They fled in record numbers. Between 1916 and 1930, more than one million Blacks moved north in the hopes of finding jobs, education, and safety. By the time Southern leaders changed tactics and decided to improve working and living conditions for Blacks instead of antagonizing them, it was too late. The Southern cotton industry was in shambles. Because the Southern elites had tied all their financial hopes to that single industry and had driven away the workforce that could have helped the region transition into new industries, the South would never be the model of prosperity it had once considered itself. And by the end of the Great Migration, more than six million people had left the South, which would be forever changed. — Mediocre, pg 114