Gardens and the Great Migration
Caroline Garden Club Members, Hampton, Virginia,.1913, Courtesy of The New York Public Library
There are two important reasons in U. S. history in which southern-born African Americans migrated to the North in large numbers known as the Great Migration. Most left the south in search of better paying jobs and housing. Others started fleeing to escape oppressive race relations and Jim Crow policies between World War I and World War II. Yet southern migrants did not abandon their rural traditions such as gardening. Subsistence gardening remained a central part of their foodways when space and time permitted. Some gardened in allies, on roof tops, in make shift garden beds in front or behind their dwellings, and in abandon lots when possible.
