SYSTEMATIC RACISM

Looking to escape the legal segregation of the South and the limited economic opportunities of rural southern communities, African Americans flocked to the North in what is known as the Second Great Migration. From 1940 to 1970, a quarter of all African Americans living in the United States left the south and moved to northern cities.[1] In general, lacking the necessary skills or education, and faced with the ramifications of systematic racism many African Americans arriving in northern cities found themselves without work, and as a result northern cities filled with either underemployed or unemployed African Americans.[2]

As it turned out, by the 1950’s, the North and South had a lot more in common than they did in 1861.