Leaving the Land of Opportunity:
Arkansas and the Great Migration
DONALD HOLLEY
BETWEEN 1930 AND 1970, almost fifteen million Americans left their
homes and farms to seek new opportunities in other states, one of the largest population movements in American history.1 When popular literature
and television documentaries describe this migration, the story usually involves black migrants who ride the Illinois Central out of the Mississippi
Delta in a desperate escape from the malevolent effects of the mechanical
cotton picker.2 Yet this population movement involved more white migrants than black, and they headed to destinations all over the country.
These migrants were searching for better jobs rather than fleeing mechanization.
Arkansas’s role in the Great Migration has been a closely guarded secret, or just ignored. Perhaps because migrants made a statement about Arkansas that is unsettling, most Arkansas historians have paid little attention
to their leaving, though the migration was the largest domestic event of
World-War-II-era and postwar Arkansas. C. Calvin Smith’s study of Arkansas during World War II focuses on economic hardship and injustice
and criticizes the failure of the state government to address these issues. By
neglecting to mention migration, he ignores what people themselves did to
better their lives. For all its encyclopedic coverage, Michael Dougan’s Arkansas Odyssey makes only casual references to migration and twentieth1
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times
to 1970 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1975), Series C 59, pp. 93-95.
This is the total for migration nationwide. In this essay, migration refers in most cases to
out-migration.
2
Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it
Changed America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). See, however, Donald Holley, The
Second Great Emancipation: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black Migration, and How
They Shaped the Modern South (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000).
Donald Holley is professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. He is the author of
Uncle Sam’s Farmers: The New Deal Communities of the Lower Mississippi Valley (1976) and The
Second Great Emancipation: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black Migration, and How They Shaped
the Modern South (2000). An earlier version of this essay won the Arkansas Historical Association’s
Violet B. Gingles Award for 2003.
THE ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
VOL. LXIV, NO. 3, AUTUMN 2005
246
ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
century population changes. The textbook Arkansas: A Narrative History,
by Jeannie Whayne, Thomas DeBlack, George Sabo, and Morris Arnold,
does not even include the terms “migration” or “population” in the index,
surely an indication of perceived lack of importance.3
Other historians have treated migration at somewhat greater length.
S. Charles Bolton has, in an essay, briefly commented on population
losses during World War II and their effect on the state’s economic development. In Arkansas in Modern America, Ben Johnson declares, “The
state’s most dramatic net loss was its people,” thereby placing migration
more firmly within the framework of Arkansas history. Brooks Blevins’s
Hill Folks presents a valuable discussion of migration both into and out
of the Arkansas Ozarks, showing how population changes shaped the region.4 Yet we still lack a comprehensive treatment of migration’s impact
on the state as a whole.
Migration represents one of the most enduring forces shaping Arkansas history. Pioneers emigrating mostly from Tennessee, Alabama, and
Georgia settled the state in the first half of the nineteenth century.5 After
the Civil War, Arkansas continued to gain population from in-migration.
The state government, planters, and railroads encouraged settlement during this period, soliciting people from as far away as China, Germany, and
Italy.6 Unfortunately, good land soon ran out, leaving many of the state’s
rural areas overpopulated in relation to arable soil. The earliest out-migration, beginning in the 1890s, was in part a response to this fundamental
problem. Population losses continued in the first two decades of the twentieth century. In the 1920s, Arkansas lost almost 200,000 people, a record
high to that point. Migration slowed slightly during the depressed 1930s,
but by the 1940s, when the national economy shifted to war production, the
3
C. Calvin Smith, War and Wartime Changes: The Transformation of Arkansas,
1940-1945 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1986); Michael B. Dougan,
Arkansas Odyssey: The Saga of Arkansas from Prehistoric Times to the Present (Little
Rock: Rose Publishing, 1994), 462, 476, 591-592; Jeannie M. Whayne et al., Arkansas: A
Narrative History (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002).
