<P> The flow of African Americans to Ohio, particularly to Cleveland, changed the demographics of the state and its primary industrial city . Before the Great Migration, an estimated 1.1% to 1.6% of Cleveland's population was African American . By 1920, 4.3% of Cleveland's population was African American . The number of African Americans in Cleveland continued to rise over the next 20 years of the Great Migration . </P> <P> Other northern and midwestern industrial cities, such as Philadelphia, New York City, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Omaha, also had dramatic increases in their African - American populations . By the 1920s, New York's Harlem became a center of black cultural life, influenced by the American migrants as well as new immigrants from the Caribbean area . </P> <P> Second - tier industrial cities that were destinations for numerous black migrants were Buffalo, Rochester, Boston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Columbus, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids and Indianapolis, and smaller industrial cities such as Gary, Dayton, Erie, Toledo, Youngstown, Peoria, Muskegon, Newark, Flint, Saginaw, New Haven, and Albany . People tended to take the cheapest rail ticket possible and go to areas where they had relatives and friends . For example, many people from Mississippi moved directly north by train to Chicago, from Alabama to Cleveland and Detroit, from Georgia and South Carolina to New York City, Baltimore, Washington D.C and Philadelphia, and in the second migration, from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to California . </P> <P> Educated African Americans were better able to obtain jobs after the Great Migration, eventually gaining a measure of class mobility, but the migrants encountered significant forms of discrimination . Because so many people migrated in a short period of time, the African - American migrants were often resented by the urban white working class (often recent immigrants themselves); fearing their ability to negotiate rates of pay or secure employment, the ethnic whites felt threatened by the influx of new labor competition . Sometimes those who were most fearful or resentful were the last immigrants of the 19th and new immigrants of the 20th century . </P>

The internal migrations of african americans in the united states from 1865 to 1900