Chapter 1: Migration in African-American Economic History

In the early twentieth century, American cities were home to immigrants from around the world; 23 percent of the urban population in the United States in 1910 was born abroad. Immigrants were attracted to the industrial centers of the Northeast and Midwest, cities like Chicago, Pittsburgh and Detroit, which offered plentiful jobs in rail yards, steel works and automobile manufacturing. Despite the promise of high wages, daily life in an American city was difficult, often centered in overcrowded neighborhoods and unsanitary conditions. The quality of urban life, while low, was improving as deadly disease outbreaks were contained by new sewer and water systems, slow, dirty omnibuses were replaced with clean, futuristic street cars or subways; and private benefactors endowed music halls, libraries and art museums to announce the arrival of their city on the world’s cultural stage. The one population that would have seemed most uniquely poised to benefit from this urban momentum was rural black southerners. A trip from Georgia to Philadelphia or from Mississippi to Chicago took but a short train ride. By moving North, many blacks could expect to increase their yearly earnings by 50 percent. Yet, despite this proximity to cities of plenty, black migration to urban centers was rare at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1900, nearly 40 years after the Emancipation Proclamation decreed an end to slavery, 87 percent of African Americans