THE LAST TICK FOR SEGREGATION: Education and the Great Migration

A presentation from Tonia Merideth, M.A. Oral Historian, Wm & Mary Bray School Lab

At the beginning of the 20th century, millions of African Americans left the Jim Crow South for the economic opportunities in the North and West. Historians refer to this as the Great Migration. This presentation examines the migrations of Black professional educators into Beloit, Wisconsin, in the 1960s. With the use of oral history interviews, school-board records, newspaper clippings, photographs, obituaries, church records, and vital statistics, this presentation retraces one aspect of this fascinating migration of micro-communities within the Midwest that changed the fabric of the nation.