Great Migration (African American)

As Great Migration (English: " Great Migration" ) is especially referred to in the decades 1910-1970, a migration of about 6 million African Americans from the rural areas of the southern United States in the industrial cities of the North, Northeast and West. It is one of the central events in the history of African Americans in the 20th century. Most blacks came from the states of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

Importance

The historian Wilkerson points out that this migration movement was greater than the migration movements that were triggered by the California gold rush and the Dust Bowl. Before the Great Migration lived only about 10 percent of the black population of the United States in the northern states, after the end of this migration, on the other hand 47 percent. This affected the Great Migration in the northern states, the expansion of cities, but also influenced by the skin color settlement structure, the emergence of a black middle class and influenced in the urban centers of speech and music culture. Among the descendants of people who migrated to the north during the Great Migration, today include such seminal figures as James Baldwin, Michelle Obama, Miles Davis, Toni Morrison, Spike Lee and Denzel Washington.

Phases

Some historians distinction is made between the First Great Migration, which lasted approximately from 1910 to 1930 and about 1.6 million people covered, and the Second Great Migration, which from 1940 to 1970, during the period of economic recovery during and after the Second World War, took place. During this time, leaving 5 million African-Americans, especially urban residents with higher education or professional qualification to the south and moved to the emerging nations of the West, about to California.