Great Migration ~ African-American Liberty Quest

Fascinating reviews in the NYTimes by David Oshinsky on Freedom Trains and in the WSJournal by John Stauffer on The Great Northern Migration, both about the epic movement of millions of southern blacks from former slave-holding Confederate states to the North and West. Says Stauffer...

"The Great Migration transformed American culture. Before it began, more than 90% of blacks in this country lived in the South. By the time the mass movement ended in the 1960s, roughly half of America's blacks resided in the North. The exodus remade New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and numerous smaller cities. It turned jazz, the blues and Pentecostalism into national phenomena. The achievement of civil-rights legislation in the 1960s would have been unlikely without the huge influx of new black constituents in so many politicians' backyards."

See here a Great Migration map from ePals on the Black Diaspora...