4
S. Charles Bolton, “Turning Point: World War II and the Economic Development of
Arkansas,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 61 (Summer 2002): 147-149; Ben F. Johnson
III, Arkansas in Modern America, 1930-1999 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press,
2000), 48-49, 52-53, 79, 116 (quotation), 189; Brooks Blevins, Hill Folks: A History of
Arkansas Ozarkers and Their Image (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2002), 148-152, 179-191.
5
Robert B. Walz, “Migration into Arkansas, 1820-1880: Incentives and Means of
Travel,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 17 (Winter 1958): 309-324, is a pioneering study
of the subject.
6
Kenneth C. Barnes, Who Killed John Clayton? Political Violence and the Emergence of the New South, 1861-1893 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 43-46;
Jeannie M. Whayne, ed., Shadows over Sunnyside: An Arkansas Plantation in Transition
(Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993).
ARKANSAS AND THE GREAT MIGRATION
247
migration stream that had previously been a steady leak turned into a torrential flood. Arkansas, in fact, lost population in every decade between
1890 and 1970.7
Still, migration remains one of the most under-researched topics in the
state’s past. We do not know much at all about these twentieth-century migrants: where they went, why they left, who they were, what kind of work
they did, or what impact their departure had on their native state. Indeed,
we have overlooked migration’s impact on postwar agriculture, politics,
and even civil rights.
At the height of the migration, observers of the Arkansas scene were
alarmed at the state’s population losses. In 1940, University of Arkansas
rural economist William H. Metzler accurately identified the problem that
the state faced even as the Depression was ending. “Our major problem is
in agriculture,” he declared in a prophetic statement. He continued:
A study of the ratio of farm population to agricultural resources in
the state indicates that we have from 350,000 to 500,000 more
people in the farm areas of the state than can be supported at a desirable standard of living. Farm resources can be expanded but not
enough to take care of them. These people will gradually be forced
to migrate either to cities and towns or to other states.
Metzler stated flatly, “In relation to developed resources Arkansas is
one of the most over-populated states in the Union. In 1935 there was an
average of only 24 acres in crops to support each farm family in the state.
Contrast this with the average of 48 acres in crops for each family in the
United States, 76 acres per family in Illinois, 86 in Iowa, 147 in Nebraska,
and 238 in North Dakota.” As a result, Arkansas farmers were not making
an adequate living, earning a per capita annual income of $185, compared
to $503 for town people. The problem, Metzler added, was “not lack of
productivity of the soil but the fact that too many people are trying to make
a living from the existing land in cultivation.” A study of migration over
the following decade seemed to confirm Metzler’s argument, showing the
largest losses continuing to occur in the rural population.8
7
Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 93-95.
William H. Metzler, “Population Movement in Arkansas,” Arkansas Gazette Sunday
Magazine, April 7 (first quotation), 14 (second and third quotations), 21, 1940; Metzler,
Population Trends and Adjustments in Arkansas, Bulletin No. 388 (Fayetteville: Agricultural Experiment Station, May 1940); James D. Tarver, Changes in Arkansas Population,
Report Series 21 (Fayetteville: Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, 1950). Also see
Holley, Second Great Emancipation, 29-33; Carl H. Moneyhon, Arkansas and the New
South, 1874-1929 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997), 64-65.
8
248
ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
In the 1950s, the national magazine Business Week pointedly asked,
“Why do Arkansans vanish?” It was a valid question, and the answer was
easy—the lack of well-paying jobs. Arkansas’s most significant export
was not lumber, cotton, or bauxite, but people. According to Business
Week, many shrugged off population losses by saying, “We’re just getting rid of our sub-marginal people who have been displaced by machines on the farm.” But, as the magazine asserted, while the greatest
loss was in farm population, the decline was heavier among the state’s
more prosperous, better-educated farmers than among sharecroppers and
farm laborers. Young people from higher-income farm families were
more ambitious and had greater expectations than others, the magazine
argued. They tended to migrate more than any other group. “There’s
nothing for me back home,” one young migrant was quoted as saying.
