One Migration, Two Perspectives: Black and White Sociologists’ Scholarship on the Great Migration, 1890-1930

• In Event: 2461 - History of Sociology/Social Thought: Fresh Perspectives on Classic Works

Abstract

Sociologists’ study of migration can be traced back to the early 1900’s and the establishment of Sociology as a discipline in the U.S. While migration studies have formed an important part of Sociology since its earliest days, little attention has been paid to the ways early sociologists understood and analyzed migration. This paper aims to fill that gap by analyzing how sociologists studied the Great Migration in the United States from the 1890s through the 1930s. This study specifically analyzes how race and race ideology impacted early migration studies. I find that, although both black and white sociologists examined precisely the same event, their interests, methods, treatment, and conclusions about the Great Migration differed significantly. White sociologists approached the Great Migration as a problem, studying southern blacks’ integration in the North, and questioning blacks’ intellectual capacity to achieve the same socioeconomic level as whites. Black sociologists, on the other hand, studied the Great Migration using empirical data to explain the causes that moved blacks from South to North and demonstrating how racial violence in the South was one of the main factors stimulating their migration. I argue that the difference between these white and black scholars is rooted in the racialized context of America during late 19th Century, when white scholars viewed the Great Migration as part of the so-called “negro problem” and ignored the emergent group of black scholars that were interested in demonstrating the impact of race relations in the movement of black people from South to North. Ultimately, this paper expands on the efforts of scholars to reevaluate the development of sociology, to explain the historical division between race and migration studies, and to highlight the ways that specific areas of study, such as migration, have developed in a racialized context.

Author

• Angel Alfonso Escamilla Garcia, Northwestern University