The Great Migration in Myth and Reality

Abstract

The founders of professional sociology in the United States constructed a system of racial segregation that paralleled the Jim Crow system in the American South. Recent research has analyzed both the structure and dynamics of this systemic racism, as well as the resourceful resistance to this discrimination by African-American scholars housed in historically Black universities and colleges (HBCUs). This essay extends that work by discussing the ways in which the Jim Crow structure was enacted and sustained over many decades, how this exclusionary project limited and distorted the research, analysis, and theory developed within the white universities; and how the work of Black sociologists – ignored and dismissed by the white establishment – constitutes a precious heritage of important and still valuable scholarship. This contrast between sterile white establishment scholarship and the still-valuable work of HSBCs scholars is documented by comparing the white and Black scholarship on the first decades of the Great Migration. This comparison demonstrates that even iconic texts by white establishment scholars presented an already disconfirmed portrait of the migration process and dynamics of Black migration from the U.S. rural South to Northern cities; and that distorted portrait of immigration was perpetuated through decades of subsequent establishment scholarship. In contrast the work of Black scholars provided indelible on-the-ground evidence that disproved the theories articulated and perpetuated by their white contemporaries, while documenting a broad theoretical perspective that remains valuable in understanding contemporary migration issues.