The first large movement of blacks occurred during World War I, when 454,000 black southerners moved north. In the 1920s, another 800,000 blacks left the south, followed by 398,000 blacks in the 1930s. Between 1940 and 1960 over 3,348,000 blacks left the south for northern and western cities.
<span>The economic motivations for migration were a combination of the desire to escape oppressive economic conditions in the south and the promise of greater prosperity in the north. Since their </span>Emancipation from slavery<span>, southern rural blacks had suffered in a plantation economy that offered little chance of advancement. While a few blacks were lucky enough to purchase land, most were sharecroppers, tenant farmers, or farm labors, barely subsiding from year to year. When </span>World War I<span> created a huge demand for workers in northern factories, many southern blacks took this opportunity to leave the oppressive economic conditions in the south. </span>
<span>The northern demand for workers was a result of the loss of about 5 million men who left to serve in the armed forces, also as the restriction of foreign immigration. A few sectors of the economy were so desperate for workers at this time that they would pay for blacks to migrate north. The Pennsylvania Railroad needed workers so badly that it paid the travel expenses of 12,000 blacks. The Illinois Central Railroad, along with many steel mills, factories, and tanneries, similarly provided free railroad passes for blacks. World War I was the first time since Emancipation that black labor was in demand outside of the agricultural south, and the economic promise was enough for a lot blacks to overcome their substantial challenges to migrate. </span>
Education reform during the Jackson era includes free public schools, as well as their state funding, a demand for school attendance, a longer school year, increased teacher training, moral education, which led to push for instruction of principles and morality in schools, as well as the emergence of education of children from rural areas. All this pushed the growth of private schools.
During the gilded age, thirty-one countries requested the education of children aged eight to fourteen. Many small colleges helped young people from rural areas move from rural farms to urban jobs and lives. The number of primary schools increased with state funding, and there was an increasing number of educated teachers.
