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About Migration to Michigan

Between 1910 and 1970, an estimated 6.5 million African Americans left the South and moved north. ThisGreat Migration was caused by the hardships of sharecropping in the rural South and the attraction of a better life in the industrial North. For blacks who endured political, social and economic oppression in the South, the North looked like the Promised Land. Wages were substantially higher and there were fewer laws segregating the races. There were no poll taxes or literacy tests to prevent blacks from voting. Racial prejudice existed in the North, but African Americans did not suffer the constant fear of humiliation and degradation they experienced in the South. At the outbreak of World War I, six thousand blacks lived in Detroit. By 1920 the citys black population exceeded forty thousand. In the early 1940s an estimated fifty thousand African Americans moved to Michigan to work in the factories building war materiel. As African Americans settled in Michigan, they soon realized that equal rights, most notably fair and equal housing and schools, did not exist in Detroit, which was a model of racial segregation. Furthermore, as tens of thousands of southern whites moved into southeastern Michigan, hatemongers stirred up traditional racial fears. During the waras black Americans fought for democracyAfrican Americans spoke out against inequality. The Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People declared that the issue of civil rights must be raised now. In August 1942 Life magazine published an article entitled, Detroit is Dynamite, noting the growing racial problems in the Motor City. For over a year blacks and whites clashed in schools, factories and on the streets. The situation deteriorated to a point where one federal agency predicted that unless the president acted quickly hell would be let loose in the Motor City. No action was taken and in June 1943 a racially motivated civil disorder left thirty-four people dead. Detroit officials blamed African Americans and made little attempt to address the problems that had caused one of the nations worst civil disorders.

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