This is a four slide-show examination of the pictorial series that the Harlem Renaissance artist Jacob Lawrence created in paint to tell the story of the "The Great Migration" of African-Americans from the Southern United States to the...

Primary source material with lesson and classroom activities in which students analyze the causes and effects of the African American Great Migration to Chicago between 1915 and 1950.

An interesting essay on the forced migration of Africans to America by way of the Middle Passage. Read where the slaves were off-loaded, how the population of slaves increased, and the inhumanities inflicted on the slaves both on the...

Letters by African Americans seeking help to leave the South. They explore issues including identity, family, community, and the struggles induced by the need to migrate north.

Online version of a Library of Congress exhibit, covering information about black history, including colonization, abolition, migrations, and the WPA. It is multimedia and contains hundreds of primary source documents.

Artistic expressions of the new black self image inspired by migration to the urban North. This focus of this site is "Song of the Towers", a series of four murals sponsored by the federal Works Projects Administration, outlining black...

Discusses the housing arrangements of African Americans and those with incomes in the Chicago area. Includes several pictures and links to further related information.

An editorial cartoon and a newspaper article illustrating the tensions between members of established African American communities in the North and Southern migrants. Links to both resources are provided within this site.

A short story and a painting illustrating African American perceptions of Northern cities. Rudolph Fisher's short story "The City of Refuge" and William H. Johnson's painting Moon over Harlem offer insight into life within the black...

After completing this mini-unit, students will understand some of the economic, educational, and lifestyle reasons why African Americans have moved from one place in the United States to another.

Primary resource provides letters, statements, and photographs of free and enslaved African Americans who journeyed to Liberia to establish new lives and identities. Also includes questions for class discussion.

This exercise examines black migration from the South in the 1960's through the perspective of Alice Walker's "Roselily." A PDF accompanies this resource, reviewing the deeper meaning behind a passage from this text.

The Great Migration for African Americans began during World War I as blacks left the segregated south to find jobs in the north. Read about how segregation followed them into their northern neighborhoods. See also how the Harlem...

These seven letters to the Chicago "Defender," a black newspaper, offer accounts from individuals who chose to leave the South from 1916-1921 in search of better opportunities as a part of what is now known as the Great Migration.

Scientists piece together the puzzle of human migration out of Africa using DNA research. (Published in 2003)

Part of an online exhibit that describes the experiences of migrants to the cities of the United States. Two American Tales asks students to compare and contrast the nearly contemporaneous experiences of European immigrants and...

Essay focussing on African American Christianity from emancipation to the great migration. Site offers photos, student discussion guidelines, historian debate and links to related material.

Migration was encouraged to western Canada and African Americans from the USA took advantage of this and came in huge numbers. But .. this open door policy didn't last, & there were negative effects between the people because of it.

Sixteen primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, visual images, and audio material-that explore African American perceptions of freedom from Emancipation to the early-twentieth century.

Contains text and photos on the African-American exodus to the West. Includes primary source documents and maps from the era.

Part of a larger site highlighting African-American migration, this site focuses on successful African-American settlements in Oklahoma Territory, which declined after Oklahoma statehood and the introduction of Jim Crow laws.

Paintings by Jacob Lawrence titled, "The Migration of the Negro", a series of sixty paintings, illustrates the migration of African Americans to the North in the twentieth century. A link to this artwork can be found within this summary.

Accounts of African American migrations from the rural South to Southern cities. This resource provides not just accounts of the Great Migration focusing on the flight from the South to the North, but also the migration within the South...

The resources here, including letters, photographs, official documents, and maps, represent the exodus of African Americans from the South to the Great Plains in the late 1800s.