## Learning Outcomes

- Explain how **World War I** accelerated the **First Great Migration**
- Identify the main **push factors** driving African Americans out of the South
- Identify the main **pull factors** attracting migrants to northern and midwestern cities
- Analyse how migration changed Black economic, political, and cultural life
- Explain why migration brought both new opportunities and new forms of discrimination
- Use the Great Migration in APUSH answers about causation, continuity and change over time, and migration and settlement

## AP United States History Syllabus

For the AP United States History, you are expected to understand how the Great Migration reshaped Black life on the World War I home front, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that the **First Great Migration** refers mainly to the movement of African Americans from the rural South to northern and midwestern cities from about **1910 to 1940**
- Understand that **World War I**, especially after U.S. entry in **1917**, accelerated migration rather than starting it from nothing
- Identify major southern push factors, including **Jim Crow segregation**, disenfranchisement, racial violence, and limited economic opportunity
- Identify major northern pull factors, including wartime factory jobs, higher wages, and labour shortages caused by reduced European immigration and military service
- Know important destination cities such as **Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland**, and the importance of **Harlem**
- Explain how migration strengthened Black urban institutions, political influence, and cultural movements such as the **Harlem Renaissance**
- Explain continuity as well as change: migrants often escaped southern conditions but still faced northern segregation, housing discrimination, and racial violence
- Understand how the Great Migration made race relations a national issue, not only a southern one

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. Why did World War I speed up the Great Migration?
2. What were the main push factors in the South and pull factors in the North?
3. Name at least three major destination cities for Black migrants.
4. How did the Great Migration change Black life without ending racial discrimination?
5. How could you use the Great Migration in an SAQ or LEQ about continuity and change?

## Introduction

The Great Migration is one of the most important internal migration patterns in U.S. history. For APUSH Period 7, it matters because it shows how **World War I** changed life on the home front, not just on the battlefield. As war production expanded, African Americans moved in large numbers from the rural South to northern and midwestern cities in search of work, safety, and greater freedom.

This movement reshaped Black life economically, socially, politically, and culturally. But it did not create racial equality. The strongest APUSH answers show both sides at once: migration opened new opportunities, yet racism followed migrants into the North in new forms.

> **Key Term: Great Migration**
> The large-scale internal movement of African Americans from the rural South to northern, midwestern, and later western cities, especially during the 20th century.

### Why World War I accelerated the Great Migration

The Great Migration did not suddenly appear in 1917. African Americans had been leaving the South before then, but **World War I** greatly increased the pace. That distinction matters on the exam. If a prompt asks for causation, say the war **accelerated** an existing movement.

The war created a labour shortage in northern industry for three connected reasons. First, wartime production expanded. Factories needed more workers in steel, meatpacking, railroads, munitions, and shipbuilding. Second, immigration from Europe declined sharply during the war, cutting off a major source of industrial labour. Third, many men left civilian jobs for military service. Put together, these conditions created openings that employers had to fill.

> **Key Term: First Great Migration**
> The first major wave of Black migration from the South to northern and midwestern cities, usually dated from about 1910 to 1940.

This helps explain why employers and labour agents actively recruited Black workers in the South. Some offered train fare or promised wages that seemed impossible by southern standards. This is important because migration was not only a personal decision. It was also shaped by wartime demand from industry.

Still, jobs alone do not explain migration. If conditions in the South had been tolerable, many families might have stayed. The war mattered because it strengthened the pull of the North at the same time that southern conditions remained harsh.

> **Key Term: wartime labor shortage**
> A shortage of workers caused by war production, reduced immigration, and military mobilization.

A good cause-and-effect chain for APUSH is this:

- World War I increased industrial output
- European immigration fell
- Many workers entered military service
- Northern factories needed labour
- Employers recruited Black southerners
- Migration north increased rapidly
  > **Test Tip:** In an SAQ, a strong answer usually gives one direct cause and then explains the mechanism. Do not just say “WWI caused migration.” Explain how wartime production and reduced immigration created jobs.

### Push from the South, pull to the North

The best way to explain the Great Migration is through **push and pull factors**. This language is precise and works well in APUSH essays.

