According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 57 percent of America’s Black people were living in the South in 2010, a higher percentage than at any time in 50 years. And that trend has not changed. Many Blacks, who at one time migrated to the North for opportunities and to escape Jim Crow, are heading back to the South. A 2009 study by sociologists at Queens College in New York, for example, found that approximately 17 percent of those who migrated South over a 10-year period arrived from New York state. And that number has not decreased over the years.
Connection Through Roots
Although many Blacks lived in the North, they continued to visit their Southern homes for family reunions, church celebrations, weddings and the like. So, they may have left the South, but the South never left them. Returning frequently broke down the feeling that the South was not a place for them. “[The South] is home,” Charles Steele, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, said in the Huffington Post. “Even though it’s a dark side of your history, you can never forget about it. You always want to make it better.”
