Urban Appalachians - The Great Migration

The Great Migration

Appalachians by the thousands came to the cities under a great variety of circumstances during the 19th and 20th centuries. Early migrants came in trickles one family at a time over many decades. They came in response to specific opportunities such as the opening of a factory. They came during World War I and during the prosperous twenties. They were sometimes recruited to work in a specific factory and, during World War II, thousands of Appalachians came to work in defense plants. Thousands more left the region in response to layoffs in the coal industry. When the mines shut down, some coal towns were entirely depopulated. During the 1950s, special bus runs were made to transport laid off miners and their families to metropolitan areas. It was during this 1940 to 1970 period that entire neighborhoods in the nation's cities became Appalachian, but the foundations of those communities were often laid much earlier in the century. The period from 1940 to 1970 is often referred to as "The Great Migration".