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The New Great Migration: Black Americans' Return to the South, 1965-2000
- Brookings Institution Press
- Chapter
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During the early part of the twentieth century black Americans left the U.S. South in large numbers. Several factors precipitated their “Great Migration” to northern cities.1 First, the mechanization of Southern agriculture rendered many farm workers, including blacks, redundant. Second, the industrialization of the Northeast and Midwest created millions of manufacturing jobs for unskilled workers. Finally, the generally oppressive racial climate in the South acted as a “push” factor for many decades as blacks sought more tolerant communities in other regions. Even as whites migrated to the Sunbelt in large numbers at mid-century, black migration out of the South exceeded black in-migration as late as 1965–70. Census migration data confirm that over the past three decades, the South has developed into a regional magnet for blacks more than for whites or the population as a whole. The South’s appeal to blacks, especially those with higher education levels and from other parts of the country, provides additional evidence that the region’s economic, amenity, and cultural “pull” factors now outweigh the “push” factors that predominated in past decades. This chapter begins by examining the South’s exchange of black migrants with other regions over the past four decennial censuses (1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000). It identifies shifts in the states and metropolitan areas over that period that gained and lost the most black residents due to internal (U.S. 87 The New Great Migration Black Americans’ Return to the South, 1965–2000 W I L L I A M H . F R E Y 3 The author is grateful to senior project programmer Cathy Sun and other support staff at the University of Michigan, as well as to Alan Berube for comments on this report. 1. Hamilton (1964); Lemann (1991). domestic) migration. The chapter compares the rates at which black and white movers selected Southern destinations in the late 1990s, and looks at the educational attainment levels of those movers and the places experiencing the largest “brain gains” and “brain drains” of college graduates. Finally, the chapter examines California’s reversal from a major recipient of black migrants from the South to a major “donor” state at the end of the century. METHODOLOGY This section briefly describes the geographic and census data that underpin this migration analysis. Geographical Definitions The four regions—Northeast, Midwest, South, and West—follow the definitions employed by the U.S. Census Bureau.2 The metropolitan types analyzed include Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CMSAs), Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), and New England County Metropolitan Areas (NECMAs) in the New England states, as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB).3 ThisstudydiffersfromotherBrookingscensusanalysesinitsuseofCMSAs rather than their component parts, Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas (PMSAs). CMSAs are metropolitan areas of 1 million or more people that are subdivided into two or more PMSAs. For example, four PMSAs exist within the Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County CMSA: the Los Angeles-Long Beach, California, PMSA (consisting of Los Angeles County); the Orange County, California, PMSA (consisting of Orange County); the Riverside-San Bernardino, California, PMSA (consisting of Riverside and San Bernardino counties); and the Ventura, California, PMSA (consisting of Ventura County). This chapter uses CMSAs rather than PMSAs to reflect how migration patterns affect broad metropolitan regions, and to ensure that estimates 88 William H. Frey 2. The regions are defined as follows: Northeast includes the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Midwest includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. South includes Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.WestincludesAlaska,Arizona,California,Colorado,Hawaii,Idaho,Montana,Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. 3. This survey uses data from metropolitan areas defined by OMB as of June 30, 1999, and in effect for Census 2000. New metropolitan area definitions were announced by OMB in June 2003. [54.208.238.160] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:47 GMT) ofdomesticmigrationcapturegeographicallysignificantchangesinresidence, rather than moves between two jurisdictions within the same region. Data Themigrationdataanalyzedinthischapteraredrawnfromthedecennialcensus question, “Where did this person live five years ago?” Using the answers to this question, the chapter analyzes migration trends for 1995–2000 from Census 2000, and for 1985–90, 1975–80, and 1965–70 from the last three censuses . Net migration for a...