African American migration from the South began surging when immigration restrictions created an industrial labor shortage. Pulled by decent job prospects and pushed by the Jim Crow system as America mobilized for World War I, sharecroppers, farmhands, and domestics, among others, migrated to southern and northern cities, including Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, and New York. Circa 1910–30 an estimated 1.75 million moved to the North. They filled factory jobs, forged communities, and pursued equal citizenship, using their churches, fraternal groups, the NAACP, and the Urban League.

Between 1940 and 1970, more than 5 million black southerners went to urban centers in the North, Midwest, and West. In the “Promised Land” black migrants faced de facto segregation, job and union discrimination, racial hatred, and riots. But they found higher pay, more freedom to vote, and better education for their children. Their economic and political progress helped sustain the long civil rights movement and desegregate society.