The Greatest Migration of All
Eric B. Schultz Ask an American historian to define the Great Migration and you’ll hear one of several answers. Most will describe the movement of 6 million African Americans from the rural South who headed north and west, from A Jack Delano photo of migrants heading north from Florida, 1940. World War I through 1970, seeking economic opportunity and relief from Jim Crow laws. This is the story so beautifully told in Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Warmth of Other Suns . There’s another group of historians who might describe the Great Migration as the 20,000 English men, women, and children who crossed the Atlantic between 1620 and 1640, seeking opportunity and relief in New England. These are the Mayflower names, the families that delight and provide such rich insights for genealogists. Since 1988 the New England Historic Genealogical Society has sponsored the Great Migration Study Project , scheduled for completion in 2016. In his monumental What Ha...