© 2025 Ideastream Public Media

1375 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115
(216) 916-6100 | (877) 399-3307

WKSU is a public media service licensed to Kent State University and operated by Ideastream Public Media.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Great Migrations: A People on the Move explores the transformative impact of Black migration on American culture and society. From the waves of Black Americans to the North—and back South—over the last century to the growing number of immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean today, the film shows how movement is a defining feature of the Black experience.

Beginning in the 1970s, South Florida saw a wave of Haitians fleeing political repression.
An important civil rights era law passed in 1965 prohibited ethnically-biased immigration laws.
Housing had always been inadequate in the Northern Black neighborhoods of the Great Migration.
Corporate support for GREAT MIGRATIONS: A PEOPLE ON THE MOVE is provided by Bank of America, Ford Motor Company and Johnson & Johnson. Major support is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Support is also provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Inkwell Society together with many of its members, and by public television viewers.
Episodes
Episode one of Great Migrations covers the first wave of the Great Migration (1910-1940).
Episode 2 of Great Migrations explores the second wave of the Great Migration (1940-1970).
Extras
The 1967 Detroit uprising was one of the most violent of the 20th century.
How a southern segregationist group took action to slow the growth of the civil rights movement.
The second wave of the great migration saw people traveling to the West,
By the summer of 1919, racial tensions in Chicago reached a boiling point.
The Red Summer of 1919 was one of the most volatile periods of our nation’s history.
Great Migrations explores how a series of Black migrations have shaped America.
Great Migrations explores how a series of Black migrations have shaped America.