The Effect of World War I On Black Occupational and Residential Segregation

Abstract

The occupational and residential pattern of blacks during the postwar years have been relatively well documented. It is known, for example, that beginning around 1916 and continuing until the Great Depression of the 1930s, Pittsburgh, like other northern industrial cities, received thousands of southern blacks who were participating in the Great Migration of 1916 to 1919 that carried over a million blacks from the South to the North. It is also known that blacks moved North basically for the same reason the southern and eastern European immigrants had come to America, that is, to seek jobs in the expanding manufacturing sector. But the occupational status and residential pattern of blacks before the Great Migration and the changes that occurred immediately after it are not very well known. Although the prewar status of blacks within the occupational structure has been examined at particular points in time, few studies have focused on the changes over time (e.g., Ovington, 1911; Crossland, 1914; DuBois, 1899; Daniels, 1914; Osofsky, 1966). Furthermore, the position of blacks in the urban economy has