Opinion | The Most Overlooked Reason Black Americans Are Moving South

The air pollution in Emma Lockridge’s community in Detroit was often so bad, she had to wear a surgical mask inside her house. The smokestacks of nearby refineries and factories filled the sky outside her windows with black particles. “I couldn’t sleep because of those fumes,” she told me last year.

In 2021 she fled Detroit for Memphis (which she soon found had pollution issues of its own), joining the million-plus Black Americans who have migrated to the South in the past three decades.

This phenomenon has been called reverse migration because many Black people are returning to a region their forebears left from the 1910s to the 1970s. Between 2015 and 2020, the top six destination states for Black interstate migrants were in the South, with Georgia, Texas and Florida leading the way.

Since August 2022, I’ve crisscrossed the United States, chatting with dozens of people about this new Great Migration, what’s driving it and how it’s reshaping Southern life. While most of the research and reporting on the causes of the exodus have rightfully focused on factors like taxes and economic mobility, I’ve found that pollution is also contributing to Black Americans’ decision to move South, in a trend that worries me as much as it moves me.

As climate change takes its toll across the South, migrants may face similar pollution issues as well as environmental threats they might not have faced if they hadn’t moved. This situation demands action on the part of elected officials and local leaders who need to cut pollution and shore up these communities to withstand the worsening heat, storms and flooding. It’s the only way to ensure that Black Americans can stay long term in the Southern towns and cities they now call home.