outhern States and thus deprive them of many of
their peculiar characteristics which they have developed in the course
of their efforts to keep the Negroes in the background; and, secondly,
because it would be of benefit to Negroes, in that it would mean for
them better education, more wealth, and greater political power.[177]
It is evident that had this movement wrought such results it would
have been a social occurrence of extraordinary importance, because it
would have, perhaps, accomplished much in the way of lessening the
tense friction between the two races; but it produced no such
results. The Census of 1920 shows that the North and West had a very
large increase in its Negro population during the preceding decade,
the number being 472,448, but the Negro population in the Southern
States decreased in only a few and remained almost normal in others
while actually increasing in some of these commonwealths. In fact,
when we consider the effects of past movements upon the distribution
of the Negro population in this country, we are forced to the
conclusion that such a dissemination of this population can hardly be
accomplished through migration. According to the Federal census of
1910, in 1870 the total Negro population of the United States was
4,880,009. Of this number 4,420,811 lived in the South, and 459,198
lived in the North and West.[178] In 1910, forty years later, this
same population was 9,827,763, and of this number 8,749,427 resided in
the South, whereas only 1,078,336 dwelled in the North and West.[179]
Looking at this distribution of population from the standpoint of
percentage estimates, we find that in 1870 90.6 per cent of the Negro
population lived in the South, whereas only 9.4 per cent lived in the
North and West. In 1910, 89 per cent of the total Negro population of
the United States was living in the South, while only 11 per cent was
living in the other two sections.[180] In 1870, moreover, the number
of Negroes born in the South and living in the North and West was
149,100; in 1910 this number had increased to only 440,534.[181] This
number, however, was exclusive of that of the migrants who might have
died or returned to the South or elsewhere before the taking of the
Federal census.

Owing to a number of small and unimportant movements, and this great
movement of 1916-18, the Federal census of 1920 shows, on the one
hand, a decrease in the percentage of the total Negro population
living in so