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In the early 1970s the migration trend of the previous five decades began to reverse: African Americans were returning to the South. After decades of mounting migration north and west, the rates had actually begun to slow in the 1950s. But it was not until the late 1960s that the number of African Americans moving to the South eclipsed the number leaving. Since then, black migration to the South has continued to grow.
Many migrants - a majority of them college-educated - seek economic opportunities in the reascending southern economy; some want to escape deteriorating conditions in northern cities; others return to be nearer to kin, to care for aging relatives, or to retire in a familiar environment with a better quality of life than that found in the urban North.
All, in some way, reclaim the South as their home, the place that African Americans built and where their roots run deep.
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