The Great Migration transformed American cities and communities as millions moved from the rural South to the urban North, but few realize the vital role the Postal Service played along the way. In this episode of Mailin’ It!, we sit down with historian Jim Bruns to discuss how the mail connected families, spread opportunity, and supported economic mobility and civic engagement during one of the largest population shifts in U.S. history.
Historian Jim Bruns discusses the Postal Service’s role in the Great Migration, a decades-long movement that saw millions of Black Americans leave the rural South for cities in the North in search of safety and opportunity. This episode explores how the Postal Service became a lifeline during this era, driving expansion in urban neighborhoods and creating new employment opportunities for Black Americans as one of the few federal employers offering stability and advancement. It also examines how the mail laid the groundwork for civil rights organizing, unionization, and voter outreach by helping educate and mobilize new generations.
Karla:
Hello and welcome to Mailn’ It!, the official podcast of the United States Postal Service. I'm Karla Kirby.
Jeff:
And I'm Jeff Marino. In this episode, we're exploring a part of American history that reshaped the country. It's one that you've probably heard of, but never really given much thought about the important role that the Postal Service played in it.
Karla:
We're talking about the Great Migration, a period in U.S. history when millions of black Americans moved from the rural south to cities in the North and West throughout the 20th century. It changed families, communities, and culture. It's an interesting topic, and it's timely as we celebrate Black History Month. What fascinates me about the Great Migration isn't just how the Postal Service enabled it, but also because of the huge impact the Great Migration had on the Postal Service in return.
Jeff:
That's right, Karla, and we've got the perfect guest to walk us through it. Joining us again is Jim Bruns, president of the National Navy Museum Foundation, and former director of the National Postal Museum. You may remember him from our episode on the Postal Service’s 250th anniversary.
Karla:
I do. And he's back to help us understand how Mail helped connect people during one of the biggest population shifts in U.S. history. Jim, welcome back to Mailin’ It!
Jim:
Thank you for having me.
Jeff:
So, Jim, for listeners who may have only heard the term in history class, how would you describe the Great Migration and why was it such a big deal?
Jim:
It was a major population shift within the United States. It ranged from about 1900 to about 1970. And during that period in the 1900s, the South contained about 93% of the African American population of this country. But over a seven decade period, about 6 million African Americans left the South for the North. By 1970, only 53% of the population, black population, was in the South. This was a major exodus of African Americans from the South.
Jeff:
And why do you think that was, Jim?
Jim:
They left particularly for better jobs and less racial discrimination. The segregation under Jim Crow laws of public facilities, including schools and hospitals, the disenfranchisement including the application of poll taxes and literacy tests and voter intimidation. And there were economic and social reasons, again, for better housing, better education.
Jeff:
So, Jim, if I'm not mistaken, at the same time, cities in the North were starting to industrialize. And how was that a factor in the population shift?
Jim:
Well, the industrialization of the North also added a great deal of industry and business and commercial interests. Plus, as well the migration of rural populations, black and white to major industrial cities such as Chicago and Detroit, and some of the other industrial centers of our country, added great mail volumes to the United States Post Office Department. And those mail volumes had to be transported, sorted, processed, and delivered.
Karla:
So now that we better understand what the Great Migration was, let's talk about the different roles the Postal Service played because there were so many. For starters, mail was the main method of communication between black Americans who moved out of the South and the family and friends they left behind.
Jim:
That's absolutely true. You know, mail was principally the only means of communications for the families that stayed in the South and the family members that migrated to the North. Very few people could afford telephones. Electricity was not widely available in the 1900s, even up to the 1930s and 1940s throughout much of the South. So mail was the principal way of communicating.
Karla:
And Jim, can you touch on, it looks like there may have been also a Postal Service role in the distribution of black owned and black run newspapers?
Jim:
Absolutely. When the African American population in the South couldn't get access to a lot of public facilities and media, it had to create its own. And that was the perfect opportunity for the United States Post Office department to deliver those black-owned newspapers and specials and other forms of advertising to African Americans in the South, particularly because they couldn't get it in the white media. It just wasn't covered a lot of their stories and their lives.
Jeff:
Okay. Well, it makes sense that mail was the main way and really the only way that people could communicate over such a long distance back then. So, other than news and correspondence, didn't the Postal Service offer a reliable way for people who migrated to the North to send money back home?
Jim:
Yes. It created the money order business in the 1860s. And through the money order business you could send a certain amount, up to a certain amount to family back in the South. And you didn't have to worry about the segregation of a bank or the bank's inability to process you or serve you because of your race. Instead, all you had to do was go to the Post Office and the money was always backed by the good faith of the United States government. So, you always would get the money that was bound to be delivered to you. It also created in the South, the Post Office Department created a postal banking system in 1911, which allowed African Americans to set up bank accounts in the Post Office where the money was as reliable as the good faith of the United States. So there were a number of opportunities at the Post Office Department created for African American families that they weren't really available to them commercially in the South.
