why did african americans consider moving from the rural south to the urban north following the civil war?

African Americans considered moving from the rural South to the urban North following the Civil War primarily to escape racial violence, segregation, and lack of economic opportunity in the South. The South was marked by pervasive racial oppression through Jim Crow laws, lynching, and lack of political power for African Americans, making life difficult and dangerous. Additionally, push factors such as poor economic conditions including sharecropping, agricultural failures, and widespread poverty motivated migration. On the pull side, the urban North offered better job opportunities, especially in growing industrial sectors such as steel mills, railroads, meatpacking plants, and automobile industries. These jobs paid significantly more than the agricultural work available in the South. Northern companies actively recruited African Americans by offering incentives like free transportation and low-cost housing. The promise of wages, relatively less discrimination, the ability to vote, and a chance for a better life attracted many African Americans to migrate Northward. This movement is historically known as the Great Migration, which reshaped demographics and social dynamics in the United States.