The Great Migration was the mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to cities in the North and West between 1916 and 1970, driven by Jim Crow segregation, racial violence, and wartime industrial jobs, and it reshaped American politics, culture, and urban life.
The Great Migration was the relocation of roughly six million African Americans out of the rural South and into Northern and Western cities between 1916 and 1970. It came in two big waves. The first started during World War I, when Northern factories needed workers and the boll weevil plus Jim Crow made Southern sharecropping unbearable. The second wave, often called the Second Great Migration, took off during World War II and ran into the postwar decades covered in Unit 8.
Think of it as both an escape and a pull. Migrants were pushed out by segregation, lynching, and dead-end tenant farming, and pulled in by industrial wages, better schools, and the chance to vote. The migration turned cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York into centers of Black political power and culture, fueled the Harlem Renaissance, and laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement by moving the question of racial equality from a 'Southern problem' to a national one. It also produced new conflicts, including housing segregation, redlining, and the urban racial tensions that shaped the society in transition you study in Topic 8.14.
The Great Migration threads through the second half of the APUSH course. Its first wave belongs to Period 7 (World War I and the 1920s), and its second wave lands in Unit 8, where Topic 8.14 (Society in Transition) asks you to explain how demographic shifts changed American society and fueled the policy debates in learning objective APUSH 8.14.A. Migration is also a core piece of the Migration and Settlement (MIG) theme, one of the big reasoning threads the exam rewards. The term even shows up in Period 2, because the colonial 'Great Migration' of Puritans to New England (Topic 2.7, APUSH 2.7.A) shares the name. That makes this one of the best terms in the course for continuity-and-change arguments about why people move and what happens when they do.
Keep studying APUSH Unit 2
Harlem Renaissance (Unit 7)
The Harlem Renaissance is the cultural payoff of the Great Migration. When hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners concentrated in Harlem, that critical mass produced the literature, jazz, and art of writers like Langston Hughes. On the exam, the migration is the cause and the Renaissance is the effect.
Jim Crow Laws (Unit 7)
Jim Crow is the push factor. Legal segregation, disenfranchisement, and racial violence in the South are why millions left. If a prompt asks you for causes of the Great Migration, Jim Crow should be the first thing out of your pen.
Urbanization (Unit 6)
The Great Migration is a chapter in the bigger urbanization story. The same industrial cities that absorbed European immigrants in the Gilded Age absorbed Black Southern migrants a generation later, and migrants faced a similar mix of opportunity, crowded housing, and nativist-style hostility.
Society in Transition (Unit 8)
Topic 8.14 covers the postwar demographic shuffle, and the Second Great Migration is part of it. As Black Americans moved into Northern cities, white residents often left for the suburbs, and the resulting fights over housing, schools, and federal power feed directly into the policy debates in APUSH 8.14.A.
The College Board has tested this term directly. The 2018 SAQ Q4 asked about the Great Migration, which tells you exactly what the exam wants: identify causes (push factors like Jim Crow, pull factors like wartime jobs) and effects (the Harlem Renaissance, new Black political power, urban racial conflict) with specific evidence. In multiple choice, expect a stimulus like a migrant's letter, a population map, or a Jacob Lawrence painting, followed by questions about causation or context. For essays, the Great Migration is gold for the Migration and Settlement theme. It works as evidence in a DBQ on 20th-century African American life, and it makes a strong continuity-and-change argument when paired with earlier movements like westward Exoduster migration or even the colonial Puritan migration.
Same name, totally different event. The Great Puritan Migration was the movement of roughly 20,000 English Puritans to New England in the 1630s, founding communities like Springfield, Massachusetts (1636). That one belongs to Period 2 and Topic 2.7, where it explains the religious culture and self-governing towns of colonial New England. The Great Migration of African Americans is a 20th-century event in Periods 7-8. If a question's date is before 1700, it means the Puritans. If it's after 1916, it means Black Southerners moving north and west.
The Great Migration moved about six million African Americans from the rural South to Northern and Western cities between 1916 and 1970, in two waves tied to World War I and World War II.
Push factors included Jim Crow segregation, racial violence, and sharecropping poverty; pull factors included wartime factory jobs, higher wages, and the ability to vote.
The migration directly caused the Harlem Renaissance and built the urban Black communities that later powered the civil rights movement.
Effects were not all positive; migrants faced housing segregation, redlining, and race riots in Northern cities, which fuels the Unit 8 'society in transition' story.
Do not confuse it with the Great Puritan Migration of the 1630s, a Period 2 event about English colonists settling New England.
On the exam, the Great Migration appeared on the 2018 SAQ, and it is strong evidence for the Migration and Settlement (MIG) theme in essays.
It was the movement of roughly six million African Americans from the rural South to cities in the North and West between 1916 and 1970, driven by Jim Crow oppression and the pull of industrial jobs during both world wars.
No. The Great Puritan Migration was about 20,000 English Puritans settling New England in the 1630s (Period 2). The Great Migration on most APUSH questions means African Americans leaving the South in the 20th century (Periods 7-8). Check the dates in the question.
No. Migrants escaped legal segregation but ran into de facto segregation in the North, including redlining, restrictive housing covenants, job discrimination, and race riots like those of 1919. That gap between expectation and reality is a common APUSH essay angle.
Push factors were Jim Crow laws, lynching, disenfranchisement, and the collapse of cotton sharecropping (worsened by the boll weevil). Pull factors were factory jobs opened by World War I and World War II labor shortages, higher wages, and greater political freedom in Northern cities.
The migration concentrated Black Southerners in neighborhoods like Harlem, and that population boom produced the explosion of Black literature, music, and art in the 1920s. On the exam, treat the migration as the cause and the Harlem Renaissance as a major cultural effect.
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