“They are talking about a new factory, but I don’t think they’ll get it. I
don’t think any college graduates have ever come back to town since I
can remember.”9 In reaching these conclusions, Business Week cited information from the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, created in 1955 as a specific response to the job shortage that continued to
embarrass the state.10
Two economists, Phillips Brown and John Peterson, returned to this
subject in 1960. They found that most Arkansas migrants, like those from
other states, were young adults and very young children, and most of
them came from rural areas. During the 1950s, according to their figures,
Arkansas lost 27.6 percent of its rural population. “People have generally
left their farm homes because they have seen opportunities to earn a better living elsewhere,” they concluded. The state simply lacked non-farm
job opportunities to absorb the large numbers of people reared on and
leaving Arkansas farms.11
These studies offered worthwhile insights into the source of the migration, as well as its driving force, even as Arkansans were leaving the
state. Unfortunately, research on Arkansas migration did not continue.
The Great Migration has been explored in general works, but no fulllength scholarly study has been devoted to Arkansas’s role.12
9
“Why Do Arkansans Vanish?” Business Week, April 12, 1958, pp. 96 (first quotation), 98 (second quotation).
10
“Arkansas: State Perked Up by Rockefeller,” Business Week, December 22, 1956,
pp. 74-77; Johnson, Arkansas in Modern America, 112.
11
Phillips H. Brown and John M. Peterson, “The Exodus from Arkansas,” Arkansas
Economist 2 (Winter 1960): 10-15.
12
Chad Berry, Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2000); Jack Temple Kirby, “The Southern Exodus, 1910-1960: A Primer for Historians,” Journal of Southern History 49 (November 1983): 585-600.
ARKANSAS AND THE GREAT MIGRATION
249
Despite this lack of scholarly work, good estimates for Arkansas outmigration have been available for more than twenty-five years in a basic
census publication, Historical Statistics of the United States.13 These estimates suggest that Arkansas lost over 1.2 million people between 1920
and 1970.14 The migrants were predominatly white, totaling one in five
white residents between 1940 and 1960; but black migration was proportionately heavier, consisting of as much as a third of the statewide black
population in the 1940s and 1950s, and almost as much again in the
1960s. These numbers are staggering. If those people had remained in the
state, Arkansas’s population might be as high as 3.9 million today, instead of the 2.7 million counted in 2000.
This migration was not, of course, a movement that flowed in one direction. Hotel Arkansas was definitely not a reverse “Hotel California,”
where migrants could check out anytime they liked but could never
check in. In other words, while people were leaving, migrants from other
states were moving into Arkansas. By 1960, 417,157 natives of states
like Mississippi, Texas, and Missouri had adopted Arkansas as their
home.15 These people made up more than a fifth (23.3 percent) of the
state’s population. So Arkansas gained as well as lost migrants, but it experienced a net loss of people because more of its inhabitants left the
state than it gained from other states and from natural increase.
The use of migration estimates can be frustrating because they seem
to vary widely. Demographers use two distinct methods for making estimates, and these methods produce highly dissimilar results.16 According
to the more conservative survivor ratio method, for example, the census
bureau reported that over 320,000 people left Arkansas during the 1940s,
or about 16.4 percent of the population (table 1). Using the components
13
Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 93-95.
The total migration between 1920 and 1970 is found by adding the estimated losses
of 191,300 between 1920 and 1930 and 128,800 between 1930 and 1940 and 919,000
between 1940 and 1970 (table 1).
15
Based on analysis of Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), 1960 microdata sample. See note 18.
16
As a technique for calculating the percentage of people who survive over ten-year
periods, the survivor ratio method is based on the assumption that national survivor ratios
apply to individual states. For example, if the survivor ratio in the U.S. between the 1950
and 1960 censuses was 0.95, then multiplying the 1950 Arkansas population by 0.95
would yield how many people were expected to survive to the 1960 census. Thus, if the
1960 Arkansas population was less than the projected number, people who were missing
were defined as migrants. The components of change method requires data on births and
deaths, which are not available for Arkansas until 1930. This method calculates net migration by subtracting the natural increase (births minus deaths) from net change between, for
example, the 1950 and 1960 censuses. For further explanation, see Everett S. Lee et al.,
Population Redistribution and Economic Growth: United States, 1870-1950 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1957), 1: 15-16.
