The Great Migration
Between 1910 and 1970, approximately six million Black Americans left the Jim Crow South for the cities of the North and West. It was one of the largest internal migrations in American history. Arlinda Willis's mother was part of its second wave, as she journeyed from Toxey, Alabama to Cleveland, Ohio. Arlinda followed at age 11.
The Cleveland Arlinda arrived in was already being shaped by the thousands of Black Southerners who had preceded her. The biography places Arlinda's individual journey within that collective one, asking what the Migration gave its participants and what it cost them, and whether the North delivered on the promise that drew them there.
Excerpt from For Once in My Life:
Linda’s transfer was no solitary venture. It was a confluence of human motion, rising from the sun-beaten fields of the Jim Crow South and washing up in cities to the north and west. Historians would come to name it the Great Migration.
To those who dared, it was a chance for a better life.
It began in the early 20th Century when anecdotes of opportunities fell upon the ears of those who had long labored under oppression.
In the South, Black men and women worked the fields, cleaned the homes, and raised the children of others. At night, they would come home and do it all over again for themselves.
Like so many others, Madiere was spellbound by stories of factories in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. Letters arrived in neighbors' mailboxes announcing the promise of better jobs and neighborhoods.
She had heard rumors of Black families living with less fear, moving with more freedom. The decision to leave was not an easy one to make. Leaving the South meant missing the familiar church pews that had cradled her prayers and the elders who recited history in parables to the younger generations. But staying meant bowing to a system resolved to keep her small.
She packed her bags and left her young daughter in the care of her parents. She said her goodbyes and boarded a train, her final destination not yet known.
The North was no promised land. But it offered Madiere a chance. A few newcomers obtained a rise in socioeconomic status. For many, the reality was continued hardship. Racism had merely changed its spots.
As Whites escaped to Cleveland’s suburbs, Black families filled the vacuum. Degentrified neighborhoods found segregation in housing policies, schools, and job opportunities.
Madiere traded one set of struggles for another. She carried with her the lessons of tenacity that she was raised on. She worked hard to establish herself, found a husband, and started a family anew. And she promised the Lord that her children would have a brighter future than her past.
By the time Linda left Toxey to join her mother in Cleveland, the Great Migration was in its final stages. Six million people had refused to be bound by the chains of history. Their culture, labor, and spirit sang a song of freedom, a call-and-response that propelled them into social solidarity.