Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division

The exodus that started during World War I diminished the overwhelming southern concentration of the population. From its beginning in 1916 to its end in 1930, the Great Migration sent nearly one-tenth of the African-American population from the South to the North. By 1930, 89 percent of the northern black population was urban, while 32 percent of southern African Americans lived in cities. In the country as a whole, 44 percent of African Americans were urban by the end of the Great Migration.