14
250
ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
of change method, which always produces higher but arguably more accurate estimates, Arkansas lost 415,000 people or over 21.3 percent of its
population in the same decade (table 1). The two estimates differ by
95,000 people, a rather large discrepancy. Still, by whatever method is
used, the 1940s and 1950s recorded the state’s highest population losses.
Table 1: Arkansas Net Migration, 1920-1970, Based on Two
Estimation Methods
19201930
19301940
19401950
19501960
19601970
Total
-191.3
-128.8
-320.4
-353.0
--
-993.5
-10.9
-6.9
-16.4
-18.5
-144.4
-95.5
-207.1
-243.8
--
-690.8
-11.3
-6.9
-14.1
-16.5
-46.3
-33.3
-116.1
-108.6
--
-304.3
-9.8
-7.0
-24.1
-25.5
--
--
-415
-433
-71
-21.3
-22.7
-4.0
-259
-283
38
-17.7
-19.1
2.7
-158
-150
-112
-32.7
-35.2
-28.9
Survivor Ratio
Total Migrants
Percentage
White
Percentage
Black
Percentage
Components of Change
Total Migrants
Percentage
White
--
--
Percentage
Black
--
Percentage
--
-919
-504
-420
-- indicates that data is not available
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial
Times to 1970 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1975), Series C 59,
pp. 93-95. Percent refers to the migrants’ percentage of the statewide population
(either total, white, or black). Foreign-born white migrants were omitted because of
their small numbers. As a result, adding white and black migrants may not equal
total migrants.
ARKANSAS AND THE GREAT MIGRATION
251
Arkansas lost a greater proportion of its African-American
population than its white population as a result of the Great
Migration. Courtesy Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System.
Published migration estimates usually cover full decades rather than
more limited periods. But we need to know more about migration during
the four years of World War II. The existence of defense jobs elsewhere
was clearly important in stimulating migration, but how important? Did
the migration halt after the war? In order to address these questions, I used
an annual estimate of the state’s population, as well as reported birth and
death data, to calculate annual variations in Arkansas migration.17
As expected, the annual estimates showed that migration has been correctly associated with World War II, during which 150,000 people left the
state. But the largest out-migration did not occur until the late 1940s, after
the war was over (table 2). After people had experienced better circumstances during the war, they did not intend to return to life as it had been.
As it turned out, then, migration did not depend on the war as its driving
force. Indeed, Arkansas lost people during the early 1950s at a slightly
17
I first determined the state’s annual natural increase (births minus deaths), added it
to the current population, and then subtracted the total from the next reported (or estimated) population to calculate net migration. For example, Arkansas’s 1950 population
was 1,909,511. The state’s natural increase that year was 36,419 (51,830 births minus
15,411 deaths), yielding a total of 1,945,930. Since the estimated population for 1951 is
1,901,000, there are 44,930 (1,901,000 minus 1,945,930) people who are expected but not
present in the state. They are defined as migrants. The source for state data is Arkansas
Statistical Abstract (Little Rock: State Data Center, University of Arkansas at Little Rock,
1986-2004).
252
ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
higher rate than during the 1940s. Over the ten years between 1946 and
1955, more than a half million people caught their last glimpse of Arkansas
in their rearview mirrors. The year of the heaviest migration was 1948,
when the state lost nearly 104,000 people. Nothing could have been more
ironic: the state’s migration peaked between 1951 and 1955, just as Arkansas officially adopted the “Land of Opportunity” as its nickname. By the
late 1950s, the population movement lost momentum as the state’s economy improved.
Table 2: Arkansas Population Losses in Five-Year Periods,
1930-1960
Population Losses
1930-1935
63,216
1936-1940
64,747
1941-1945
152,782
1946-1950
187,330
1951-1955
355,431
1956-1960
28,807
Source: Arkansas Statistical Abstract (Little Rock: State Data Center, University of
Arkansas at Little Rock, 1986-2004). Estimation Method: Components of Change.
