Education Standards
Great Migration-Grade 11 (doc)
Great Migration-Grade 11 (pdf)
Optional Assessment
Performance Task 2
Performance Task - Supporting Question 1
Source 1B-Ida-B-Wells
Source 1D-Galliard Letter
Source 1E-The reason
Source 2-C: Study of Race Relations
Source 2-E: Racial Restrictive Covenants
Source 2-F | Goin' North - Oral History
Supporting Question 1-Graphic Organizer
Supporting Question 2&3-Student Worksheet
The Great Migration and the power of a single decision | Isabel Wilkerson
Yes-No-But
Was the Great Migration a push or pull migration?
Overview
The goal of this inquiry is for students to gain an informed, critical perspective on the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West from 1915-1970. By investigating the movement, including the injustice of Jim Crow in the South, and the racism migrants continued to face in the North and West, students will examine how the migration changed the social fabric of the United States. Through taking a critical look at the documents, students should understand the extent to which this movement was “great,” and determine if the title Great Migration is fitting.
Photo: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library (1168439), CC BY 4.0
Lesson Introduction
Was the Great Migration a “push” or “pull” migration?
Supporting Questions
- Why did African Americans migrate by the millions to the North and West?
- How did this migration change the demographics and culture of the United States?
- How did migration effect race relations and economic opportunities for African Americans?
Inquiry Description
The goal of this inquiry is for students to gain an informed, critical perspective on the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West from 1915-1970. By investigating the movement, including the injustice of Jim Crow in the South, and the racism migrants continued to face in the North and South, students will examine how the migration changed the social fabric of the United States. Through taking a critical look at the documents, students should understand the extent to which this movement was “great,” and determine if the title Great Migration is fitting.
NOTE: this inquiry is expected to take five to seven class periods. The inquiry time frame could expand if teachers think their students need additional instructional experiences (i.e. supporting questions, formative performance tasks and featured sources). Teachers might want to consider purchasing and using The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson for a source of migrant narratives, Many Rivers to Cross Episode 4: Making a Way out of No Way (DVD), for background knowledge, and The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein for a source on redlining and de jure discrimination. Teachers are encouraged to adapt this inquiry in order to meet the needs and interests of their students. Resources can also be modified as necessary to meet individualized education programs (IEPs) or Section 504 Plans for students with disabilities.
Structure of the Inquiry
In addressing the compelling question “was the Great Migration a push or pull migration?” students work through a series of supporting questions, formative performance tasks, and featured sources in order to construct an argument with evidence and counterevidence from a variety of sources.
Staging the Compelling Question
This inquiry assumes that the teacher has already taught “push” and “pull” migrations in an earlier unit. If that opportunity hasn’t been there yet in the course, it is a necessary precursor to the compelling question.
The compelling question could be staged by having students listen to narratives written by migrants and discussing what motivation migrants had for moving away from the South. If you are able to connect students with a local story, this is also a good place to start. Finally, I would recommend showing Isabel Wilkerson’s TED talk “The Great Migration and the power of a single decision” at some point during this study.
Supporting Question 1
The first supporting question- “Why did African Americans migrate by the millions to the North and West?” – brings the opportunity to discuss and explore Jim Crow laws in the South, the long pattern of racism towards blacks in the US, and how World War I created an opportunity for African Americans to leave. The formative performance task asks students to generate a list of reasons why African Americans left the South. Students draw this information from the featured sources – Jim Crow laws, lynching reports, personal correspondence by migrants, an advertisement in the Chicago Defender, a political cartoon, and an excerpt from a memoir.
Supporting Question 2
The second supporting question – “How did this migration change the demographics and culture of the United States?” asks students to examine the shift in demographics during the first wave of the migration, and the resulting cultural movements of literature and music. Students will use government statistics and a table to discover that a significant amount of African Americans moved out of the south.
Supporting Question 3
The third supporting question – “how did migration effect race relations and economic opportunities for African Americans?” extends the study to an examination of de facto and de jure segregation in the North. Using sources that chronicle Northern race riots and discrimination, students will discover that although the North and West did not have written Jim Crow laws, migrants still faced discrimination in their new homes. The performance assessment will ask students to write a paragraph that explains how migrants faced different forms of racism and challenge after they moved North and West, allowing them to practice making a claim and supporting it with evidence. This question also presents the opportunity to weave in the practice of redlining. Note: it is helpful to have already explored the Reconstruction period before this document set. In addition, background on the 1919 assaults on African American businesses and communities are essential to understanding.
