The Great Migration
An estimated six million Black Americans leave the rural South for cities of the North, Midwest and West, conventionally in two waves separated by the Depression. At the start of the century around nine in ten Black Americans lived in the South; by 1970 close to half lived in Northern cities. Musically it relocates Delta players to Chicago and Carolina and Southern players to New York and Detroit, puts them among wage-earning audiences with electricity and record shops, and converts an acoustic rural practice into an amplified urban one inside a generation.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- The Great Migration · phenomenon · United States · not located
- The Mississippi Delta · region · United States · not located
- Blues · cultural practice · United States · not located
- Chicago · city · United States
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Great Migration
An estimated six million Black Americans moved from the South to the North and West between 1916 and 1970, conventionally in two waves (1916–1930 and 1940–1970); around ninety per cent of Black Americans lived in the South at the start of the twentieth century and close to half lived in Northern cities by 1970. V55 verification basis: retrieved in search summary attributed to this reference entry and corroborating university and museum accounts; no page was opened and no census table was consulted.
Encyclopaedia Britannica · Partly verified
britannica.com, entry on the Great Migration
Recorded on The Great Migration
Related
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