Southern push factors were severe. African Americans in the South faced **Jim Crow segregation**, disfranchisement, racial violence, and narrow economic options. Even after emancipation and Reconstruction, many Black southerners remained trapped in sharecropping, farm labour, and debt. Political rights were restricted through literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, and exclusion from real power. Violence was a constant threat, including lynching and mob attacks.

> **Key Term: Jim Crow segregation**
> A system of state and local laws and customs that enforced racial separation and discrimination, mainly in the South after Reconstruction.

These conditions made migration about survival as much as advancement. That is a point students often miss. The movement was not just a search for higher wages. It was also an attempt to escape a region where law, politics, and violence worked together to keep Black people subordinate.

Northern pull factors were powerful but more mixed. Migrants heard of industrial jobs, better wages, and more room for political participation. Cities such as **Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland**, and **St. Louis** became major destinations. Letters from relatives, church networks, and Black newspapers spread the message that life could be better elsewhere.

The **Chicago Defender** played a major role here. It published job listings, migration advice, and stories that encouraged movement northward. It did not invent the desire to leave the South, but it helped turn thousands of individual decisions into a mass movement.

> **Key Term: Chicago Defender**
> An influential Black newspaper that encouraged African Americans to migrate north by publicising jobs, train routes, and better opportunities.

Students sometimes oversimplify the North as “free” and the South as “oppressive.” The reality is sharper and more useful: the South was usually worse, but the North was not equal. Migrants were often choosing relative improvement, not full justice.

The scale of change was dramatic. About **500,000** African Americans left the South between **1910 and 1920**, and about **1.5 million** left between **1910 and 1930**. City growth shows the pattern clearly:

- **Chicago**: about **44,000** Black residents in 1910, over **109,000** in 1920, and about **234,000** in 1930
- **Detroit**: about **6,000** in 1910, **41,000** in 1920, and about **120,000** in 1930
- **New York City**: especially Harlem, saw a major rise in Black population during the same years

These numbers matter because they show that the Great Migration reshaped the demographic map of the United States.

### How migration reshaped Black life in cities

Migration changed Black life first by moving it from a mainly rural setting to an urban one. That shift affected work, politics, religion, family networks, and identity.

Economically, many migrants gained access to wage labour in industries tied to war and manufacturing. Factory jobs were usually harder and dirtier than the promises suggested, but they often paid more than southern agricultural labour. Earning wages in an urban economy gave some Black families more independence than sharecropping had allowed.

Politically, northern cities offered greater voting access than the South. Black migrants could influence elections more directly, especially as their numbers grew in key wards and neighbourhoods. This did not mean full political equality, but it did mean that Black communities had more room to organize. Groups such as the **NAACP** and the **National Urban League** gained strength in this environment.

> **Key Term: National Urban League**
> An organization that helped African Americans adapt to urban life by assisting with jobs, housing, and social services.

The National Urban League is especially useful for showing how migration created new urban support networks. Migrants often arrived without stable housing, secure jobs, or experience of city life. That meant northern opportunity required institutions to help people survive the transition.

Religion also remained important. Black churches had long been central in southern communities, and they remained central in the North. Churches offered practical support as well as worship: information, contacts, food, child care, and a sense of belonging. In urban life, where migrants could feel isolated, these institutions mattered even more.

Culturally, the effects were huge. The concentration of Black communities in cities, especially **Harlem** in New York, helped create the **Harlem Renaissance**, a major flowering of Black literature, music, and art in the 1920s. Writers such as **Langston Hughes** and **Zora Neale Hurston**, and musicians such as **Louis Armstrong** and **Duke Ellington**, became major figures.

> **Key Term: Harlem Renaissance**
> A major flowering of Black artistic, literary, and musical culture in the 1920s, centred especially in Harlem, New York.

The Harlem Renaissance was not the Great Migration itself. It was one major consequence of the demographic change migration created. That distinction is useful in essays: migration is the process, cultural flowering is one effect.

The movement also encouraged a stronger sense that Black life in America was part of a national, not merely regional, struggle. Race relations were no longer something many white Americans could pretend existed only in the South. As Black communities grew in northern cities, so did national debates over labour, voting, housing, and citizenship.

