Although industrialists welcomed (at least temporarily) black workers, one should not ignore the other factors that pushed workers northward, including the crop losses due to the boll weevil, falling cotton prices, natural disasters, and, especially, a long history of racial oppression. The war turned black northern migration from a trickle to a flood. Historian James Grossman in
Land of Hope writes that the migration "drew upon black southerners who looked to urban life and the industrial economy for the social and economic foundation of full citizenship and its perquisites" (p. 19). But the Great Migration cannot be seen solely in economic terms. Historians have argued that black Americans moved not just for jobs but for good schools, equal rights, and equal access to public facilities.
The stories associated with such a migration are rich, filled with both anticipation and frustration, particularly as migrants believed northern cities, such as Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland, offered a racial paradise that could actually be seen when crossing the Mason-Dixon Line. One young man recalled that he expected to see the Mason-Dixon Line, perhaps marked by a row of trees. Although disappointed, he quickly moved into another car and took a seat next to a white man when someone reported that they were now in the North.
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