Historically in the United States, the white middle class gradually left the cities for suburban areas because of higher crime rates and perceived danger caused by African-American migration north toward cities after World War I (the Great Migration)—the so-called “white flight” phenomenon.[8]
Some historians differentiate between the first Great Migration (1910–1930), numbering about 1.6 million Black migrants who left mostly Southern rural areas to migrate to northern and midwestern industrial cities, and, after a lull during the Great Depression, a Second Great Migration (1940 to 1970), in which 5 million or more African-Americans moved, including many to California and various western cities.[9]
Between 1910 and 1970, Blacks moved from 14 states of the South, especially Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, to the other three cultural (and census-designated) regions of the United States. More townspeople with urban skills moved during the second migration.[9] By the end of the Second Great Migration, African Americans had become an urbanized population. More than 80 percent lived in cities. A majority of 53 percent remained in the South, while 40 percent lived in the North and 7 percent in the West.[10]
From the 1930s until 1977, Black Americans seeking borrowing capital for housing and businesses were discriminated against via the federal government legislated discriminatory lending practices for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) via redlining.[11][12] In 1977, the US Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to help meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.[13][14][15]
Later urban centers were drained further through the advent of mass car ownership, the marketing of suburbia as a location to move to, and the building of the Interstate Highway System. In North America this shift manifested itself in strip malls, suburban retail and employment centers, and very low-density housing estates. Large areas of many northern cities in the United States experienced population decreases and a degradation of urban areas.[16]
Inner-city property values declined and economically disadvantaged populations moved in. In the U.S., the new inner-city poor were often African-Americans that migrated from the South in the 1920s and 1930s. As they moved into traditional white European-American neighborhoods, ethnic frictions served to accelerate flight to the suburbs.[17]