What Are The Primary Questions That Explain The Great Migration

The Great Migration stands as a moment in American history, recognizing the resilience and determination of Black Americans in the face of adversity.It captures how hundreds of thousands of Black Americans embarked on a journey from the oppressive conditions of the South to the promise of new opportunities in the North and Western states of the United States. The Great Migration was a response to systemic racism, economic exploitation, and the pursuit of freedom and equality. This essay will delve into the primary questions that explain the Migration: What led migrants to leave the South? What was life like for those outside of the South?

The migration of African American migrants from the South was propelled by socioeconomic factors, racism

Which is explained perfectly in the words of Kathryn Kitty Woodard. In an interview conducted by Charles Hardy, she tells about a time when she was around 5 years old where her father helped her uncle escape a mob intent on killing him because a white woman was accusing him of rape, she tells story from her mothers and fathers perspectives beginning with the mothers“ And she said, "What's wrong?" And he told her that he had to get Uncle Leon out quickly, because it was a mob gonna try to lynch him.”. “And he put Uncle Leon--he said, "I've got to go, because I have him in the car." He was on the floor of the car, with a rug over him. My father drove him to Macon, Georgia” (Hardy, Minute 1). This quote from her story as a young child points to another huge contribution to the reason as to why/what led so many African Americans to migrate north. In this case Leon, Kathryn’s uncle, had to flee north to escape his lynching for a crime which he never committed but was accused of and believed to be because the victim was a white

Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series 1940-1941. Visually captures everything that was occurring during the great migration, from everything to the labor the slaves endured, to the treatment they received from white southerners and the living conditions of the north, to the tripe of work they held in the north. One that caught my attention was the one with the description of “They found discrimination in the North”. It was a different kind” (Lawrence, panel 49). The painting of Jacob Lawrence portrays what could be a restaurant divided by a line where on one side only the African Americans are seated and eating while on the other/opposite side of the line the whites are seated and eating as well. This piece connects and alludes to Langston Hughes excerpts of his life in the north to help us understand what life was like for those outside of the south as they experienced discrimination in the