Chicago Migrants

Linked to Great Migration

Share Feedback

Over the course six decades, roughly 6 million Black southerners moved from the South to the North, Midwest, and West. Driven by the availability of jobs outside the South, as well as the desire to escape racial violence within it, migrants moved primarily from rural, agricultural areas like Georgia’s Black Belt to cities such as Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

From The New York Public Library, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot, by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations.

A black-and-white photo of a Black family in turn-of-the century dress. They range in age from a boy under ten to a senior man and woman. They wear hats, jackets, boots, and have pieces of luggage.

Updated Recently

A More Perfect Union

The New Georgia Encyclopedia is supported by funding from A More Perfect Union, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.