Beginning with the effect seen on the north, as it had arguably the biggest impacts by the migration, we see a rapid increase in population in the northern states, cities such as New York grew in population from 91,709 to 327,706 n just twenty years. Factors like his, plus the closing of munition factories (they were no longer need as much as the war had ended), made it so there were fewer jobs available. The lack of jobs lead to mass unemployment (until the economic boom in the 1920s) and therefore resulting in low income and even homelessness for many Americans. Due to these desperate situations it was seen that crime levels increased throughout the north, as people had no other choice if they wanted to survive If black migrants were to get jobs they were very poorly paid, either because they were given the lowest paying jobs or because companies were used to paying black people less money because of their race. Due to this however, black migrants were happy to be paid anything and would work in terrible circumstances. This soon led to white citizens being threatened of losing their jobs and being replaced by migrants; they wouldn’t complain about the work conditions. This lead to more hostility between black and white Americans. Other features of everyday life which caused hostility was segregation. Even though there were no fixed laws for segregation like the south, prejudices lead to segregation, such as black people getting lower paying jobs and therefore being forced to live in lower costing houses which slowly turned into ghettos due to the amount of other poor black citizens living there. However, some good did come from this separation; black citizens were more likely to get into political positions as they had their whole community to vote for them. …show more content…
They were able to make the numbers up to make a difference. There were some cases where black citizens couldn’t come through with their political strategies as they were too spread across the city or state, e.g. New York. Those who did get political positions however were able to try and make black lives better within America. It is arguable to say that the migration was the first step to gaining equality.
Effects on black citizens were only seen in the north however. Southern black Americans, as well as the Deep South, suffered due to the migration. Since many of those who had migrated were former slaves (or descendants of slaves), there was a sudden lack of labour in the cotton plantations which spread through the Deep South. The plantations made much less profit and even in some cases had to shut down. Those who had remained were now the subject of even more racist discrimination as white southerners were angry about the loss of their workers. Hatred grew when black citizens began to go into different employment as the south had deeply rooted racist prejudices, so many disagreed with the notion of black citizens taking jobs which could have been theirs.