Summative Performance Task
At this point in the inquiry, students have examined reasons why African Americans left the South, how this migration changed the demographics of the US, challenges the migrants faced, and new opportunities they embraced. Students should be expected to demonstrate the breadth of their understanding and their ability to use evidence from multiple sources to support their distinct claims. In this task, students construct an evidence-based argument responding to the compelling question “Was the Great Migration a push or pull migration?” It is important to note that students’ arguments could take a variety of forms, including a detailed outline, poster, or essay. Students’ arguments will likely vary, but could include any of the following:
The Great Migration was a pull migration, as migrants sought to gain economic opportunities and a better life. For many individuals, it was a great opportunity and made their lives better, especially for their children.
- The Great Migration was a push migration, as racism pushed migrants out of the South.
- The Great Migration was both a push and pull migration, as migrants both fled racism and looked for economic opportunities elsewhere. Although they faced discrimination and racism in the North and West, it was not of the magnitude of what migrants left behind in the South.
Students could extend these arguments by examining a series of letters written to convince African Americans to move North. Student’s analyses of the letters can focus on the arguments made about why African Americans should move North and how those letters convinced many of the 6 million migrants that they should go North and West.
Students have the opportunity to Take Informed Action by examining oral histories of the Great Migration, and after study of oral history, conducting their own interviews to gather stories of the Great Migration.
An additional extension would be to explore the reverse migration trend of African Americans returning to the South, and the migrant experience today (e.g. from Puerto Rico).
Background Resource
Featured Source Anderson, J., & Gates, Jr., H. L. (Producers). (2013). Making a way out of no way. The African Americans. PBS.
Supporting Question 1
Why did African Americans migrate by the millions to the North and West?
Featured Source 1-A:
Wilkerson, I. (2010). The warmth of other suns. New York: Vintage Books.
| NARRATIVE | NOTES |
|---|---|
| Dr. Robert Joseph Pershing Foster: Monroe, LA to Los Angeles, CA | |
| Ida Mae Brandon Gladney: Chicksaw County, MS to Chicago, IL | |
| George Swanson Straling: Eustis, FL to New York (Harlem), New York |
Featured Source 1-B:
Conklin, B. (2018). Ida B. Wells and her crusade for racial justice (pdf) | Constitutional Rights Foundation | All rights reserved. Permission granted to distribute for educational purposes.
Featured Source 1-C:
History of lynching in America (2023) (website) | NAACP
Featured Source 1-D:
Letter from Cleveland Galliard of Mobile, Alabama, to the Bethlehem Baptist Association, Chicago, Illinois, 1917. Holograph. Carter G. Woodson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Believed to be in the Public Domain
Mobile, Ala April 19, 1917
The Bethlehem Baptist Association
I take pain to pen you a few lines for Information about coming North and I see your advertisements in the Chicago Defender and i am very fond off the Defender I got it every week when I can and I like to read It and i am Colored young man. I’m need of a position because I have a family to support and I am out off a job and I can’t get nothing To do to Support them in [--] have been out of a job for five months or more and have been sick to but I am up again thank the good Lord and I am a member of Stone Street Baptist Church the oldest Baptist Church in the South and I am 31 Yrs old and I can fill the position as a porter in a grocery store, or even and Elevator or drive
A team Are do most anything and I would like for the Association to please help me to get up thier please. And get me a position please and I will pay you the expense back when i get up their and got to work and I will work I was working Here for the New Orleans Mobile & Chicago R.R. Running the Elevator and cleaning up to and they want me to work night and day for the Same amount of Salary [--] was only $20.00 per month and so I quit and i have been loafing Every Since last Nov so this is all at present from
Cleveland Gailliand
Direct your letter (Gen. Del.)
Post Office
Mobile, Ala
Featured Source 1-E:
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. (1920-03). The reason Believed to be in the Public Domain.
Featured Source 1-F:
Cobb, N. (late 19th c). as quoted in All God’s dangers: the life of Nate Shaw. By Theodore Rosengarten. Believed to be on the public domain
“Whenever the colored man [sic] prospered too fast in this country under the old rulins, they worked to figure to cut you down, cut your britches off you. So, it might have been to his way of thinking that it weren’t no use in climbin too fast; weren’t no use in climbin slow, neither, if they was goin to take everything you worked for when you got to high”
—Alabama sharecropper Ned Cobb, recalling his father’s approach to life in rural Alabama in the late 19th century
Performance Task: Why did African Americans want to migrate north and west?
Push Factors
- List reason
- List person, event, document, law, idea, group, or Supreme Court case that supports
Pull Factors
- List reason
- List person, event, document, law, idea, group, or Supreme Court case that supports
Supporting Question 2
How does this migration change the demographics and culture of Northern cities?
Featured Source 1-A:
Proportion of Negro to Total Population at the Twelfth Census 1910. United States Bureau of the Census – Frontispiece of Negroes in the United States (1904), Bulletin 8 of the United States Bureau of the Census | Public Domain.
