UCLA School of Law

During the first two-thirds of the 20th century, millions of Black rural Southerners moved to cities – usually to the ghettoized urban cores of cities – in the phenomenon known as the Great Migration. By 1960, however, the Black population was substantially urbanized and began to migrate in large numbers from one metropolitan area to another. This migration has been little studied. Using restricted census data, we find that intermetropolitan Black movers were far more likely than Black movers within metropolitan areas to settle in predominantly White neighborhoods. These movers are thus a valuable, and hitherto overlooked, barometer of how, over time and across different regions of the country, the openness of housing to Black entry changed and evolved.