About Our Trip

Over eighty years ago, seven million African Americans from the South fled Jim Crowe, boll weevils, and the Great Flood of 1927 to pursue new opportunities in Northern factories and the service industry. Many of these migrants were from Mississippi and settled in Chicago. To teach about the historic journey of the Great Migration, we propose a field experience for Solomon students to travel to Chicago and learn about the importance of this time in American history. Students today are coming of age with many new technologies, yet fail to see history’s relevance or impact upon their lives. The Great Migration 2010 trip will focus on the extensive social, geographic, economic, and political changes that occurred as a direct result of the Great Migration in the early 20th century. Students will discover these changes are not isolated experiences rooted in the past. Rather, these are changes that have ramifications for today's world. One example is that many students have family members who still live in Chicago and other northern cities.

Now in 2010, Solomon Middle school plans to follow the historic path of migration north to Chicago, to learn about this epic time in American history and its impact upon our daily life. Prior to departure, students would research the Great Migration. African American artist, Jacob Lawrence, captured this experience of his parents and other African Americans traveling North in his sixty painting series entitled “The Migration Series.” In addition, students would research their family’s personal connection to the Great Migration through an oral history project, interviewing family members.

Traveling north via Amtrak, we would leave Greenwood and arrive in Chicago, just like African Americans traveled north on the Illinois Central Railroad eighty years earlier. Once in Chicago, we would spend time visiting the Chicago History Museum (which includes an interactive exhibit about the Great Migration), the Monument to the Great Northern Migration, Art Institute of Chicago and several colleges (University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, Columbia College of Art). During the trip, students will record their experience with a journal that will serve as a place to take notes and sketches. Upon return, students will synthesize their experiences (on the train, in Chicago, and their research on the Migration) into an exhibit for public display.