Examine Map 16-2. Why did large numbers of blacks remain in the South despite the Great Migration of ...

Ideal Answer: The ideal answer should:
1. Define the Great Migration as the migration of two million blacks from the southern to the northern states in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
2. Explain why southern blacks left the South: segregation, lynching, natural disasters, relatives living in the northern cities, expansion of jobs in heavy industry because of World War I.
3. Note that most blacks stayed in the South. Issues of poverty, debt peonage, violence from southern whites, and family discouragement kept many blacks in the South.
4. Note that the Great Depression and World War II helped to increase black migration out of the South, this time also to western states.