Between roughly 1916 and 1970 about six million African Americans left the rural South for cities in the North, Midwest and West, driven by Jim Crow segregation, racial violence and the demand for industrial labour during and after the World Wars. They concentrated in cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, reshaping the demography of urban America. By 1970 only half of the country's Black population remained in the South. The influx coincided with discriminatory housing and lending practices that confined many migrants to overcrowded, segregated neighbourhoods.
The Great Migration transformed the racial geography of American cities and set the demographic stage for twentieth-century debates over segregation, housing and renewal.
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