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Nozrul Miah
Dr. Harrison
Honors 1000
23 October 2015
Ripples in the Great Migration
The Great Migration, a time period between 1910 and 1970 in which approximately six
and a half million African Americans left the south for a Promised Land (Lorensen, 571), was a
major factor in integrating African Americans into the social space present in Detroit. To
illustrate this, we will follow the story of an African American male from the South named
Benjamin Johnson who has domestically immigrated to Detroit from the South in the first waves
of the Great Migration. Benjamin is thrown into a new sector of society in which he must learn
how to deal with new cultural and social problems. He faces the challenges of racial and social
discrimination in the so called promised land, seeking out job opportunities which are not
available in the south, and also helping to establish new cultural roots such as jazz during the
infancy of African American communities.
First and foremost, Benjamin grew up in the Southern part of the United States in town of
South Pittsburg, Tennessee. It had only been a few years since the slaves were freed, but the
effects of racism still lingered in the community. There was an obvious class distinction between
whites and blacks and with the increasing enforcement of the Jim Crow laws, racial boundaries
seemed to carve themselves out more distinctively. Unlike the white families, Benjamin and his
family lived in a rural part of the state with a small community of African Americans. His
parents, grandparents, and three sisters all lived in a broken house just like all the other families.
Since Benjamin was the only son, he had to learn the skilled trade of carpentry from his father

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during his early teenage years. As a result, the father son duo went around fixing houses to
receive a small payout.
As time passes the year is now 1916 and Benjamin has just turned eighteen. Talks of a
Great Migration are surging through his small community, and Benjamin was genuinely
interested in the concept. The Great Migration was supposedly a plea for African Americans in
the South to make their way up north in search of jobs and better social status. It sounded
appealing, especially with the situation that Benjamin and his family were in. However, his
father wasnt so keen to the idea since he was so accustomed to the South and even though it was
a horrible environment, he felt it was his only home. Benjamin realized that the rest of his family
felt the same way, so he decided to go alone. His father argued it would be hard for him since he
had never been away from his family. However, he wouldnt be alone since he was joining
thousands of other African Americans on their journey to a place called Detroit. Benjamin knew
there was a real opportunity here, especially with the booming auto industry with the Ford
Plants, so he departed for Detroit on a bus with a suitcase full of clothes and dreams.
As the route came to an end, Benjamin along with the other bus passengers were forced
to get out. There was a man there greeting everyone, and directing them to the black part of
town. It was extremely helpful for a person to have family there in Detroit, allowing their
experience to be streamlined. It meant they had a home and a job waiting for them unlike
Benjamin who was struggling to find his place into this new community since he had no family
or relatives there. However, to his surprise this new place that he thought would be different was
in many ways similar to his old home in the South. It was crowded and cramped, and instead of a
house that Benjamin was accustomed to, he had a single apartment room with plenty of
roommates.

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Next, Benjamin had to figure out a way to pay for his expenses which included his family
back home. He thought it wouldnt be hard to get a job at the Ford Plant he had been hearing so
much about, but it wasnt as simple as he thought. He had no idea who to talk to, so he turned to
the civic leaders of Detroit at the time who called themselves the Detroit Urban League: an
interracial organization headed by African-American social work professionals to assist in the
adjustment of black rural southern migrants who arrived during the Great Migration. (Murage
1). They had agreements with the surrounding auto industry companies to get new black
immigrants to fill vacancies at the job. Initially, Ben had no luck because of the massive number
of people applying at the same time which literally caused his application to be lost in a sea of
other folders.
During this waiting period, Benjamin wanted to explore more of the city of Detroit and
see what it had to offer. However, as he looked around he began to feel more violated and
disgusted. Just like his black community in the South, the African Americans in the north were
also confined to a small area of town in cramped housing. He was experiencing segregation, and
it had taken over everything from the stores they bought food from to the schools, which were
heavily white and black separated. Benjamin stopped touring around the white part of town since
he knew the police were waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike him, so he went back to the
seemingly more uninteresting black part of town.
On this side, Benjamin learned many things about black culture he had not known about
in his small southern town. He learned there was a growing movement to stop segregation
through the establishment of a new organization called the NAACP (National Association for the
advancement of colored people). While Benjamin was waiting on word from his job, he wanted
to learn more about the organization, and since it was only a few years old he wanted to try and

