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Old Posted Feb 5, 2013, 9:29 PM
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animatedmartian animatedmartian is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nantais View Post
I've already heard about the Great Migration but I didn't think it was so important. I mean, it's a really huge growth in Black population between 1950 and 1980. Also, why was it apparently more important in Détroit than in other northeastern american cities ?
Detroit was a huge supplier of jobs. The car companies hired many African Americans and paid them just about the same as their white coworkers. For many northern cities, that was very out of the norm and quite a big draw for Detroit.


Quote:
And, on another scale, why Blacks moved predominantly to the inner city and not to some suburbs ? Why did it happen essentially after the WW2 and not earlier, because I guess it was already not that cool to be a Black in the South in the late 1800's or in the early 1900's ?
This is where America's racist and segregatory history comes in. Segregation was the norm in many northern cities (including Detroit) where Blacks and Whites lived in separate neighborhoods.

In the city of Detroit, banks would not give mortgage loans to residents who lived in integrated neighborhoods. So regardless of if a resident was racist or not, the system was racist and this meant that blacks (and possibly other non-white minorities) could only live in very slummy neighborhoods. Even though Blacks had made good money working at the auto companies, they would have no help from the government when it came to rebuilding their neighborhoods and improving their quality of life. Blacks weren't really "allowed" to move into the suburbs until at least the 70s and 80s. They weren't even allowed to move into certain neighborhoods of Detroit, like Palmer Woods, even if they could afford it.
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