Proportion of African American to Total Population at the Census 2000.
United States Bureau of the Census | Public Domain
Note: needs updated to 2020 Census
Featured Source 2-B:
"Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918", published in The Journal of Negro History, (July and October, 1919) | Public Domain.
Letter 9 (from Philadelphia, Pa., Oct. 7, 1917)
Dear Sir:
I take this method of thanking you for yours early responding and the glorious effect of the treatment. Oh. I do feel so fine. Dr. the treatment reach me almost ready to move I am now housekeeping again I like it so much better than rooming. Well Dr. with the aid of God I am making very good I make $75 per month. I am carrying enough insurance to pay me $20 per week if I am not able to be on duty. I don't have to work hard. dont have to mister every little white boy comes along I havent heard a white man call a colored a nigger you no now-since I been in the state of Pa. I can ride in the electric street and steam cars any where I get a seat. I dont care to mix with white what I mean I am not crazy about being with white folks, but if I have to pay the same fare I have learn to want the same acomidation. and if you are first in a place here shoping you dont have to wait until the white folks get thro tradeing yet amid all this I shall ever love the good old South and I am praying that God may give every well wisher a chance to be a man regardless of his color, and if my going to the front would bring about such conditions I am ready any day-well Dr. I dont want to worry you but read between lines; and maybe you can see a little sense in my weak statement the kids are in school every day I have only two and I guess that all. Dr. when you find time I would be delighted to have a word from the good old home state. Wife join me in sending love you and yours.
I am your friend and patient.
Chicago, Illinois
My dear Sister: I was agreeably surprised to hear from you and to hear from home. I am well and thankful to say I am doing well. The weather and everything else was a surprise to me when I came. I got here in time to attend one of the greatest revivals in the history of my life over 500 people joined the church. We had a Holy Ghost shower. You know I like to have run wild. It was snowing some nights and if you didn't hurry you could not get standing room. Please remember me kindly to any who ask of me. The people are rushing here by the thousands and I know if you come and rent a big house you can get all the roomers you want. You write me exactly when you are coming. I am not keeping house yet I am living with my brother and his wife. My sone is in California but will be home soon. He spends his winter in California. I can get a nice place for you to stop until you can look around and see what you want. I am quite busy. I work in Swifts packing co. in the sausage department. My daughter and I work for the same company-We get $1.50 a day and we pack so many sausages we don't have much time to play but it is a matter of a dollar with me and I feel that God made the path and I am walking therein.
Tell your husband work is plentiful here and he won't have to loaf if he want work. I know unless old man A----- changed it was awful with his sould and G----- also.
Well I am always glad to hear from my friends and if I can do anything to assist any of them to better their condition. Please remember me to Mr. C----and his family I will write them all as soon as I can. Well, I guess I have said about enough. I will be delighted to look into your face once more in my life. Pray for me for I am heaven bound. I have made too many rounds to slip now. I know you will pray for prayer is the life of any sensible man or woman. Well goodbye from your sister in Christ.
P.S. My brother moved the week after I came. When you fully decide to come write me and let me know what day you expect to leave and over what road and if I don't meet you I will have some ther to meet you and look after you. I will send you a paper as soon as one come along they send out extras two and three times a day
Supporting Question 3
How did migration effect race relations and economic opportunities for African Americans?
Featured Source 2-C:
Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922). pp 98-99. Believed to be in the Public Domain.
Project Guttenberg copy of The Negro in Chicago (entire work)
Section VI Migrants in Chicago
Question: “Do you feel greater independence and freedom in Chicago? In what ways?”
Answers:
- Yes. Working conditions and the place of amusement.
- Yes. The chance to make a living; conditions on the street cars and in movies.
- Going into places of amusement and living in good neighborhoods.
- Yes. Educationally, and in the home conditions.
- Yes. Go anywhere you want to go; voting; don’t have to look up to the white man, get off the street for him and go to the buzzard roost at shows.
- Yes. Just seem to feel a general feeling of good-fellowship.
- On the street cars and the way you are treated where you work.
- Yes. Can go any place I like here. At home I was segregated and not treated like I had any rights.
- Yes. Privilege to mingle with people; can go to the parks and places of amusement, not being segregated.
- Yes. Feel free to do anything I please. Not dictated to by white people.
- Yes. Had to take any treatment white people offered me there, compelled to say “yes ma’am” or “yes sir” to white people, whether you desired to or not. If you went to an ice cream parlor for anything you came outside to eat it. Got off sidewalk for white people.
- Yes. Can vote; feel free; haven’t ay fear; make more money.
- Yes. Voting; better p=opportunity for work; more respect from white people.
- Yes. Can vote; no lynching; no fear of mobs; can express my opinion and defend myself.
- Yes. Voting, more privileges; white people treat me better, not as much prejudice.