Karla:
So, Jim, what sort of effect did this big shift in population to the North and West have on the Postal Service’s ability to keep up with the demand of services in those areas?
Jim:
Well, as the African American population again, roughly 6 million people, moved to northern metropolitan areas, the northern metropolitan areas began to have substantially greater mail volumes. And the Post Office Department had to serve those in creating additional routes and local stations, substations and provide for mailing staff, delivery workers to carry the mail out to all those new residents that are coming from the South. It also provided a tremendous amount of job opportunities for African Americans to join the Post Office Department.
Jeff:
You know, we've talked about how the Postal Service was a lifeline for people and their families during the Great Migration, but it also offered up these other opportunities which benefited the Postal Service as a source of employment for the people moving from the South to the North and to the West. Is that right?
Jim:
So many of these African American Postal employees moved north with the migration and became employees of the United States Post Office Department in the North, accepting city delivery jobs, rural free delivery jobs, and as postmasters in northern metropolitan areas.
Jeff:
So what were some of the advantages of being a Postal Service employee if you were a black American?
Jim:
It brought a great deal of respect. It demonstrated that you were part of Middle America and with the acceptance of jobs as postmasters, you were also a leader within the community. And it was not uncommon for postmasters to be the highest political appointee in the local community representing the party that won the White House during that particular administration, be it for four years or be it for eight or more in the case of Franklin Roosevelt. So it was a very important position to be a local postmaster or a federal employee of the United States Government working at the Post Office Department.
Karla:
So I imagine, Jim, that would also include, you know, getting stable wages as well as civil service protections as a federal employee.
Jim:
Absolutely. Your wages were pretty much guaranteed once you moved past the substitute category. A lot of Postal employees, white or black, had to start out as substitutes where you might be on the clock for four hours and off the clock for two. So an eight hour day turned into a 10 hour day before you made your wages. But once you passed the substitute classification and you became a full-time employee of the Post Office Department, your wages were guaranteed on an annual basis set by the United States Congress.
Karla:
And so that segues into another really important topic. The role black postal workers played in civil rights organizing over time.
Jim:
The migration of African Americans to the North, and their engagement and involvement in the United States Postal Service wasn't flawless. It was a price, it was paid by our parents and grandparents who worked for the Post Office Department during that period of time. And one of the prices was that the Post Office Department especially under the Wilson administration, was highly segregated. Black railway mail clerks who had basically worked in integrated on integrated mail trains from the 1850s up to the 1900s were all of a sudden segregated because the Wilson administration believed that white employees should not have to work in the same mail car as black employees. In fact, it got so bad that white employees were screened off from African American employees during the Wilson administration and years beyond. And that was principled because Wilson brought with him an entire cabinet basically, of Southerners. Albert Burleson was a Postmaster General. He was from Texas. He used prison labor on his farm in Texas, which was predominantly black. Josephus Daniels was from North Carolina. He was a newspaper publisher in the South. And he segregated the United States Navy and McAdoo in the Treasury Department did the same thing with treasury employees. So there was a price to be paid by our, our ancestors for the integration of the United States Postal Service that came with Postal reorganization.
Jeff:
But eventually in around 1913, that led to the formation of the National Alliance of Postal Employees or NAPE. And it seems like creating NAPE or the National Alliance of Postal Employees Union proved that black workers could unionize and advocate for themselves. And it sounds like that was a start of something much bigger in terms of the overall Civil Rights movement.
Jim:
The creation of the Black Postal Union was born out of the fact that the white predominant unions of that time had a membership requirement that literally forbid African Americans from being members of those unions. Native Americans could be members of those unions, but not African Americans. And so the African Americans seeking insurance, which was one of the benefits of membership in a union, life insurance in particular, created their own union, the National Alliance of Postal Employees in 1913, specifically to provide not only representation for them as a working group, but also to provide insurance for them as well. Among the activities of the formation of the National Alliance of Postal Employees was to encourage African American Postal employees to join. And that solicitation movement led to recruitment efforts on behalf of civil rights causes both local and national. And so the unions, black unions, became very, very active in the Civil Rights Movement and organizing the Civil Rights movement that led to the actual end of what we would call the Jim Crow era. And the Great Migration in the 1970s with the civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Karla:
Well, what we do know from our civic textbooks, that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests, poll taxes, and other parts of Jim Crow that meant civil rights groups suddenly had millions of potential new voters to reach. How were those groups able to take advantage of the mail to do that?
Jim:
The mail was the great mass communicator and once you had lists of names and addresses, this was well before active use of advertising and the emails and that kind of thing, the mail was the quickest, the easiest, and the most cost effective way of reaching out to the American public, be they black or white, to get them to vote in particular ways for particular issues. So the mail was a very important way of soliciting political support and support for the movements that were so important to gaining civil rights finally for our entire nation.
