Here are just a few highly selective examples of second- or third-generation beneficiaries of the Great Migration who might well have languished in obscurity in the Jim Crow South: in literature, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Richard Wright; in sports, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson; in music, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross. But there was also a dark side to the Great Migration that became increasingly visible in the middle decades of the twentieth century.