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root himself in the organization. Their goal was to eliminate racial barriers and have create an
equal environment for everyone, which seemed appealing to Benjamin at the time. At the time
there were no membership fees, so Benjamin casually made his way into the organization by
taking care of basic errands such as delivering important documents. Alongside the NAACP,
Benjamin found himself taking up another activity which was making an impact on African
Americans at the time, which was jazz. When he wasnt at the NAACP branch, he would be at
the corner saloon learning how to imitate the sounds of jazz. The rhythmic beats caught the
attention of all African Americans, and could be described as a soundtrack for the Great
Migration of African Americans (Gennari, 1). Benjamin was so intrigued by this that he began
practice the music himself on a saxophone from one the older gentlemen, and to tell his very own
stories through the rhythmic beats and tempo on the corners of Detroit.
Skipping ahead, a year has passed and everything seems to be converging at one point for
Benjamin. He is able to get a job at the Ford Motor company which was incredibly busy at the
time. Nevertheless, he still made time for the NAACP where he was starting to jump ranks due to
his continued persistence. To tie these in together, he would play jazz at the corners in his free
time to tell the story of the Great Migration, segregation, and his life in music.
To conclude, the Great Migration was truly a spectacular time for those who took part in
it. The first wave had to firmly assert themselves in a hostile and racist neighborhood and find
job opportunities which were limited for African Americans. Even though there wasnt as much
freedom as they had hoped, there were still many opportunities to start a new life in the north.
Benjamin has showed us that the South was a bad place to be, and the north seemed to be a
major improvement in opportunities but not in housing. Cultural and racial divides were still
there, but as a domestic immigrant Benjamin worked his way around these to integrate himself

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into his community and bring something new into the city of Detroit such as jazz, and the
movement of the NAACP.

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Works Cited
Cha-Jua, Sundiata Keita. "African Americans in Suburbs and African American
Towns." Encyclopedia of American Urban History. Ed. David Goldfield. Vol. 1.
Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference, 2007. 13-18. Gale Virtual Reference Library.
Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
Fisher, Phillip. Democratic social Space. Still the New World: American Literature in a
Culture of Creative Destruction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 33-55.
Gennari, John. "Jazz in African-American Culture." Encyclopedia of African-American Culture
and History. Ed. Colin A. Palmer. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA,
2006. 1167-1169. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
Logan, John R., et al. "Creating the Black Ghetto: Black Residential Patterns before and during
the Great Migration." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science 660 (2015): 18. ProQuest. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
Lorensen, Jutta. "Between Image and Word, Color and Time: Jacob Lawrence's the Migration
Series." African American Review40.3 (2006): 571-86. ProQuest. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
Martelle, Scott. Detroit: A Biography. Chicago, Ill: Chicago Review Press, 2012. Print.
Murage, Njeru. "Making migrants an asset: the Detroit Urban League-Employers alliance in
wartime Detroit, 1916 to 1919." Michigan Historical Review 26.1 (2000): 66+. Academic
OneFile. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
Ohio Historical Society. Working at Ford. Digital image. Schomborg Center for Research in
Black Culutre. Ohio Historical Society, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
<http://www.inmotionaame.org/gallery/detail.cfm?migration=8&topic=99&id=465407
page=5&type=image>.
Ray Stannard Baker. Segregation. Digital image. Schomborg Center for Research in Black
Culutre. Page and Country, 1908. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
<http://www.inmotionaame.org/gallery/detail.cfm?migration=8&topic=99&id=465448
page=2&type=image>.
Scott, Donald. "Great Migration." The American Mosaic: The African American
Experience. ABC-CLIO, 2015. Web. 17 Oct. 2015. Other

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Tocqueville, Alexis. Fortnight in the Wilderness. Tocqueville in America. Ed. George W.
Pierson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. 229-259.
University of Chicago Press. Out of The South. Digital image. Schomborg Center for Research
in

Black Culutre. The University of Chicago Press, 1922. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
<http://www.inmotionaame.org/gallery/detail.cfm?migration=8&topic=99&id=465277
page=1&type=image>.

