Major federal civil rights laws helped dismantle legal segregation and expanded voting rights protections in the South. These changes did not end discrimination, but they reduced some of the legal barriers that had helped push Black families out of the region for decades. Over time, this made remaining in—or returning to—the South more feasible for some households.
By about 1970, the long 20th-century movement of Black Americans from the South to other regions had largely run its course. U.S. Census summaries estimate that about 6 million Black people left the South between 1910 and 1970, creating large Black communities in Northern and Western cities. This sets the baseline for understanding the later reversal back toward the South.
By the late 1970s, demographers identify a clear shift: Black net migration to the South turns positive overall. Research summarized by Brookings and other scholarship describes this as the beginning of the “New Great Migration,” driven by changing job markets, family ties, and perceptions of opportunity. This is a turning point from decades of net outflow from the South.
Mid-1970s survey-based estimates still showed net losses of Black residents from some Northern regions, reflecting ongoing reshuffling after the Great Migration era. For example, a Census report using the March Current Population Survey found net Black outmigration from the Northeast during 1975–1977. This kind of evidence helps document the transition period just before the South’s net gains became more visible.
Economic change helped pull migrants southward: many Northern industrial centers lost manufacturing jobs, while many Southern and Southwestern metros grew. Encyclopedic summaries link the New Great Migration to deindustrialization in parts of the North and expanding opportunities in the South, along with educational and political opportunities. These push-pull factors made moves to places like Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas more common.
Not all migrants were “returning” to their exact hometowns, but many were returning to the South as a region. Historical summaries note that a large share of Black migrants moving south in the late 1960s and 1970s were returning to their region of birth, while others were moving south for the first time. The movement increasingly targeted large Southern cities rather than rural areas.
Research on rural and small-town (“nonmetro”) counties shows the reversal was not limited to big cities. USDA analysis reports that by 1985–1990 there was a small net flow of Black residents back to the nonmetro South from the North and West, and the share of nonmetro Southern Black outmigrants going to other regions fell sharply by the early 1990s. This indicates a broader regional shift, even as many moves still went to Southern metro areas.
By the late 1990s, the South gained Black migrants from each of the other U.S. regions, reversing earlier decades when the South was a major net “sender.” Brookings analysis using decennial-census-era migration data highlights Southern metro areas—especially Atlanta—as leading destinations. Meanwhile, large metros such as New York and Chicago experienced sizable Black outmigration in the same period.
In the early 2000s, researchers widely used “New Great Migration” to describe the South’s Black net-migration reversal in the late 20th century. This period produced influential summaries and methods work that treated the trend as historically significant because it reversed a pattern that had dominated much of the 1900s. Naming and measuring the phenomenon helped standardize it in demographic research and public discussion.
Population distribution shifted alongside migration: after 1970, the share of Black Americans living in the South began to grow again. Pew Research Center reports an increase from about 52% in 1970 to about 56% in 2019, indicating a sustained long-term movement and/or population growth in the region. This reinforces that the change was not a short-lived cycle.
Recent synthesis pieces continue to describe the New Great Migration as an active, multi-decade pattern rather than a completed event. Brookings updates tracking migration through 2020 emphasize that the South’s net gains reflect combined push factors in some Northern metros and pull factors in Southern metros, with state-level shifts over time. The result is a durable “end state” in which the South again functions as the main demographic center of Black America, reshaping politics, labor markets, and community life across regions.
By the 2020 Census period, national reporting emphasized that the U.S. population was increasingly diverse and that major demographic change was concentrated in many metro areas—especially across the South and West. While the census story is broader than Black migration alone, it provides the backdrop for why fast-growing Southern states and metros remained important destinations. The New Great Migration story increasingly intersects with suburbanization, metro growth, and changing regional economies.
New Great Migration: Black Return to the South (1970s–present)