Arkansas’s population losses can be compared with those of other
states (table 3). In the 1940s, Arkansas experienced the third largest
population loss among all forty-eight states (Oklahoma was first, and
Mississippi ran a close second). Over 21.3 percent of its population left,
a startling one in every five people. In the 1950s, Arkansas’s out-migration percentage increased to 22.7 and ranked second, trailing slightly
behind West Virginia, which lost 23.2 percent. Over the two decades
from 1940 and 1960, Mississippi’s population losses exceeded Arkansas’s by 18,000. No state, however, lost a greater proportion of its people than did Arkansas over this period. Arkansas’s loss averaged 22.0
percent per decade during these twenty years. The total out-migration
from the eleven states that lost the most people was 6,594,000; so about
15 percent of those participating in this huge population movement
came from Arkansas. However we measure it, Arkansas played a leading role in the Great Migration.
253
ARKANSAS AND THE GREAT MIGRATION
Table 3: Migration Losses, Arkansas and Selected States,
1940-1960 (1,000s)
Percent
Arkansas
415
21.3
433
22.7
848
22.0
Mississippi
433
19.8
433
19.9
866
19.9
North Dakota
121
18.9
105
16.9
226
17.9
West Virginia
235
12.4
466
23.2
701
17.8
Oklahoma
434
18.6
219
9.8
653
14.2
79
12.3
95
14.6
174
13.4
Kentucky
366
12.9
390
13.2
756
13.1
South Carolina
230
12.1
222
10.5
452
11.3
North Carolina
258
7.2
328
8.1
586
7.7
Georgia
290
9.3
212
6.2
502
7.6
Pennsylvania
355
3.6
475
4.5
830
4.1
South Dakota
1950s
Percent
Totals
Average
loss
(Percent)
1940s
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial
Times to 1970 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1975), Series C 59,
pp. 93-95. Estimation Method: Components of Change.
These figures indicate the magnitude of this migration, but they do
not tell us anything about the migrants themselves. According to the research of Metzler and others, most migrants were young people from
high-income farm families, but we need to learn more.
The opportunity to do so became available with the 1997 release of
the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series by the University of Minnesota (often called the IPUMS microdata samples).18 The data consist of
samples drawn from the manuscript census schedules. These samples
18
Steven Ruggles et al., Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 2.0 (Minneapolis: Historical Census Projects, University of Minnesota, 1997). This data may be
downloaded from http://www.ipums.org.
254
ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
cover thirteen censuses from 1850 to 1990, with the exception of the
1890 and the 1930 censuses. A fire consumed the former, and coders are
currently working on the latter. Microdata focus on the smallest units.
They are samples of households but contain detailed demographic information about individuals living within those households. Microdata are
far superior to historical census data that are available in aggregated tables for states and, in some cases, counties. Without the manuscript
schedules, which are currently unavailable after 1920, there is no way to
focus on individuals. Microdata also make it possible to examine data
from across the entire United States for a given census.19
Using the IPUMS data extraction system, researchers can create sets
of data tailored to their particular interests. Then they can analyze their
data with programs like Statistical Analysis System or Statistical Package
for the Social Sciences. I chose to study the 1950, 1960, and 1970 samples
because they cover the period when migration was heaviest. I extracted a
dataset that included individuals who were born in Arkansas but who resided in any state except Arkansas. These persons were defined as migrants. Since the IPUMS microdata include all the detail originally
recorded in the census schedules, each person in the sample is identified
by state of residence, birthplace, age, sex, race, family size, rural or urban
residence, education, and income.
Thus the depth of information is remarkable. We can know where migrants moved, i.e., to what states. We can find out if their new residence
was rural or urban, what jobs they held, as well as their income and socioeconomic status. We can also know the educational level they achieved.
Since the samples are weighted, we can estimate how many people each
sampled person represents. Though the possibilities are not endless, the
microdata contain a wealth of information never before available.
