Summary

Chapter 2 is entitled “Derailing the Great Migration.” In the decades following the Civil War, the South continued to be a dangerous and difficult place for black Americans. Black people were subjugated by violence and by political and economic oppression. Southerners also suppressed black efforts to establish organized education for themselves. Many black Americans fled to the North, and although they faced oppression and discrimination there as well, the North was at least safer than the South. Chicago became an important center of black populations, and many black people migrated to Chicago specifically. This large-scale migration of black people, beginning in the 1910s, is often referred to as the Great Migration. In the early years of this migration, Southerners became alarmed, as their economy continued to rely on exploiting black people. The South attempted to make it more difficult for black people to migrate. For...