The Great Migration

Beginning in the early twentieth century, millions of African Americans left the Southern states and migrated north in search of opportunities denied to them in the South. Upon arrival in northern cities such as Chicago, many African Americans found that the North was not the promised land that they had envisioned and faced similar discriminatory laws and racial hostility. African Americans worked against the odds for decades after their arrival to earn their piece of the pie in Chicago. They formed community organizations, blended the culture they had cultivated in the South to the new urban environment, and worked both outside and inside the political structure of the city to gain civil rights.