African-American Migrations, 1600s to Present | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

FREE IN THE NORTH AND SOUTH

Although Southern states made life for a free black difficult, whether denying residency or threatening re-enslavement for minor criminal offenses, more free blacks lived there than in Northern states, even through the Civil War.

When slavery was abolished at the end of the Civil War in 1865, the greatest increases in the black population of northern cities were in Cleveland, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

In 1860, free blacks numbered 488,070, about 10 percent of the entire black population. Of those, 226,152 lived in the North and 261,918 in the South.

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