{"id":9943,"date":"2017-05-23T13:37:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T20:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/hs\/?p=9943"},"modified":"2017-06-08T10:43:02","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T17:43:02","slug":"great-migration-apush-topics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/hs\/ap\/great-migration-apush-topics\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Migration: APUSH Topics to Study for Test Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Great Migration may be one of the more difficult topics in your APUSH studies. That\u2019s because of the complexity of the motivations and the large expanse of time that can be covered under this topic in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

This post will break down the details of the complicated and rich period known as The Great Migration.<\/p>\n

What is The Great Migration?<\/h2>\n

For nearly six decades, 6 million African Americans migrated from the U.S. South to the West, Midwest, and Northeast, usually\u00a0in search of economic opportunity. This slow but mighty movement of individuals is commonly called The Great Migration.<\/p>\n

\"great
Brownstone buildings in Harlem. This famous New York City neighborhood has a rich African American history resulting from The Great Migration.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When was The Great Migration?<\/h2>\n

From approximately 1916 to 1970, individuals and families moved from the South to the North. The
\nmotivations of someone moving in 1916 are likely to be different than someone moving in 1968, and
\nyet both of these would be considered a part of the Migration; this is the nature of historical periodization<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In some ways, the Great Migration is similar to other immigrant narratives in that motivations for migration had similar push and pull factors<\/a><\/strong>. By contrast, African Americans were already U.S. citizens; they were looking to make their citizenship real by moving out of the U.S. South. In this\u00a0sense, the Great Migration is not a typical narrative of immigration.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s explore what that means.<\/p>\n

Why does The Great Migration matter?<\/h2>\n

As you learned when you studied Reconstruction<\/a><\/strong> and its ramifications, the citizenship that the 14th Amendment<\/a><\/strong> guaranteed African Americans didn\u2019t mean much.<\/p>\n

African Americans routinely experienced political and economic oppression. Many individuals were trapped in debt peonage as sharecroppers, and any ability to escape this economic condition through the ballot box was thwarted by the actions of individuals and systems that barred African Americans from political participation.<\/p>\n

If African Americans were considered citizens in the South, it was in name only. It may be helpful to think of The Great Migration in terms of other movements of immigrants. As Isabel Wilkerson writes in her sweeping history of The Great Migration\u00a0The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America\u2019s Great Migration<\/em>,<\/p>\n

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