All Articles Tagged "migration"
New Migration Leaving Black Businesses Behind
(The Grio) — When two million black Americans began migrating to the North in the early 1900s, leaving behind the legalized inhumanity of Jim Crow in search of a better life, the movement was known as “The Great Migration.” When another five million left after the second world war, scientists named it “The Second Great Migration.” The 21st century was heralded in by a third seismic migratory phenomena. This one, still ongoing and growing, called “The New Great Migration,” is chronicling the mass movement of African-Americans back to the South, that for close to a century, they steadily left in droves. Scientists are busy formulating their methodology and collecting data to report on this historic trend. However, for the owners of black businesses in the North that were established and thrived on the patronage of black Southern migrants and their families, scientific findings are not necessary. Their customers, patrons, clients and church members are fewer and fewer. For some the drain from urban areas back to the South has forced them to close their doors forever.
Blacks Leaving Chi-Town Behind
(The Root) — Roderick J. Harrison, a Howard University researcher, said he was not surprised earlier this year when the U.S. Census Bureau reported a dramatic decline in Chicago’s black population. The recession and perception of better economic opportunities in Southern states such as Georgia and Texas — and even Western states like California, Nevada and Arizona — have prompted a number of black Chicagoans to pack up their belongings and create new paths in a pattern being called reverse migration. It’s similar to the historic journey created by their ancestors decades ago in the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North and Midwest. Even the allure of Chicago being the hometown of the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, may not be enough to draw people back.
Are Blacks Over Living In New York?
By J. Smith
The Great Migration of blacks from the American south to nearly every other corner of the nation, is being revived by the descendents of those who fled. Except this time, the migration is from the North, back to the South. Black New Yorkers, including many who are young and college educated, have left the state in droves; 17 percent of the blacks who moved to the South from other states in the past 10 years came from New York, according to The New York Times. The newspaper reports that of the 44,474 who left the state in 2009, more than half went to the South.
“The percentage of blacks leaving big cities in the East and Midwest are heading to the South is now at the highest levels in decades,” the Times reports. “MIddle-class enclaves, like Jamaica and St. Albans in Queens, are feeding this exodus. Black luminaries — like James Brown, W.E.B. DuBois and Ella Fitzgerald — once lived in St. Albans, a neighborhood that is now being hit by high unemployment and foreclosures.”
Though those interviewed in the report site various reasons for their departure — a spiritual connection to the South, family with whom they’d like to reconnect — the recurring theme is the chance for an economic fresh start. Although the cost of living disparity between the two regions is well-known, before, it was a worthy sacrifice to live in cities with booming industries and far from the sting of Jim Crow. But now, with cities like Houston constantly ranking high on lists of places that young professionals can flourish in, the struggle of cramped big city life in the North is less necessary.
From the TImes: “New York has lost some of its cachet for black people,” Professor Spencer Crew said. “During the Great Migration, blacks went north because you could find work if you were willing to hustle. But today, there is less of a struggle to survive in the South than in New York. Many blacks also have emotional and spiritual roots in the South. It is like returning home.”
Haiti Reaches Out to Diaspora
(AP) — Haiti’s new president is reaching out to the 2 million Haitians emigrants whose earnings abroad have long helped keep the struggling country afloat even while they have been shut out of local politics. Recently inaugurated Michel Martelly, who lived abroad himself, has vowed to overturn Haiti’s long-standing ban on dual citizenship and to build a better relationship with an overseas community that contributes 25 percent of Haiti’s gross domestic product with remittances sent to relatives back home. The Haitian diaspora, mostly in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean, has been shut out of the political scene. Residency requirements ban those abroad from owning land or running for office, a clause that kept Grammy Award-winning singer Wyclef Jean from fulfilling his dream of running for president of Haiti. Many Haitians maintain that Martelly can act on his campaign promises because he understands them: He was a widely traveled musician who speaks fluent English and seems as comfortable in the Miami suburbs as he does in the crumbling and chaotic streets of Port-au-Prince.
Census Shows African Americans Leaving High-Priced Suburbs
(Chicago Magazine) — As home prices soared in the first years of the 21st century, several of Chicago’s most desirable suburbs saw their African American population decrease, according to new data from the Metropolitan Planning Council. At the same time, the African American population boomed in some of the outer-ring suburbs, where inexpensive subdivision houses were built in large numbers between 2000 and 2010. “We’re seeing some large shifts in population that seem to be connected to housing choices [and] housing prices,” says Joanna Trotter, the community development director for the Metropolitan Planning Council. “Some communities are not keeping a lot of lower-cost options, so people are going where it’s more affordable.” The three towns that lost the largest proportion of their black populations were, in order from the largest loss, Geneva, Glencoe, and Glenview. As shown in the chart below, each of those towns lost more than 30 percent of their African American population between 2000 and 2010.
