The Great Migration as Black Power and Survival

The Great Migration is often taught as a story of Black hardship, but in this episode of The Breakdown, we explore what it truly was: a strategic act of survival and power. Between 1916 and 1970, more than six million Black Americans made the deliberate decision to leave the Jim Crow South, not because the journey was easy, but because staying had become increasingly dangerous amid racial violence, economic exclusion, and political repression. What followed was not merely relocation, but a profound transformation of American cities, labor systems, cultural life, and Black political power that would reshape the nation’s social and electoral landscape for generations.