ABSTRACT
Chicago, like many northern cities, was the destination of many black southerners who migrated north in search of jobs and greater opportunity in the twentieth century. During the first wave of the Great Migration, in the years around World War I, Chicago’s black community grew 148 percent from 1910 to 1920, with an influx of 65,355 migrants. For many black Chicagoans, the experience of migration from South to North proved important to their priorities and values, and served as a frequent touchstone in the communication between black applicants and their social workers. Several prominent researchers working later in the decade found contrary patterns. Recent historical scholarship has overturned many of these conclusions. It has shown that the experience of migration tended to intensify black Chicagoans’ ties to family and close friends. For instance, historian James Grossman suggests that the Great Migration was deeply connected to family and institutional networks that reached black communities on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.