> **Test Tip:** For causation essays, separate causes from effects clearly. WWI labour demand is a cause. The Harlem Renaissance is an effect. Students often mix them together and lose clarity.

### Opportunity without equality: continuities students must not miss

A high-scoring APUSH answer must show both **change and continuity**. The Great Migration changed where African Americans lived and worked, but it did not end discrimination.

In northern cities, migrants often encountered segregated neighbourhoods, overcrowded housing, discrimination in hiring, and hostility from white workers. They were frequently confined to the worst housing and lowest-paid jobs. Some unions excluded Black workers. Employers sometimes used Black workers as strikebreakers, which increased racial tension with white labourers.

Housing discrimination was a major continuity in racial inequality. Migrants had left southern oppression, but they often found themselves pushed into crowded urban districts with high rents and poor conditions. They were not legally enslaved or formally controlled by Jim Crow in the same way, but barriers still limited where they could live and how far they could advance.

Conflict sometimes erupted into violence. The most famous example is the **Red Summer of 1919**, when racial violence broke out in numerous places. The **Chicago Race Riot of 1919** is especially important. Competition over jobs and housing, mixed with long-standing prejudice, made northern cities flashpoints rather than safe havens.

This is a crucial APUSH point: the Great Migration nationalized racial conflict. It did not simply move Black people north into peace. It moved the racial crisis of the United States onto a broader stage.

World War I rhetoric added another layer. President Wilson said the United States entered the war to make the world “safe for democracy.” For Black Americans, that claim exposed a contradiction. How could the nation fight for democracy abroad while denying equality at home? Migration, military service, and urban activism all sharpened that question.

A strong historical judgement would be:

The Great Migration produced **more opportunity, not equality**.

That sentence is short, accurate, and exam-ready.

### How to write about this in APUSH essays

This topic fits especially well with AP themes such as **Migration and Settlement (MIG)**, **Work, Exchange, and Technology (WXT)**, **American and National Identity (NAT)**, and **Culture and Society (SOC)**. It also works well in Period 7 essays about the home front, reform, or race.

If the prompt asks for **causation**, organise by push and pull:

- Southern racism and limited opportunity pushed migrants out
- WWI labour shortages and higher wages pulled migrants north
- Newspapers and recruiters sped the process up

If the prompt asks for **continuity and change over time**, organise like this:

- Change: movement from rural South to urban North, higher wages, larger Black political and cultural communities
- Continuity: segregation, violence, job discrimination, unequal housing

If the prompt asks for **comparison**, compare South and North:

- South: legal segregation, disfranchisement, racial terror, agricultural labour
- North: industrial jobs, more voting access, stronger urban institutions, but continued racism

A concise thesis model could be:

World War I accelerated the Great Migration by increasing northern industrial labour demand while African Americans continued to flee Jim Crow oppression in the South; the movement reshaped Black life through urban jobs, political activism, and cultural growth, but racial discrimination remained a major continuity.

That thesis does three jobs at once:

- gives cause
- gives effects
- qualifies with continuity

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- The Great Migration was a major internal migration of African Americans within the United States
- The First Great Migration is usually dated from about 1910 to 1940
- World War I accelerated the movement rather than creating it from nothing
- Southern push factors included Jim Crow segregation, disfranchisement, racial violence, and limited economic opportunity
- Northern pull factors included wartime factory jobs, higher wages, and labour shortages caused by reduced immigration and military service
- Major destination cities included Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and St. Louis
- The Chicago Defender helped encourage and publicise migration northward
- Migration helped expand Black urban institutions, voting influence, and organisations such as the National Urban League and NAACP
- The Harlem Renaissance was a major cultural effect of migration, especially in Harlem, New York
- Migrants found opportunity in the North but still faced housing discrimination, job discrimination, segregation, and violence
- The Red Summer of 1919 showed that racial conflict had become a national issue, not just a southern one
- A strong APUSH judgement is that the Great Migration brought more opportunity but not full equality

## Key Terms and Concepts

- Great Migration
- First Great Migration
- wartime labor shortage
- Jim Crow segregation
- Chicago Defender
- National Urban League
- Harlem Renaissance


World War I: Home Front - Great Migration reshapes black life