Review 3

For almost 50 years following the end of the Civil War, the slow trickle of black migrants who left the South increased very little. Thus, 91.5 percent of all U.S. blacks resided in the South in 1870 and 89 percent in 1910. During the next decade, however, the number of black emigrants increased sharply, "pushed" by restrictive laws, violence, and near-subsistence economic conditions. Too, World War I led to a strenuous effort by northern industries to "pull" blacks and poor whites from the South.
Prior to 1914, national industrial expansion had depended on millions of European immigrants to meet the large demand for labor. More than one-third of the U.S. population in 1910 was foreign born or had at least one parent born outside the country.
.The southern economy might not have suffered from the exodus of blacks if the population involved had not also been selective. Most blacks who left were between the ages of 18 and 35. Raised in the South, this group's most economically productive years were then spent outside the region. Many of those who remained behind were in their later productive years, retired, or not yet in the labor force. Racial limitations on opportunities in professional occupations also resulted in a loss of many of the most highly trained young people from the region.