The Lower East Side and the Great Migration (1916)

Historians see 1916 as the start of the Great Migration to New York and other northern cities. In 1910, New York City’s Black population was 91,709, and by 1920 it had grown to 152,467 (66%). World War I was in full swing with a massive loss of life on all sides. Immigration dropped precipitously, leading to a significant labor shortage. In 1915 and 1916, severe boll weevil infestations and floods devastated southern agriculture. These disasters and oppressive Jim Crow laws drove hundreds of thousands of African Americans to flee northward.

Most Black residents lived either in the San Juan area (now Lincoln Center) or in Harlem. The seven-block corridor spanning Chrystie, Forsyth, and Eldridge Streets between Houston and Canal Streets was one of the most densely crowded urban areas in the world. The Lower East Side was home to Eastern European Jewish, Italian, and Greek immigrants, and served as a critical transition point for Black families during the First Wave of the Great Migration.

Dumbbell and rear tenements packed the area between Chrystie and Forsyth Streets. Different landlords rented to a specific European immigrant. This forced Black residents to pay inflated rents for the lowest-quality basement apartments or rear rooms. They often lived as boarders within existing households.

Eldridge and Chrystie streets were hubs for sweatshops and clothing stores. Black women found jobs in the garment sector as pressers or laundresses. Men might work as cloth cutters or fabric haulers. Black women might work as maids, cooks, and washerwomen for wealthier families uptown or within the neighborhood, while men worked as janitors, teamsters, elevator operators, and porters. White trade unions and white-collar jobs barred Black workers, but Black men found work as they had throughout the 19th century, working as longshoremen, dockworkers, and freight handlers along the bustling East River piers.