Worrell, Frank C. "African Americans." Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology. Ed. Neil J.

Salkind and Kristin Rasmussen. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2008. 1
5-21. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.

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Bibliography Worksheet Citation Style Selection: MLA
Source 1 (Required): The Gale Virtual Reference Library Type: Reference Article
Cha-Jua, Sundiata Keita. "African Americans in Suburbs and African American
Towns." Encyclopedia of American Urban History. Ed. David Goldfield. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Reference, 2007. 13-18. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE
%7CCX3470500020&v=2.1&u=lom_waynesu&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=0025aaf430f86fd
2ad5bb87110a4b461
Source 2 (Required): SCHOLARLY ARTICLE Database: PROQUEST

Lorensen, Jutta. "Between Image and Word, Color and Time: Jacob Lawrence's the Migration
Series." African American Review40.3 (2006): 571-86. ProQuest. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.

Source 3 (Required): Type: SCHOLARLY ARTICLE Database: PROQUEST

Logan, John R., et al. "Creating the Black Ghetto: Black Residential Patterns before and during
the Great Migration." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science 660 (2015): 18. ProQuest. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.

Source 4 (Required): Primary Source: Type: Picture

University of Chicago Press. Out of The South. Digital image. Schomborg Center for Research in
Black Culutre. The University of Chicago Press, 1922. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
<http://www.inmotionaame.org/gallery/detail.cfm?migration=8&topic=99&id=465277
page=1&type=image>.

Source 5 (Required): Martelles Detroit: A Biography: Chapter:1 Page(s):1-10

Martelle, Scott. Detroit: A Biography. Chicago, Ill: Chicago Review Press, 2012. Print.

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Source 6 (Required): Tocquevilles Fortnight in the Wilderness chapter on Blackboard 229259
Tocqueville, Alexis. Fortnight in the Wilderness. Tocqueville in America. Ed. George W.
Pierson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. 229-259.

Source 7 (Required): Fisher, Democratic Social Space

Fisher, Phillip. Democratic social Space. Still the New World: American Literature in a
Culture of Creative Destruction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 33-55.
Source 9 etc (Your choice, so long as it is credible)
REFERENCE ARTICLES:
Scott, Donald. "Great Migration." The American Mosaic: The African American
Experience. ABC-CLIO, 2015. Web. 17 Oct. 2015. Other
Worrell, Frank C. "African Americans." Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology. Ed. Neil J.
Salkind and Kristin Rasmussen. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2008. 1
5-21. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
Gennari, John. "Jazz in African-American Culture." Encyclopedia of African-American Culture
and History. Ed. Colin A. Palmer. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA,
2006. 1167-1169. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
PICTURES:
Ohio Historical Society. Working at Ford. Digital image. Schomborg Center for Research in
Black Culutre. Ohio Historical Society, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
<http://www.inmotionaame.org/gallery/detail.cfm?migration=8&topic=99&id=465407
page=5&type=image>.
Ray Stannard Baker. Segregation. Digital image. Schomborg Center for Research in Black
Culutre. Page and Country, 1908. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
<http://www.inmotionaame.org/gallery/detail.cfm?migration=8&topic=99&id=465448
page=2&type=image>.
SCHOLARLY ARTICLES:

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Murage, Njeru. "Making migrants an asset: the Detroit Urban League-Employers alliance in
wartime Detroit, 1916 to 1919." Michigan Historical Review 26.1 (2000): 66+. Academic
OneFile. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.