Black people now hold the balance of electoral power in some of the nation’s largest cities, while population experts predict that in the next ten to twenty years, black Americans will constitute the majority in a dozen or more cities. In Washington, D.C., and Newark, New Jersey, they already are in the majority; in Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, and St. Louis, they represent one third or slightly more of the population; in such places as Oakland, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati, they constitute well over one fourth. Even at the height of European immigration, no ethnic group has ever multiplied so rapidly in the United States. In order to understand the black ghetto — both its great problems and its capacity to become a key political force in urban America — we should take a brief look at the history of black migration to the North.

Many slaves escaped to the North before Emancipation, while some, of course, migrated to Liberia, Haiti, and Central America. The Emancipation Proclamation cut many loose from the land, and starting with the end of the Civil War, there developed a steady trickle of freed men from the South. During Reconstruction, this northward migration eased somewhat with the ability of black people to take advantage of the franchise.

Soon after, however, Southern racism and fanaticism broke loose. Thousands of black people were killed in the 1870s in an effort by whites to destroy the political power that blacks had gained. This was all capped by the deal of 1876 whereby the Republicans guaranteed that Mr. Hayes, when he became President, would, by noninterference and the withdrawal of troops, allow the planters — under the name of Democrats — to gain control in the Deep South. The withdrawal of these troops by President Hayes and the appointment of a Kentuckian and a Georgian to the Supreme Court marked the handwriting on the wall.

In Black Reconstruction in America, W. E. B. DuBois portrays the situation clearly:

Negroes did not surrender the ballot easily or immediately. They continued to hold remnants of political power in South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, in parts of North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee and Virginia. Black Congressmen came out of the South until 1895 and Black legislators served as late as 1896. But in a losing battle with public opinion, industry and wealth against them … the decisive influence was the systematic and overwhelming economic pressure. Negroes who wanted work must not dabble in politics. … From 1880 onward, in order to earn a living, the American Negro was compelled to give up his political power.

Black people were therefore looking to move again. About 60,000 went to Kansas, two thirds of them destitute on arrival. In general, however, migration to escape the new regime in the South did not really get under way until World War I. Business was booming in 1914–1915 as this nation became a major supplier of war materials to the Allies. This in turn increased the job market, and with the war cutting off the flow of immigrants from Europe, Northern industry went on a massive campaign to recruit black workers. Emigration from the Deep South jumped from 200,000 in the decade 1890–1900 to half a million in 1910–1920. This migration northward did not cease with the conclusion of the war. The Immigration and Exclusion Acts of the early twenties created a great demand by industry for more workers (especially with the new assembly-line concept employed by Ford). As a result, during the twenties and thirties about 1,300,000 black people migrated from the Deep South to the North.