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AH Challenge: No African-American 20th century 'Great Migration' north and west

raharris1973

Well-known member
The challenge is to have no African-American 20th century 'Great Migration' north and west. Your PoD can be 20th century, or late 19th century, but it must be post *1868*.

This would leave the African-American population overwhelmingly concentrated in the southern United States through the 20th century, instead of something more like the bare majority being concentrated there.

Some potential ideas -

-Discussed a few times previously - immigration restrictions against southern and eastern Europeans never kicked in, and this reduces the "pull factor" of northern job opportunities and labor recruiters since immigrants fill labor demand

-somewhat related and parallel to above, no US participation in either world war leading to less northeastern, midwestern, western demand for southern labor to relocate, possibly no WWI means no Red Scare means no or slow or less immigration restriction

-Newer idea - stronger economic "anchor" in the south: accelerated development of southern manufacturing and service employment, via earlier invention and deployment of air conditioning technology?

-Newer idea - stronger economic "anchor" in the south: accelerated development of southern manufacturing and service employment, industry moves harder and faster and more aggressively south from the 1920s through the 1960s, especially from the Wagner Act on to seek out the non-unionized southern labor force (black and white) and punish the unionizing northern workforce and legal regime. Now they did not do so super abruptly in OTL, so maybe we need some facilitating factors to be in place beforehand. Perhaps southern state governments and national governments in the decades from the 1880s-1930s could have more generously improved transportation, water, electrical and other infrastructures over time in the south so it wasn't so abysmally behind that the midwest and northeast were ahead even with unionization?

-Kill the "pull factors" in the north, hard and nasty - somehow replicate the full Jim Crow suite, 100% in northern states, with the end of Reconstruction, and keep it going at the same intensity and duration as the south.

Now, in any of these scenarios, would any southern states which had black majorities in the reconstruction period, like South Carolina, Mississippi, or Louisiana, retain those majorities through the 20th century? Or would the effect of immigration and economic "anchors" in the south or reduced "pull factors" in the south also maintain or increase white population in all southern states enough to outnumber blacks in every state?

Assuming some states in the south remain African-American majority, and Civil Rights enfranchisement/Voting Rights Acts occur on schedule, would this notably increase the representational weight and bargaining power of African-Americans politically from the 1970s onward?

Would Civil Rights on OTL's schedule be a good or bad assumption?
Pro- Broad trends in the world, anti-colonial developments in the world, television, steady increases in education and expectations
Anti- Smaller represented African-American communities in the north to electorally pressure northern politicians , support media institutions, and to resource the Civil Rights movement, even more white massive resistance to African-American voting rights in states where it means the end of white majority votership

More integral and cohesive African-American extended family, inter-generational and community life with less extra-regional migration? Does the possible added social capital make up for potential lost income and potential lost educational opportunities?

Based on statistical observations of trends, the pre-existing non-southern African-American communities may on balance benefit from a lack of a Great migration. On the one hand, newcomers from the south won't be a source of patrons for their businesses. On the other, new arrivals won't push their wage scales down, and convergence over time with white labor rates over generations, and social mixing, may be faster, depending on how conditions in the north are altered.
 
I once played with the idea of avoiding a Great Migration by having black people in the South get locked down in serfdom-like conditions. Not sure, now, how that would work.

Beyond that, I think a relative lack of immigration restrictions would work, by allowing previous migration flows from Europe to continue and providing less of a niche for black migrants. This does not mean these will not come, mind: The push factors were quite severe.
 
What about changing the push factors? a post-1868 POD does allow *some* time for more of Reconstruction to stay in place (and for the Boll Weevil to be delayed or come under different circumstances), and I don't think it's inherently unrealistic to avert or weaken Jim Crow, especially if you keep the backlash against Reconstruction at bay long enough (say, there's no imposition of Black Codes in the 1870s-90s and racial terrorism is kept more under control in the 1890s) that there's more chance for black people in the south to accumulate even modest generational wealth and retain political pull to an extent.
 
What about changing the push factors? a post-1868 POD does allow *some* time for more of Reconstruction to stay in place (and for the Boll Weevil to be delayed or come under different circumstances), and I don't think it's inherently unrealistic to avert or weaken Jim Crow, especially if you keep the backlash against Reconstruction at bay long enough (say, there's no imposition of Black Codes in the 1870s-90s and racial terrorism is kept more under control in the 1890s) that there's more chance for black people in the south to accumulate even modest generational wealth and retain political pull to an extent.

I do like that quite a lot!
 
Inspired by

Is there a way to 1) get Grant more interested in curbing some of the scams and scandals that discredited him and 2) much more important get him, his successors, and other politicians more generally interested in both taking active steps to curb panics and in more generally moving away from Gilded Age lassez-faire capitalism and fear of economic regulation to active governmental interest in industry and trade, with this 3) giving pro-reconstruction politics more public support and purchase since it's tied to a platform that materially improves people's lives?
 
What's more likely given basic, foundational American socio-political structures and attitudes, some vast, reforming porto-new Deal-ish Great Society-ish Civil Rights programs in the late 19th century as being described in posts #3, #4, or #5, or less heroic, idealistic, 'do-gooder', progressive things from the OP like 'early air conditioning' or 'earlier flight of industry south to avoid unions'?
 
What about changing the push factors? a post-1868 POD does allow *some* time for more of Reconstruction to stay in place (and for the Boll Weevil to be delayed or come under different circumstances), and I don't think it's inherently unrealistic to avert or weaken Jim Crow

This does seem the best way - other factors coild stop it being a capital-G great migration but if it really sucks in the south, if the politics and economy and atmosphere are all against you but you can move somewhere that seems relatively better, you're more likely to move. If the south is 'only' as racist as the north (and it could plausibly end up less hostile with this 1860s POD than OTL north and the iffy shit it could do) and the economic opportunities are there, you knock a lot of that on the head.
 
I doubt Reconstruction could be successful but even if it was, some degree of black migration to the Northeast, Midwest and, to a lesser extent, West is still inevitable, IMO, because the American Civil War set back the economy of the South by a century.
 
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