American society and generating an intellectual and artistic renaissance as African Americans sought to hold on to their culture. Yet, these migrants encountered considerable disappointments, including limited employment opportunities, exclusion from unions, housing segregation, and outbreaks of violence. In East St. Louis, Illinois, African Americans had been recruited to work in the factories, really in a bid by factory managers to weaken unions. In retaliation, workers attacked and killed dozens of African Americans in a riot in East St. Louis in 1917. An outbreak of riots in northern cities in 1919 led to more than 250 people being killed. Most were African Americans.
Chicago suffered the worst riots in 1919. By early 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma had become a favorite destination for African Americans leaving the South. Many families had become established and wealthy. The city's financial district was known as the Black Wall Street. But then, an African American teenager accidentally tripped and fell on a white female elevator operator, sparking rumors of rape.
Whites tried to lynch him, but black veterans intervened and tried to prevent it. What followed was the worst race riot in American history. More than 300 blacks were killed in Tulsa.
The financial district was set ablaze. and thousands were made homeless as a white mob that included policemen and National Guard members set about destroying part of the city. Racial violence during the war inspired a new spirit of militancy among African Americans. In northern cities, many blacks supported the Universal Negro Improvement Association, a movement for African independence and black self-reliance. Launched by Marcus Garvey, a recent immigrant from Jamaica.
Garvey was a spellbinding orator and repeatedly packed Carnegie Hall in New York City, where crowds of 25,000 mostly African Americans came to hear him set out his vision for a Back to Africa campaign. The basic idea that African Americans would never be able to attain equal rights had impelled earlier generations to the same conclusion, that they must leave the country. message never really resonated with many African Americans.
But Garvey was captivating all the same, and while his solution was too radical for many African Americans, they embraced his overall message of empowerment. Garvey, though, alienated African American leaders, especially W.E.B. Du Bois, who considered him a dangerous demagogue. And Garvey, with his dream of millions of African Americans moving back to Africa led him into shady business deals, including an attempt to start a cruise line called the Black Star Line. He soon fell into financial trouble and ultimately committed mail fraud to try and get the money to save his cruise line. Garvey was deported back to the Caribbean after his conviction for mail fraud, but even so, undoubtedly.
The movement that Garvey started demonstrated African Americans' sense of betrayal in the post-war period.