 Due to the high rate of lynching, racism, and lack of political and economic opportunities in the South, many black southerners decided to live outside the South to escape these conditions.From 1910 to 1940, 1.5 million southern blacks migrated to urban and industrial Northern cities such as New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Boston, and Pittsburgh during the Great Migration.The rapid influx of southern blacks into the North changed the ethnic composition of the population in Northern cities, exacerbating hostility between both black and white Northerners.