To Live a Fuller and Freer Life
To Live a Fuller and Freer Life
Black Women Migrants' Expectations and New York's Urban Realities, 1890–1927
This chapter discusses how the will to improve their lives propelled African Americans from the South to the urban North. Beginning with a steady trickle during Reconstruction and increasing through the turn of the twentieth century, the Great Migration swelled to a flood during the years around World War I. Women migrants, whether on their own or aided by family members, moved in the hope of enjoying freedoms denied them in the Jim Crow South. They found that freedom was incomplete and came at a price. Some made occupational or financial sacrifices. For example, the woman interviewed in 1919 was a trained teacher who had left her professional position in the South to work in New York City's garment industry. Still, she spoke for other black migrants as well as herself when she judged the move worthwhile.
Keywords: women migrants, African Americans, urban North, Reconstruction, Great Migration
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