IPUMS microdata samples revealed, first of all, that the most popular destination for Arkansas migrants in the 1940s and 1950s was California, followed by three adjacent states, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri
(table 4). But every state on the west coast made the list of the top twenty
most popular destinations, along with most of the industrial states of the
Midwest. By multiplying each person in the sample by the number of
19
For discussion of microdata in the study of migration, see James N. Gregory, “The
Southern Diaspora and the Urban Dispossessed: Demonstrating the Census Public Use
Microdata Samples,” Journal of American History 82 (June 1995): 111-134; Robert Adelman, Chris Morett, and Stewart E. Tolnay, “Homeward Bound: The Return Migration of
Southern-Born Black Women, 1940 to 1990,” Sociological Spectrum 20 (no. 4, 2000):
433-463; Stewart E. Tolnay, “The Great Migration Gets Underway: A Comparison of
Black Southern Migrants and Non-Migrants in the North, 1920,” Social Science Quarterly
82 (June 2001): 235-252.
ARKANSAS AND THE GREAT MIGRATION
255
people that individual represented in the population, for example, we
find that in 1960 313,004 Arkansas natives lived in California.
Table 4: Top Twenty Destinations of Arkansas Migrants, 1960
State of Residence
Number of Migrants
California
313,004
Texas
173,535
Oklahoma
131,108
Missouri
127,280
Illinois
103,226
Michigan
72,987
Louisiana
53,855
Tennessee
47,319
Kansas
41,949
Indiana
29,884
Arizona
27,807
Washington
26,595
Ohio
23,890
Oregon
21,301
Florida
19,227
Mississippi
19,018
Colorado
15,948
New Mexico
15,942
Alabama
10,160
New York
9,867
Source: Analysis of IPUMS microdata samples. The number of migrants is the cumulative
total of persons born in Arkansas living in these states in 1960.
256
ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
This is just the beginning. An analysis of 1950, 1960, and 1970 microdata samples reveals not only characteristics of the migrants but also enables us to compare them with non-migrant Arkansans.20 Migrants and
non-migrants were about the same average age, with migrants having
slightly smaller family size than non-migrants (table 5). Whites made up
four of every five migrants, blacks one in five. Females slightly outnumbered males in all categories.
The most marked contrast between migrants and non-migrants was
their income. We must interpret reported income with caution since many
migrants (mostly children) had no income to report, but the contrast is still
striking. In 1950, migrants reported an average annual income that was 58
percent higher than the average income non-migrants earned. Migrants’ total income was 23 percent higher (table 5, part A).
By 1960, after a decade of heavy migration, the gap between migrants
and non-migrants showed increasing advantages in income for those who
hit the road. Their average income was more than 50 percent higher than
those who stayed at home (table 5, part B). Migrants were more than twice
as likely to earn an annual income of more than $5,000—an amount that
equals almost $30,000 today, or about $10,000 higher than the state’s current per capita income.21
By 1970, when the migrants were in their peak earning years, they reported an average annual income of $4,038, compared to $2,900 for nonmigrants. The mean income for migrants had increased 62 percent since
1960. Their total reported income was two and a half times higher than
non-migrants. Between the 1960 and 1970, the number of migrants who
reported earning $5,000 or more doubled (table 5).
These figures confirm that the major motive for leaving was to seek
better jobs. Between push and pull motives, pull predominated—the pull
of more money and a better life. Did migration pay off for the migrants?
Clearly it did. The migrants were looking for the money, and they found it.
Another indicator of social and economic success is the Duncan Socioeconomic Index (SEI), a constructed variable that measures occupational
status based upon the income level and educational attainment associated
with each occupation.22 In 1950, migrants’ socioeconomic status exceeded
that of natives by 22.6 percent. Ten years later, the SEI index for both
20
For non-migrants, I selected a sample of persons residing in Arkansas, regardless of
where they were born.
21
U.S Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2004-2005
(Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 2004), 434. For converting the value of
money, see the Economic History Service’s website, http://eh.net/hmit/.
