Black Flight From Detroit
Over a hundred years ago black Americans began migrating to the north for job opportunities, and in 1910 there were already 6,000 black residents in Detroit, in 1940 there were 100,000, in 1950 there were 200,000, and by 1970 there were 660,000 black residents in Detroit. The period from 1910 to 1970 that saw a total of 6 million rural blacks leave Southern States for the north is called the Great Migration or the Great Northern Migration. World War 2 provided even more jobs in Detroit as Ford and the other Detroit car companies switched to building military equipment. But during the war and throughout the 1940s the big 3 automakers built 25 new plants in former farmland outside of Detroit, and while there were jobs there, community standards kept blacks from moving near the new factories, and even commuting through white suburbs was risky. The population of Detroit reached 1.8 million in 1950 with 1.5 million white res...