But the decade of the 1940's saw the largest black migration from the South, as wartime production in industrial areas demanded labor. This would be the first time white and black workers would be working side by side. During this decade, nearly 1 million black Americans made the move from South to North. By 1950, for the first time, a third of all black Americans lived outside the South. .
The rise of black ghettos in northern and western cities may have complicated the problems of segregation and discrimination, but they also were grounds for encouragement for movements like the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s. This literary, artistic, and intellectual movement, centered in New York's Harlem, kindled a new African-American cultural identity by celebrating black traditions and the black voice. This internal migration was important not only culturally, but also one, because of its encouragement of black assertiveness, as white politicians viewed blacks as a more powerful political presence; and two, because it stimulated a national movement for civil rights. Segregation and discrimination were no longer viewed as uniquely Southern problems. .
In March of 1941, a black leader named Philip Randolph proposed a new civil rights strategy: a massive march on Washington D.C., in which blacks and sympathetic whites would demand an end to discrimination against blacks in the employment and the armed forces. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was disturbed by Randolph's proposal. The President had been trying to rise up American support for a war against Hitler and his treatment of religious and ethnic minorities. A march of this scale that would bring attention to discrimination against African-Americans could only serve to embarrass the administration and contradict what they had been preaching against. FDR called Randolph for a meeting, where Randolph made the following three demands: Immediate end to segregation and discrimination in federal government hiring, an end to segregation of the armed forces and government support for an end to discrimination and segregation in all American employment.