22
O. D. Duncan, “A Socioeconomic Index for All Occupations,” in Occupations and
Social Status, ed. A. Reiss et al. (New York: Free Press, 1961), 109-138.
ARKANSAS AND THE GREAT MIGRATION
257
groups was higher, but migrants exceeded non-migrants by 17.1 percent.
The 1970 data show the gap narrowing to 13.2 percent.
Table 5: Migrants and Non-Migrants, Selected Characteristics,
1950, 1960, and 1970 Censuses
Migrants
Non-Migrants
Part A, 1950
Average Age
40.1
39.8
3.4
3.9
$1,342
$849
$4,206,696
$3,430,544
Income over $5,000 (number)
80
75
Income over $5,000 (percentage)
2.6
1.9
15.7
13.2
Race (percentage)
W=79.6/B=20.4
W=78.1/B=21.8
Sex (percentage)
M=47.5/F=52.5
M=49.1/F=50.9
Farm (percentage)
11.8
61.1
Non-Farm (percentage)
88.2
38.9
3,135
4,039
41.8
42.4
3.6
3.9
$2,496
$1,591
$30,343,485
$19,981,840
2,002
891
Income over $5,000 (percentage)
16.5
7.1
SEI
21.9
18.7
Average Family Size
Average Annual Income
Total Income
SEI
Number in Sample
Part B, 1960
Average Age
Average Family Size
Average Annual Income
Total Income
Income over $5,000 (number)
258
ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Table 5: Migrants and Non-Migrants, Selected Characteristics,
1950, 1960, and 1970 Censuses
Migrants
Non-Migrants
Race (percentage)
W=79.2/B=20.7
W=80.7/B=19.2
Sex
M=48.9/F=51.2
M=48.2/F=51.8
6.2
20.1
93.8
79.9
12,158
12,560
41.3
42.2
3.4
3.6
$4,038
$2,900
$63,021,008
$25,444,354
4,724
1,615
Income over $5,000 (percentage)
30.3
19.0
SEI
24.8
21.9
Race (percentage)
W=79.3/B=20.5
W=82.9/B=16.9
Sex (percentage)
M=47.8/F=52.2
M=47.4/F=52.6
4.7
9.5
95.3
90.5
15,606
8,773
Farm (percentage)
Non-Farm (percentage)
Number in Sample
Part C, 1970
Average Age
Average Family Size
Average Annual Income
Total Income
Income over $5,000 (number)
Farm (percentage)
Non-Farm (percentage)
Number in Sample
Note: The income data reported in table 5 include only persons who reported income,
including losses, for the previous year. The number of cases is also based on this sample. Migrants are defined as persons born in Arkansas who were living outside of the
state at the time of the census. Non-migrants are defined as all persons living in Arkansas whether born in the state or not. Data for income and educational attainment are
not directly comparable with the same data from other censuses.
Microdata samples also provide information about the educational
achievement of migrants. Did Arkansas lose its best and brightest people
ARKANSAS AND THE GREAT MIGRATION
259
High school graduates, like these members of the Ashdown
class of 1936, were more likely to migrate out of Arkansas
than their less educated neighbors. Courtesy Southwest Arkansas Regional Archives, Washington, AR.
as many critics have suggested? In 1950, migrants reported significant educational achievement over Arkansans who stayed at home. The microdata
indicate that 17.7 percent of migrants had completed high school and 9.8
percent had done some college work, compared to 13.6 percent of high
school graduates among non-migrants and 7.1 percent with college credit.
By the 1960 and 1970 censuses, both migrants and natives were better educated and the educational differences between them had narrowed, but
migrants still maintained their lead (table 6). The microdata do not indicate
where individuals attended school, but migrants clearly had pursued educational goals more successfully than homebodies. As has long been suspected, Arkansas seems to have lost many of its most educable people.
Higher percentages of Arkansas natives with high school diplomas and
college experience lived out of state than lived in state.
