Pittsburgh and the Great Migration: Black Mobility and the Automobile

During the Great Migration of 1916-1940 over two million African Americans left the American South seeking a greater quality of life, with the Steel City a major destination. Men and women packed up what they could fit in a suitcase or the trunk of a car and left behind their homes and families in search of better opportunities in the budding industries of the North and Midwest. They were escaping discriminatory laws and racial violence. Purchasing a car was one of the first things African Americans did as they moved into the middle class, providing a sense of freedom and automony unexerienced before. This mobility and the freedom to come and go as one pleases revolutionized the Black middle class in Pittsburgh and played a pivitol role in the Great Migration's effects upon the region. The Frick Pittsburgh's Car and Carriage Museum presents the harrowing history of Pittsburgh in the Great Migration and the role the car played in the growth of Black mobility and automony.