 Because of segregation, African American men were placed in unskilled jobs and women were placed in domestic services.These conditions had little to no change from the early decades of the twentieth century, which was a powerful incentive for African American southerners to leave and go look for opportunity elsewhere.In the 1930s and 1940s, the introduction of the mechanical cotton picker and other forms of farm mechanization reduced the demand for unskilled labor in southern agriculture, leading many African Americans to seek new jobs in urban areas.