Downside of Moving Up
(Uptown Magazine) — Life in the suburbs is supposed to reflect the quintessential American Dream—white picket fences, birds chirping in the mornings, and homes to call your own. According to the 2010 Census, blacks, long associated with urban communities, are finally starting to trade concrete jungles for grassy knolls. Hundreds of thousands of blacks, particularly those in the middle and upper class, have left cities like New York and Chicago for the Southern suburbs of North Carolina, Texas and Maryland, for a promise of a “better” life. But is suburbia really a dream locale for African Americans? Felicia Duncan, 38, was fed up with urban life in her hometown of Oakland, California four years ago. She wanted a better environment for her daughter to grow up in, and was increasingly troubled by her surroundings. “I wasn’t comfortable with [my daughter] stepping out in the front yard. It was a lot going on in terms of drug use, drug sales, and crime activity.” So like 25% of other blacks in the area, she left the city, once known as the center of the Black Power Movement.
Diminished Political Power Feared as Blacks Spread Out
(AP) — With more blacks moving from city to suburb, the National Urban League says it is worried states may improperly seek to stem the political clout of African-Americans as they spread into historically white districts. The leader of the 101-year-old organization also says he is troubled by complaints from big-city mayors such as those in New York and Detroit who contend large pockets of their residents were missed in the 2010 census. Blacks historically have been more likely to be missed in the decennial count and preliminary numbers for 2010 suggest that could have happened again.
“We have to give consideration as to whether there is an undercount,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, told The Associated Press. In its annual “State of Black America” report being released Thursday, the civil-rights group paints a picture of African-Americans at a crossroads following decades of progress from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It notes growing equality between blacks and whites in employment, even as blacks remain more likely to be poor and jobless in the current economic slump. And it cites a wider black influence in politics — particularly in the South and the suburbs — that buoyed Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, before waning enthusiasm in 2010 led to tepid black turnout and widespread wins for Republicans and tea party conservatives.
Diminished Political Power Feared as Blacks Spread Out
(AP) — With more blacks moving from city to suburb, the National Urban League says it is worried states may improperly seek to stem the political clout of African-Americans as they spread into historically white districts. The leader of the 101-year-old organization also says he is troubled by complaints from big-city mayors such as those in New York and Detroit who contend large pockets of their residents were missed in the 2010 census. Blacks historically have been more likely to be missed in the decennial count and preliminary numbers for 2010 suggest that could have happened again.
“We have to give consideration as to whether there is an undercount,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, told The Associated Press. In its annual “State of Black America” report being released Thursday, the civil-rights group paints a picture of African-Americans at a crossroads following decades of progress from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It notes growing equality between blacks and whites in employment, even as blacks remain more likely to be poor and jobless in the current economic slump. And it cites a wider black influence in politics — particularly in the South and the suburbs — that buoyed Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, before waning enthusiasm in 2010 led to tepid black turnout and widespread wins for Republicans and tea party conservatives.
Blacks Pack Up in Search of Southern Comfort
(New York Times) — The percentage of the nation’s black population living in the South has hit its highest point in half a century, according to census data released Thursday, as younger and more educated black residents move out of declining cities in the Northeast and Midwest in search of better opportunities. The share of black population growth that has occurred in the South over the past decade — the highest since 1910, before the Great Migration of blacks to the North — has upended some long-held assumptions.
Both Michigan and Illinois, whose cities have rich black cultural traditions, showed an overall loss of blacks for the first time, said William Frey, the chief demographer at the Brookings Institution. And Atlanta, for the first time, has replaced Chicago as the metro area with the largest number of African-Americans after New York. About 17 percent of blacks who moved to the South in the past decade left New York State, far more than from any other state, the census data show. At the same time, blacks have begun leaving cities for more affluent suburbs in large numbers, much like generations of whites before them.
“The notion of the North and its cities as the promised land has been a powerful part of African-American life, culture and history, and now it all seems to be passing by,” said Clement Price, a professor of history at Rutgers-Newark. “The black urban experience has essentially lost its appeal with blacks in America.” During the turbulent 1960s, black population growth ground to a halt in the South, and Southern states claimed less than 10 percent of the national increase then. The South has increasingly claimed a greater share of black population growth since — about half the country’s total in the 1970s, two-thirds in the 1990s and three-quarters in the decade that just ended.
Southern Blacks Move to Suburbs
(AJC) — African-Americans in the South are shunning city life for the suburbs at the highest levels in decades, rapidly integrating large metropolitan areas that were historically divided between inner-city blacks and suburban whites. Census figures also show that Hispanic population growth for the first time outpaced that of blacks and whites in most of the South, adding to the region’s racial and ethnic mix. ”All of this will shake up the politics,” said Lance deHaven-Smith, a political science professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Because the South is a critical region for Republicans in presidential elections, “all the Democrats have to do is pick up a couple Southern states, and Republicans are in trouble.” The share of blacks in large metropolitan areas who opted to live in the suburbs climbed to 58 percent in the South, compared to 41 percent for the rest of the U.S., according to census estimates. That’s up from 52 percent in 2000 and represents the highest share of suburban blacks in the South since the Civil Rights Act passed in the 1960s.
