# Is The "great Migration Reversing Itself? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 28, 2009, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-great-migration-reversing-itself/511834 "2009-09-28T12:13:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-great-migration-reversing-itself/511834/1 "2009-09-28T12:13:11Z")
The “Great Migration” refers to the mass miration of southern black sharecroppers to the industrial cities of the northern USA (like Detroit, Cleveland, NYC, etc.), in the years from 1940-1970. Now, you read about people abandoning places like Detroit, Flint, Cleveland, and I wonder if the people who came north are now moving back south-as the the south industrializes. I expect that places like Detroit are unlikely to recover their industrial edge for years (if ever), so does this mean that the south will continue to gain population and industry? ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-great-migration-reversing-itself/511834/2 "2009-09-28T13:04:32Z")
I’d say that’s likely. Conditions in the diaspora led people to follow the jobs and such north. But economic conditions have changed. The solid, industrial and likely union jobs in the northern cities are gone and replaced with growth in other areas. Therefore that’s where people go. Sooner or later the numbers will change again and the trend will change. How long that takes? Who knows? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-great-migration-reversing-itself/511834/3 "2009-09-29T00:08:22Z")
Given how notorious the South still is for racism, I doubt it. A great many of their ancestors left in the first place because they were driven out by white racism; by everything from Jim Crow to outright mass murder. Blacks have no reason to think of the South fondly, or to expect their lives to improve if they go there. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-great-migration-reversing-itself/511834/4 "2009-09-29T00:32:25Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Given how notorious the South still is for racism, I doubt it. A great many of their ancestors left in the first place because they were driven out by white racism; by everything from Jim Crow to outright mass murder. Blacks have no reason to think of the South fondly, or to expect their lives to improve if they go there. I lived in Atlanta from 1996 to 2002. A huge influx of black professionals was taking occuring. There was still some kind of (self?) segregation going on with almost entirely black subdivisions in south Fulton and south Dekalb counties springing up, just as almost entirely white and Asian suburbs spread out in the north. I had numerous conversations with the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of people who had left the Jim Crow South and were now returning, they certainly don’t share your perspective on what the South is like now. There is feeling that Blacks are now in a much more powerful position socially and politically there. Many if not most of the cops in the Atlanta area are black, as are the vast majority of municipal employees. From people who I know who moved to Charlotte and the Research Triangle areas in North Carolina the same thing seems to be true there as well. Don’t know about South Carolina or Mississippi though, but from the time I spent in Birmingham, there was no hint of a society haunted by the memory of the Klan.