Jim Crow Laws: The Great Migration

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“I 'm tired of being Jim Crowed, gonna leave this Jim Crow town, Doggone my black soul, I 'm sweet Chicago bound, Yes, Sir, I 'm leavin ' here, from this ole Jim Crow town. I 'm going up North, where they think money grows on trees, I don 't give a doggone, if ma black soul should freeze I 'm goin ' where I don 't need no B.V.D.s” (Jim Crow Blues, Davenport). The South offered little to no chance for advancement for rural blacks with the dwindling southern economy that once thrived on the backs of slaves after it came to an abrupt halt and pushed the oppressive, unfair restrictions on their lives in place, called the Jim Crow laws. With a sharp increase in the demand for labor in northern factories due to World War I, African Americans in the South and white factory owners from the North saw the chance for a mutually beneficial enterprise, that would later be referenced in history as The Great …show more content…

For blacks migrants, leaving the South on their own terms and gave them the opportunity to migrate willingly into the northern cities just as the Italians, Polish, and English men had done