WASHINGTON – The nation’s Blacks are leaving big cities in the Northeast and Midwest at the highest levels in decades, returning to fast-growing states in the once-segregated South in search of better job opportunities and quality of life.
The Southern U.S. region – primarily metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami and Charlotte, N.C. – accounted for roughly 75 percent of the population gains among Blacks since 2000, up from 65 percent in the 1990s, according to the latest census estimates. The gains came primarily at the expense of Northern metro areas such as New York and Chicago, which posted their first declines in Black population since at least 1980.
The figures are based on 2009 census population estimates. The recent census figures for Blacks refer to non-Hispanic Blacks, which the Census Bureau began calculating separately in 1980.
In all, about 57 percent of U.S. Blacks now live in the South, a jump from the 53 percent share in the 1970s, according to an analysis of census data by William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. It was the surest sign yet of a sustained reverse migration to the South after the exodus of millions of Blacks to the Midwest, Northeast and West in the Great Migration from 1910 to 1970.
“African-Americans are acting as other Americans would – searching for better economic opportunity in the Sun Belt,” said Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns, a detailed history of the Great Migration. “But there is also a special connection. As the South becomes more in line with the rest of the country in social and political equality, many are wanting to connect with their ancestral homeland.”
The converts include Shelton Haynes, 33, a housing manager in Atlanta. He grew up in New York City and lived in Harlem for many years with his wife and two children before growing weary of the cost-of-living and hectic pace. After considering other places in the South such as Charlotte, N.C., the two settled on Atlanta, where Haynes’ brother, sister-in-law and parents now also live.
“We have a great support network of family and friends here, and there is good community involvement, with our kids involved in swimming, tennis and basketball,”’ Haynes said. “In Atlanta, I also see a lot of African-Americans do very well in a variety of professions, so it was good to see things changing.”
