THE CALL TO COME NORTH
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The Call North
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The Great Migration was an exodus of African Americans from the south to the north. Looking for a better life, and to escape Jim Crow laws, caravans of African Americans left the bowels of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and other southern states in search of the Promised Land. It is estimated that nearly 70,000 African American men, women and children fled the south during the first of the two time periods. The exodus occurred between 1916 through the 1920's. The second exodus occurred between 1940-1970 with an estimated total of 6,000,000 men, women and children of African descent leaving the South and migrating to the North.
The clarion call to come north was sent by several anti-lynching counterparts. Mrs. Ida B. Wells Barnett is one pioneers who wrote in The Chicago Defender newspaper against the lynching's of the south. "The combination of word-of-mouth advice, active recruiting by northern labor agents, and promises of free transportation often supplied the reason and mode for migration North . . . the Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper, published articles exposing the blatant racism of white southerners, political oppression, and the perpetual threat of lynching." (http://www.northbysouth.org/1999/flyaway/flyaway.htm) The city of Chicago presented economic opportunities because of the railroads, the stockyards, factories, the steel mill, and other growing industries.
Objectives: Students will learn to compare and contrast the social environments of the South and North. Students will learn of the communal responsibility that Northern African Americans had for their Southern counterparts. Students will learn the role of the media in The Great Migration. Students will learn of the attractiveness of "Black Chicago".
Questions:
Resourceful links: Black Migrant letters to The Chicago Defender Fly Away - The Great Migration |