Karla:
So when we look at specifically what the mail was used for, the civil rights organizations and even local political campaigns, voter registration, providing information, what other, I guess, tools were used or what other information was sent out via the mail to assist in increasing voter participation?
Jim:
Well, one of the nice things to come out of the creation of the zip code in 1963, which again, is, timed perfectly. The zip code comes out in 1963, the Voting Rights Act of ‘65, and the Civil Rights Act of ‘64, they're so perfectly timed together. And the zip code allowed marketers, mailing marketers, including political organizations and unions and other organizations that were mobilizing support for particular issues important to the United States to begin to use that data that comes from a zip code to mass market appeals. And it's almost like precision, the birth of precision bombing of America's mail. Once you had the zip code, you could actually target communities that you knew were sympathetic to your cause or interested in your cause, or were supportive of your cause. You could begin to target-mail them and that saying “birds of a feather flock together” and within a specific zip code the commonality of interests of people became very apparent to mass marketers and unions and political parties began to use that quite dramatically after 1963.
Jeff:
Okay, Jim, so we've talked about how the mail connected families, grew neighborhoods, supported the fight for voting rights. Let's jump up to 1970. In the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, how did the Postal Service itself change in ways that reflected everything?
Jim:
The Great migration actually set in motion, it provided the quality for Postal employees for the very first time. They were no longer subjected to political patronage or cronyism. They were appointed and advanced based on merit and performance. And that was a tremendous departure from the past. The Post Office Department no longer was politicized. It now became a an agency of the federal government that was operated on corporate principles with employee benefits that were uniformly applied based on the category of employment throughout the entire agency. So it was really the equalizer, the great equalizer for Postal employees to achieve what was begun with the Great Migration of people seeking better wages, better housing, better education, and better employment opportunities. It actually, we got, we got to where we needed to be, but there's still work to be done.
Karla:
So, Jim, if we wanted our listeners to take one thing away from the Postal Service’s role during the Great Migration, what would that be?
Jim:
I would say that the saying “there's always work at the Post Office” was the most important thing. The United States Post Office Department was always willing to hire men and women who were willing to work. And for many African American families that migrated from the South, the Post Office Department became a family employer where I would work for the Post Office, my son would work for the Post Office, my daughter would work for the Post Office, and my brother would work for the Post Office. It became a family affair. And that still today is very, very true. The Postal family includes many, many families of generations.
Jeff:
Jim, thanks so much for joining us on this episode. This is really informative. I think I learned a lot. It's a big refresher from my history books a long, long time ago. So, thanks for joining us.
Jim:
It's my pleasure. I hope to be invited back!
Karla:
Jim, thanks again. Always a learning experience when you join us. So thanks for participating today.
Karla:
It is time for another round of Did You Know?, when we share interesting facts about the Postal Service. Jeff, why don't you get us started?
Jeff:
Sounds good, Karla. Well, as you know, I've always been fascinated by the fact that Air Mail has been around almost as long as we've had airplanes.
Karla:
That's interesting. The Postal Service has always been pretty quick to use the latest modes of transportation to speed up mail delivery. I know we even experimented with rocket mail delivery at one point.
Jeff:
Yeah, I guess you could say that never really took off
Karla:
I imagine there weren't that many pilots back then, just in general. Glad to hear the one we're talking about was a woman. Do you have more information?
Jeff:
Well, here it goes. Katherine meant to fly the entire trip in one day and break the world's nonstop distance record at the same time. But she had to land near Binghamton, New York because she was running out of fuel. And unfortunately, it was a rough landing and her plane got damaged before the crash. She'd actually flown 783 miles in about 11 hours, which broke two American records at the time for distance and endurance. It took them another week to get her and her plane back in the air. But eventually she was able to finish the route on June 1st. And after that, she was hired as a regular mail service pilot for the New York to Philadelphia route.
Karla:
So, she was really a pioneer twice over. First as a female pilot and second as one of the first pilots for the Postal Service Air Mail. Again, very informative. Some things I didn't know.
Karla:
We've had Jim here before and I had no idea the Postal Service’s role in the Great Migration. I can see it now. It makes sense listening to him give the history, but, you know, 250 years still standing, still doing what we do.
Jeff:
Yeah, I think that was one thing for me too, honestly, it's been a long time since I've had history classes and, you know, relearning about the Great Migration. I realized it wasn't that long ago. I mean, what we just discussed happened over the course of basically 60 years. So a lot happened in a, in a short amount of time, and it honestly wasn't that long ago. And it reminds me, like you, about how integral the Postal Service has been in the history of the United States as itself, as we get close to the, the 250 year celebration of the nation. So it's a good, good, timely episode, I think.
Karla:
Absolutely.
And that's all for this episode of Mailin’ It! Don't forget to subscribe to Mailin’ It! wherever you get your podcast. To make sure you don't miss the next episode and follow along on Instagram @USPostalService, X @USPS, Facebook and Youtube.com @USPS.