Avinash Moorthy (Harvard Kennedy School)

The Defender on the Move: Black Newspapers and the Great Migration

Fifty years after emancipation, nearly 90 percent of the U.S. Black population lived in the South. I test whether information on southern conditions and northern life sparked northern migration using within-city and across-county variation in exposure to the Chicago Defender, the largest and most prominent northern Black newspaper. The Chicago Defender expanded South in the mid-1910s by partnering with Black railway porters working for the Illinois Central railroad. In cities along the Illinois Central railroad, I show that otherwise similar individuals who lived near a porter carrying the Chicago Defender were more likely to migrate North. Across counties, I show that Chicago Defender penetration increased out-migration and political organization, and decreased lynchings. Back of the envelope calculations indicate that the Chicago Defender led at least 172,000 Black individuals to migrate North by 1940, caused 95 NAACP branches to open, and prevented 216 lynchings. My results demonstrate the value of information in guiding moves to opportunity.