Full Citation
Title: The Great Escape: The Antecedents of the First Wave of the African American Great Migration, 1910-1940
Citation Type: Conference Paper
Publication Year: 2017
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Abstract: The African American Great Migration refers to the sixty-year period, between 1910 and 1970, during which an estimated six million black Americans voted with their feet and left the South. It started off as a trickle, but the outpour of black migrants from the South to the North increased with rapid intensity each census year for the next six decades. There is a body of research within the social sciences, largely comprised of studies conducted by sociologists and economists, which focuses on the consequences of the African American Great Migration and the mechanisms that sustained the mass movement (Crowder, Tolnay, & Adelman, 2001; Stewart E. Tolnay, Adelman, & Crowder, 2002; Stewart E. Tolnay et al., 2005; Stewart E. Tolnay & Crowder, 1999; White, Crowder, Tolnay, & Adelman, 2005). The majority of these studies rely on data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), a quantitative data source that aggregates person-level social and economic microdata from various U.S Censuses, and recent American Community Study (ACS) surveys. IPUMS data has made possible the empirical study of U.S. migration outcomes: How did those who migrated from the South during the Great Migration fare vis-à-vis their Northern counterparts (Stewart E. Tolnay, 2001)? What were the variations along dimensions of race and gender (Crowder et al., 2001)? How did marital status impact migrant’s destination decision (White et al., 2005)? These and other outcomes-driven studies have had a tremendous impact on our understanding of the macro level social and economic consequences that the African American Great Migration has had on migrants, “natives”1 , and receiving areas. However, the questions that have been asked to date are strictly limited by the data available to researchers. Further, the extant public use data sources have nearly been exhausted in terms of the reaching the limits of what more it can tell us about this phenomenon. As sociologist and demographer Stewart Tolnay aptly points out, “researchers have thoroughly mined existing data sources in their efforts to better understand which black southerners were more likely to pack up and head north during the Great Migration” and that “future progress on this issue will likely come from the innovative use of unanticipated data sources” (Tolnay, 2003, p. 213). This study takes up Tolnay’s call by relying on oral history and archive data soures to examine a lesser studied facet of the Great Migration; its’ antecedents.
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Authors: Brown, Karida, L
Conference Name: Population Association of America
Publisher Location: Chicago, IL
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity
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