Great migration to Cleveland
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During the early 20th, there was “movement of African Americans from the South to the urban North,” known as The Great Migration (Grossman, 2005). The Great Migration began in 1910s and lasted nearly thirty years. “Estimates vary, but perhaps as many as 500,000 blacks moved from the South to the North” in a ten year period (Ohio Historical Society, 2005). The migration was due to many factors. However, the most common factors were the availability of work, due to the World Wars and its need to manufacture goods to support troops, and the aspiration of attaining better lives for themselves and their families. The jobs available during this period were mainly factory jobs. Big cities offered jobs and therefore cities, such as Cleveland, were the destination of many African Americans.
“Thousands of African Americans who participated in the Great Migration settled in Ohio. They provided businesses in the state's industrial centers…(primarily) Cleveland…with workers (Ohio Historical Society, 2005).” The massive number of African Americans to Ohio, in particularly to Cleveland, greatly changed the demographics of the state and Cleveland. Prior to the Great Migration, there was an estimated range of 1.1- 1.6% of Cleveland’s population was African American (Gibson & Jung, 2005). In 1920, 4.3% of Cleveland’s population was African American (Gibson & Jung, 2005). The number of African Americans in Cleveland continued to rise over the next twenty years of the Great Migration.
Cleveland was appealing to those who participated in the Great Migration. Cleveland was one of the biggest industrial centers in Ohio. The city’s easy access and natural resources allowed Cleveland to flourish in industry. Cleveland had many steel mills and needed a large workforce. With many jobs vacant, due to many white men going to fight in the World Wars, African Americans came to Cleveland to work.
Finding work served as determinant and a perk to many African Americans who wanted to escape the hard life of the South. Life was not perfect in Cleveland. There were still racial tensions. “Despite the problems that African Americans faced in (Cleveland), the racism that they endured tended to be less overt than that of the South (Ohio Historical Society, 2005).” Also, their jobs in the factory required long hours, often little pay and hard physical labor. Despite work related disadvantages, African Americans generally felt that their work conditions were better than sharecropping.
The North was still seen as the “promise land,” nearly sixty years after the end of slavery. “The Great Migration…create(d) new opportunity and hope for the blacks who migrated northwards (Ohio Historical Society, 2005).” The North provided African Americans with opportunities of employment and the betterment of their lives.
[edit] References
Gibson, Campbell, and Kay Jung. "Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for Large Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States." U.S. Census Bureau. Feb. 2005. 6 Apr. 2007 <http://www.census.gov/population/>.
Grossman, James. "Great Migration." The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. 2005. 6 Apr. 2007 <http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/>.
Ohio Historical Society, 2005, "Great Migration", Ohio History Central: An Online Encyclopedia of Ohio History.
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