- Yes, feel more like a man. Same as slavery, in a way, at home. I don’t have to give up the sidewalk here for white people as in my former home.
- Yes. No restrictions as to shows, schools, etc. More protection of law.
- Yes. Have more privileges and more money.
- Yes. More able to express views on all question. No segregation or discrimination.
- Sure. Fell more freedom. Was not counted in the South; colored people allowed no freedom at all in the South.
- Find things quite different to what they are at home. Haven’t become accustomed to the place yet.
Featured Source 2-D:
Photo: Carrying a sign in front of a milk company, Chicago, Illinois. July, 1941. John Vachon, Photographer. Gelatin-silver print. FSA-OWI Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Believed to be in the Public Domain.
Featured Source 2-E:
Racial Restrictive Covenants of Seattle, Wash. | Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project:
Additional Resources:
- How red lines built white wealth: a lesson on housing segregation in the 20th century | Zinn Education Project
- Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America | Mapping Inequality – University of Richmond, Virginia Tech, University of Maryland
Featured Source 2-F:
Goin’ North: tales of the Great Migration oral history project | University of Kentucky Library
From the gallery, choose a migrant and listen to their story.
Supporting Question 2 & 3
How does this migration change the demographics and culture of Northern cities? How did migration effect race relations and economic opportunities for African Americans?
Write a paragraph using evidence that explains the effects of the Great Migration.
Generate a list of reasons why African Americans sought a new life in the North and West between 1910 and 1970.
Reorganize these reasons into this table:
Push | Pull |
|---|---|
|
|
Assessments
Great Migration - Yes, No...But Sheet
See the attached student handout below.
Performance Task: Why did African Americans want to migrate north and west?
Was the Great Migration a “push” or “pull” migration? Write an answer to this question. Construct an introductory paragraph that gives a specific and clear claim and lists relevant reasons. Follow with evidence from multiple historical sources.
Remember, in your introductory paragraph you will
- Start with a broad, general statement that establishes TIME and PLACE
- States your claim (the answer to the question)
- Gives your three reasons why you claim this
Each body paragraph will:
- Start with a topic sentence that restates the reason
- Name, explain and relate back to the claim at least three PEDLIGS
- Name it. (An example is ________________________)
- Explain it (which means ________________________________________)
- Relate it back to the claim. This is where you tell why your answer is correct, and how the PEDLIBS you have names proves that.
When you quote from documents, use “short quotes” (less than a sentence) and follow the quote with an in-text citation. Do this by listing the last name of the author of the source in parens.
Example: “Herman loves history.” (Munster)
If you have time, end with a conclusion.
The last item is your Reference list
Optional Assessment
UNPACKED: Great Migration Interactive Suitcase
As millions of migrants packed their suitcases, they packed their possessions – but also their hopes and dreams. Your assignment will be to work collaboratively as a team of 2 to 3 to create a suitcase display that reflects a migrant from the Going North oral history project.
Procedure:
- Form team (you may work by yourself, in a team of 2, or in a team of 3)
- As a team, pick one of the stories from Goin’ North
- Research the migrant using the Goin’ North site and, if needed, additional credible sources.
- Design and create a suitcase (boxes available in class). You are in charge of the design. The suitcase could be a snapshot of a day in the life of the migrant or could be representative of a larger part of their story.
- Set up the suitcase in class on _________________________________.
Grading:
Each team will share a design grade- list below. (up to 20 points)
Each individual will earn a collaboration grade for their teamwork, docent work on the day of the display, and diligent work in class (up to 20 points)
In order to get the full 20 points, the suitcase will need to have:
- Looks like a suitcase and opens up for display
- Has at least three items that represent the migrant’s story. These can be photos, primary source documents, artifacts, etc.
- At least one and no more than two QR codes. Required QR code is of a voice recording by the team telling the migrant’s story- this is the Docent Talk. Optional QR codes can be a recording of the migrant, or a credible approved video about the migrant.
Use Voice Recorder to record your team voice recording (docent talk). Upload the recording to a team member’s MSD Google drive, set the share to Mukilteo, and copy the share link into QR Code Generator.
Print your QR code and make it part of the suitcase so that visitors to the exhibit will be able to scan and listen.
Time in class will be on:
_________________________ (planning)
_________________________ (work in library)
_________________________ (work in class; go to library on a pass if need quiet place to record)
_________________________ (work in Library -- last day to be able to print anything)
Set up day: ______________________________. (in Library)
This project is inspired by the project Unpacked: Refugee Baggage
Attribution and License
Except where otherwise noted, original work in this unit by Sue Metzler for Mukilteo School District is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. All logos and trademarks are property of their respective owners. Sections used under fair use doctrine (17 U.S.C. § 107) are marked.
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