Over the last 100 years, most US blacks migrated from the South to the North. Did they find what they sought?

Yes and no. Better income and better social conditions, but also a black-white pay gap that changed little over time. Why?

Leah Platt Boustan, UCLA economist (and my friend), just wrote a book on it, Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets.

This is from James Ryerson’s New York Times review: 

In her rich and technical account, the economist Leah Platt Boustan employs the tools of her trade — resourceful matching of data sets, rigorous modeling of labor phenomena, sweeping use of census figures — to analyze the demographics and economics of the Great Migration as a whole… Her investigation both deepens our understanding of what we think we know and adds new complexities and wrinkles.

I expect it’s excellent.