Besides earning more and achieving greater occupational status, migrants did something else: they left the farm. The microdata samples indicate that in 1950 less than 12 percent remained in agriculture,
compared to more than 60 percent of non-migrants. In 1960, only 6.2
percent of migrants lived on a farm. More than three-fourths of them
lived in urban areas. Reflecting the decline of the farm population, the
1970 census data show that less than 5 percent of migrants lived on farms
(table 5, part C).
260
ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
.
Table 6: Migrants and Non-Migrants, Educational
Achievement, 1950, 1960, and 1970 Censuses
Migrants
Nonmigrants
Difference
Average Grade Completed
11.8
10.9
0.9
Completed High School (percentage)
17.7
13.6
4.1
9.8
7.1
2.7
Average Grade Completed
12.3
11.8
0.5
Completed High School (percentage)
20.7
17.7
3.0
Attended College (percentage)
11.1
10.5
0.6
Average Grade Completed
13.1
12.6
0.5
Completed High School (percentage)
27.5
25.2
2.3
Attended College (percentage)
15.2
14.1
1.1
1950
Attended College (percentage)
1960
1970
The loss of 848,000 people in the 1940s and 1950s had a profound influence on wartime and postwar Arkansas. The absence of this vast pool of
workers created severe labor shortages, especially in agriculture. These
shortages remained critical even after the war and destroyed the old, inefficient plantation system, which had always been based on cheap labor.23
In postwar Arkansas, the number of sharecroppers and tenant farmers
plunged so significantly that by 1959 the agricultural census stopped collecting data on them. In the same period, the number of farms declined, but
the average size of farms increased. There were fewer farmers, but machines made them more productive. The out-migration solved the state’s
23
See Paul H. Williams, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Plantations,” Arkansas Times
9 (July 1983): 86-93.
ARKANSAS AND THE GREAT MIGRATION
261
longstanding problem of rural overpopulation, and did so without creating
social upheaval.
Migration and attendant labor shortages not only destroyed the oldtime plantations but also stimulated agricultural mechanization. Despite
the myth of machines displacing labor, tractors and mechanical cotton
pickers replaced labor that had already fled the farm. For example, 500,000
Arkansas natives already lived out of state by the time the first mechanical
harvesters appeared in Arkansas cotton fields in 1949. Machines did not
pick the bulk of Arkansas’s cotton crop until the early 1960s—that is, after
out-migration began to taper off. Facing labor shortages, large and small
farmers turned to machines in an attempt to stay in agriculture. Migration
made labor more expensive, motivating farmers to switch to machines.24
These extraordinary forces of change that converged in postwar Arkansas also stimulated the civil rights movement. While labor shortages
gave black workers more clout, mechanization made their labor superfluous. Jim Crow segregation, when employed as a form of labor control, had
played a supportive role in plantation agriculture. But the disappearance of
labor and agricultural mechanization signaled the vulnerability of Jim
Crow, which suddenly became an anachronism. For the first time since the
Civil War, the cotton areas of the South had less at stake in segregation,
which in turn opened the way for the civil rights movement. The civil
rights movement was the product of many forces, but migration and mechanization played key roles.25
They also contributed to political shifts. As rural communities declined, Arkansas, like other southern states, saw its population become
more urban. Congressional and legislative redistricting brought political
power to urban areas at the expense of rural Arkansas. At the same time,
the loss of population cost the state three congressional districts by 1962.
As a consequence of the Great Migration, Arkansas and the rural
South experienced a revolution that made life better for everyone, though
it is too often overlooked today and sometimes disparaged. The nostalgia
for the old homestead is clearly misplaced; small, hardscrabble farms corresponded to a lack of educational opportunity, poor housing, and low income.26 Not only did Arkansas’s migrants benefit from higher incomes and
better schools, the state began to industrialize its economy. The Great Migration embodies a remarkable success story for migrants as well as for Arkansas itself.
24
For a full discussion, see Holley, Second Great Emancipation, 97-99, 141-161.
Ibid., 185-196.
26
Arthur Raper, Machines in the Cotton Fields (Atlanta: Southern Regional Council,
1946), 19.
25