Case Study
Great Migration
OPTIONAL
What to Expect: Today’s Lesson
Warm Up
Learning target, circle agreements
Questions
Closing circle
Exit Ticket
Wrap-up
Social Studies
Let’s learn about the Great Migration
Warm Up
Learning Target
SECTION ONE: WARM UP
NYS Social Studies Framework
4.7b Beginning in the 1890s, large numbers of African Americans migrated to New York City and other northern cities to work in factories.
Students will investigate the reasons that African Americans moved into northern cities.
Students will investigate artists, writers, and musicians associated with the Harlem Renaissance.
�S.S. Practices: Gathering, Interpreting and Using Evidence, Comparison, and Contextualization
Check-In
SECTION ONE: WARM UP
Show the class with your fingers which number ‘dog’ represents how you’re feeling today?
Social Studies Practices:
Gathering, Using, and Interpreting Evidence
7
Have you and your family ever moved? What were your reasons for moving?
Preparation Question:
Circle Agreements
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
At least 6 million African Americans moved from the South to northern cities like Rochester. In 1910, Rochester went from 5,000 people of color to over 30,000 in 1970.
Let’s investigate what caused so many people of color to move North.
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
1910–1970 �Great Migration
Many people of color migrated from Sanford, FL to Rochester .
The Great Migration in Rochester, NY
Why did people move to Rochester? Watch until 2:37.
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
“My family came from Coredele, Georgia. I broke my hand as a one year old child. Evidently there was a nurse who came through Coredele saw my hand, and told my mother and father about Strong Memorial Hospital with the hopes I would be treated at Strong.”
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
Trent Jackson
Competed in the Olympics and played in the NFL for the Eagles.
*Important Note: People of color didn’t have access to the same medical care as white people when Mr. Jackson was young. Often, hospitals were segregated and unequal.
There was no high school for African Americans where the Holloways lived in Virginia. They sold their farm and moved to North Carolina to be near a segregated school for Black children. She was valedictorian of her class, but remembers after graduation having her tooth pulled: “You had to go into a back room.” She remembers drinking from the “colored” water fountain, using a separate bathroom, sitting in the ‘Black’ section of the restaurant.
After graduating from Bennett College she decided to join her friend and move to Rochester to attend University of Rochester and become a teacher.
Adapted from Tearing Down Fences The Life of Alice Holloway Young
Note: Dr. Young was the first Black Principal in Monroe County, NY in 1962.
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
Dr. Alice Holloway Young
Above: Family photo of Dr. Young’s family. Dr. Young is the second young girl from the left in the bottom row.
Right: RCSD Principal Young
“I had to leave Florida because I owed my children a better future. I needed more money. The farms up North did pay more than the southern farms. With my educational limitations, it would have been hard to find work even in a factory.”
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
Charles Jackson
*Important Note: When Mr. Jackson was a child in Florida he went to segregated and unequal schools. Often he missed school because he needed to work with his family.
Charles Jackson, Author
David Gantt
“We came here from Opp, Alabama (South). The unfortunate thing for me is that I had some incident where I was called an inappropriate name by a little white kid so I punched him in the face. If you knew anything about the south in those days that meant real big trouble for me so my mother decided to take usm bundle us up, and come north.”
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
Served as a member of the New York Assembly from 1983 to 2020
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
“I was born in Clairton, Pennsylvania which is a community fourteen miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
My parents came from the South. I'm the grandson--great-grandson of a slave born in Florida. My parents came north in 1921. My father, who never went to school—not one day— worked in coal mines initially and then the steel mill for forty-four years before he retired. My mother had nine years of education in southwestern Georgia, and was the driving force, of course, for education.
After college I applied and was granted a fellowship to the University of Rochester, so I came here in August of nineteen hundred and fifty-two.”
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
Dr. Walter Cooper
Retired Scientist at Kodak, Civil Rights Leader, and NYS Regent
In the county where we lived in Florida, there was only one major hospital. The most pivotal point in my life occurred when my mother was pregnant. Towards the end of the baby's gestation period, my mother's doctor refused to admit her to this local hospital.
So when my Uncle Ben called for me from New York, I decide to go. He was hiring for a restaurant chain. Under his watchful eye, I found myself doing dishes, taking out the garbage, and other odd jobs. My main focus was to make money. I guess you can say that I practiced what I was taught by my mother and family: that is, to be proud of yourself and have self-respect.
-Excerpt adapted from The Grace of GOD GO I
... The Legacy of Reverend Simmons
by: Rev. Ivory Simmons
Wayne County, NY
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
Rev. Ivory Simmons
Alice Mathis moved to Rochester to make more money so she could buy a house in Sanford Florida. She took the train to Rochester during the summer to pick fruits and vegetables and was paid more than she could get in the south.
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
Alice Mathis
“It ain’t nothing to brag on, coming to New York. You get a chance to get away from the rent and the bills. But still have to send money back to family.
We used to get treated real good in New York, but now they are getting kind of prejudiced to me about being a migrant worker. You go into the store and they turn their backs.”
-Excerpt from Ruby Ford’s Oral History in Migrant Farmworkers of Wayne County, NY a Collection of Oral Histories from the Back Roads.
Note: Ruby Ford was born and raised in Haines City, Florida, and traveled regularly to Wayne County, NY with her family to pick fruit since the age of 9.
SECTION TWO: THE GREAT MIGRATION
Ruby Ford
Questions
Why did people of color move to the Greater Rochester area during the Great Migration? Be sure to provide specific examples from the primary sources you just explored.
Closing Circle:
Circle Agreements
SECTION THREE: CIVIC PARTICIPATION
Exit Ticket
Why did people of color move North to Rochester?
We can analyze the reasons that African Americans moved into northern cities.
Learning Target
SECTION FOUR: EXIT TICKET
What zone are you in? Share with a friend about someone who inspires you to never give up?
SEL: Optimistic Closure
“Never give up. You either are involved or you are not, there is no middle ground. I choose to be involved."-Dr. Walter Cooper
SECTION FOUR: SEL OPTIMISTIC CLOSURE
Courtesy of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.
Blue Zone 1 finger | Green Zone 2 fingers | Yellow Zone 3 fingers | Red Zone 4 fingers |
Bored | Happy | Excited | Upset |
Tired | Positive | Worried | Angry |
Sad | Thankful | Nervous | Aggressive |
Depressed | Proud | Confused | Mad |
Shy | Calm | Embarrassed | Terrified |