Hettie V. Williams, PhD

Black migration to the North dramatically accelerated after 1910 due to the outbreak of World War I in 1914 that precipitated a decreased availability of immigrant workers from Europe, which in turn led to the expansion of opportunities for African Americans in industrial employment. This was coupled with widespread floods in 1916 and 1917-1918, a serious boll weevil infestation that ruined the southern cotton crop and caused profound economic hardship for black agricultural workers in the South. After 1910, black migration out of southern states began to significantly shift away from southern destinations to cities such as Chicago in the urban Midwest and cities such as Asbury Park, New Jersey in the Northeast.

Migrants flocked to major Midwestern cities during the first phase of the Great Migration. This section of the country had noticeably large numbers of African Americans settle in the region from 1910 to 1930. Cities such as Chicago, Gary, Indiana, Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit recorded some of the highest increases in black population in the first two decades of the Great Migration. According to the U.S. Census, Cleveland’s black population increased by 300 percent from 8,448 to 34,451 between the years 1910 and 1920.

Many migrants took trains directly to the North or West leaving states such as Alabama heading for destinations such as Detroit. Some black migrants who left southern states such as Mississippi and Arkansas took Highway 61 or the Illinois Central Railroad to places such as Chicago. Chicago, a city with only 2 percent African Americans before the migration, experienced a dramatic population increase as a result of the Great Migration. Black populations in Midwestern cities expanded significantly within two decades into the First Great Migration. In Chicago, the black population increased by 148 percent; 200 percent in Toledo, Ohio; and by 611 percent in Detroit.  Detroit’s black population grew from 1 percent in 1910 to 8 percent in 1930. In Midwestern cities such as Gary, Indiana, the percentage of blacks increased by more than 1,000 percent from 383 in 1910 to 5,299 in 1920. Detroit’s black population grew from 1 percent in 1910 to 8 percent in 1930. Gary experienced the highest percentage point change in its black population during the First Great Migration with a black population that went from 2.3 percent of the total in 1910 to 18.3 percent of the total population in 1940. The expansion of the black community in these cities and others over several decades led to a transformation in black political and cultural life within a new urban setting.

African Americans also migrated into various northeastern cities including cities in states such as New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Jersey during the First Great Migration. U.S. Census records indicate that there was a 15 percent change in the black population in New York, a 20.6 percent expansion in Philadelphia, and Boston experienced a 13.3 percent change in its black population during the First Great Migration. Several major New Jersey cities including Trenton, with a 30.4 percent increase in its black population, Camden, with a 28.5 percent increase, Paterson with a 23.8 percent increase, and Newark that experienced a 79.2 percent increase in a single decade (from 1910 to 1920) during the First Great Migration suggests that the Garden State was a major destination center for black migrants. Four New Jersey cities (Newark, Atlantic City, Camden, and Jersey City) were among the twenty-one U.S. cities in 1930 that had black populations over 10,000. Only Ohio had more, in that it had seven cities with a black population at or over 10,000. Many black intellectuals who eventually coalesced in New Jersey during the first two decades of the twentieth century settled in the northern section of the Garden State. These migrants settled in cities such as Newark and suburbs such as Montclair.

Historian Clement Price in his important text Freedom Not Far Distant notes that blacks, “came to New Jersey in greater numbers than to any other northern state” during the height of the Great Migration. Migration to New Jersey was so high in part because New Jersey contained some of the oldest historically black communities in the nation such as Gouldtown, Timbuctoo, and Lawnside, and historically black church congregations, where migrants could find support from existent black institutions to sustain their settlement. Many migrants also looked to religious based associations such as the YWCA for both material and spiritual sustenance. The existence of social and emotional (or spiritual) networks in places such as New Jersey shaped settlement patterns. The social and spiritual networks present in the Garden State were well developed and comparable, if not greater than, those that existed in other northeastern states at the time given the high numbers of black migrants entering the state between 1910 and 1940. Existent black communities in New Jersey served as a magnet for bringing migrants from the South, and the new migrants also augmented existing social, political, and culture institutions in the Garden State after the Great Migration. The black population in New Jersey increased from 47,638 to 69,844 between the years1890 to 1900 at an increase of 46.6 percent; and, between the years 1910 and 1930 the black population in New Jersey grew from 89,760 to 208,828 indicating an increase of 132.6 percent as reflected in the U.S. Census records. Asbury Park, New Jersey increasingly became a major place of settlement for African Americans during the Great Migration.