Like hundreds of thousands of Black families, my paternal grandmother and several of her relatives participated in the Great Migration, one of the most dramatic population shifts in American history.

Although some Blacks left the South to pursue economic opportunities, a lot of them had no choice—it was often for safety and security, to escape overt and violent oppression. Blacks leaving the South in droves, was not, of course, the same as being sold as chattel, but it was rooted in oppression nonetheless.

Source: The Second Great Migration for Black Families Is Embracing School Choice