At Home: 1890: Activities -- South

The economic, political and social reasons behind the Great Migration

One-Way Ticket
I am fed up
With Jim Crow laws,
People who are cruel
And afraid,
Who lynch and run,
Who are scared of me
And me of them.
I pick up my life
And take it away
On a one-way ticket--
Gone up North,
Gone out West,
Gone!

--Langston Hughes

Economic Reasons for the Great Migration of 1910 - 1920

1913 - 1915: black and white farmers suffered from an agricultural depression. Prices for agricultural products dropped. Small farms made little to no profit during these two years.
Disastrous floods and the spread of the boll weevil created further economic misery in the rural south.
Exclusion from job opportunities.
Out of desperation, many black independent farmers took jobs as tenent farmers or sharecroppers for established white landowners.
Black farm families became increasingly poor and unable to make ends meet.

Political Reasons for the Great Migration of 1910 - 1920

Although black men had gained the right to vote in 1867, southern states used a number of methods to keep blacks from voting and having political power.

Literacy test: some states passed laws requiring that all voters must pass a literacy test--having a voter read and explain a passage--before they would be allowed to vote. Many blacks were illiterate, never having been given an education.
A poll tax: required citizens to pay money to vote. Since most blacks were poor, they could not afford to vote.
A grandfather clause: many southern states added a grandfather clause to their state constitutions, which declared that persons who could vote on or before January 1, l867, or whose father or grandfather could vote, did not have to take a literacy test or pay a poll tax in order to vote. Without this clause, many whites would not have been able to vote. With the clause in place, only blacks were excluded from voting.

Social Reasons for the Great Migration of 1910 - 1920

Blacks were robbed of their dignity and treated as socially inferior to whites through the passage of Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws discriminated against blacks and kept them apart from the whites.

Schools, railroad cars, hotels, restaurants, and other public places--even hospitals--were segregated.
The schools and hospitals established only for blacks were not equal in quality to those used by whites.

In addition to discrimination and segregation, blacks faced hostility and violence from some whites.

Between 1900 and 1914, over 1,000 black people were murdered by white mobs in the U.S.