About six million black Americans left the South between 1910 and 1970.
.jpg)
A route map from the South to Northern and Western cities, marked about six million.
SteelMan: The Census Bureau uses that estimate and splits it into 1910-1940 and 1940-1970.
Cut: The plate's map does not show the two waves.
The migration was two waves, not one event.
.jpg)
A timeline splits 1910-1940 and 1940-1970.
SteelMan: Census describes those two waves.
Cut: The plate does not size each wave.
War work and wages pulled migrants, and Jim Crow pushed them.
.jpg)
A factory is marked pull. A courthouse is marked push.
SteelMan: Both are standard accounts.
Cut: The plate does not weigh them.
Migrants concentrated in a few Northern and Western cities.
.jpg)
Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles are marked.
SteelMan: Those were major destinations.
Cut: The list is not a census ranking.
The South's black population share fell and the North's rose.
.jpg)
Two regional bars move in opposite directions.
SteelMan: Census region counts show that shift.
Cut: The bars are unlabeled.
Migrants followed kin, not a random map.
.jpg)
A letter points to a city where family already live.
SteelMan: Chain migration is the usual city-history mechanism.
Cut: The plate shows no network count.
Northern cities had a color line of their own.
.jpg)
A Northern block is marked restricted.
SteelMan: Covenants and violence met migrants in destination cities. The Archives page ties Northern hostility to the influx.
Cut: The plate equates that line with Southern Jim Crow. The legal regimes differed.
The larger wave came after 1940.
.jpg)
A 1940-1970 bar is taller.
SteelMan: Census names 1940-1970 the second wave.
Cut: The opened Census page does not say which wave was larger.
Defense plants in both wars recruited Southern black workers.
.jpg)
A 1917 plant and a 1942 plant.
SteelMan: War labor demand is part of both waves.
Cut: The dates are labels, not a hiring count.
A later return to the South is a different move.
.jpg)
A reverse arrow is marked after 1970.
SteelMan: Black population gains in the South after 1970 are a Census finding.
Cut: The plate does not size the return.
The migration was a labor move inside the country, not an arrival from abroad.
.jpg)
A domestic route is marked internal.
SteelMan: The Census page describes an internal migration from the South.
Cut: The plate uses that fact against a foreign-origin story. They are different centuries.
The plate says 1919 riots met migrants in Northern cities.
.jpg)
Chicago is marked July 1919.
SteelMan: The National Archives describes the Red Summer of 1919 and names Chicago as the notable Northern case.
Cut: The plate's death count is not on the Archives page. Elaine, Arkansas, was the deadliest incident the page names.
The plate says the 1943 Detroit riot was a second-wave collision.
.jpg)
A Detroit street is dated 1943.
SteelMan: Wartime Detroit took a large second-wave migration.
Cut: The plate's cause and count were not opened against a record.
Racial covenants, not only custom, kept migrants out of white blocks.
.jpg)
A deed is marked restricted.
SteelMan: Covenants were used in destination cities and were later unenforceable.
Cut: The plate does not cite Shelley v. Kraemer or a deed.
The plate says the 1968 Fair Housing Act came after the move, not before it.
.jpg)
A statute is dated 1968, after the migration arrows.
SteelMan: Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, Title VIII, on 11 April 1968.
Cut: The Act did not end the residential pattern the migration had already made.
The plate says the boll weevil pushed sharecroppers off cotton before the factories pulled.
.jpg)
A weevil is dated ahead of a factory.
SteelMan: The weevil is a real push in the rural South in the 1910s.
Cut: The plate's order is a cartoon. It is not a county series.
The plate says letters and the Defender carried the destination north.
.jpg)
A letter and a newspaper point north.
SteelMan: The Chicago Defender and kin letters are standard mechanisms in the migration histories.
Cut: The plate does not show a circulation figure.
The plate says migrants were younger and more urban than the South they left.
.jpg)
Two age bars, migrants younger.
SteelMan: Selective migration is the usual demographic finding.
Cut: The plate's bars are unlabeled.
The plate says wages were higher and housing was segregated.
.jpg)
A wage card is up. A block is marked restricted.
SteelMan: Both are documented.
Cut: The plate does not print a wage ratio.
The plate says migrants were packed into subdivided kitchenette apartments.
.jpg)
A flat is cut into several rooms, each marked rented.
SteelMan: Kitchenettes are the standard Chicago account of how the Black Belt absorbed the arrivals.
Cut: The plate does not show a rent or a crowding count.
The plate says arrival thickened a few South Side blocks rather than spreading across the city.
.jpg)
A belt of blocks is marked black, the rest of the city unmarked.
SteelMan: The Black Belt was a real residential concentration.
Cut: The plate's map is not a census tract.
The plate says the 1919 Chicago riot fixed a residential line.
.jpg)
A beach is dated 1919 and a line is drawn on a map.
SteelMan: The riot began at a segregated beach and is part of the Red Summer record.
Cut: The plate treats the riot as the cause of the line. The line was already there.
The plate says second-wave migrants went to war plants, not only to domestic service.
.jpg)
A 1942 plant gate is marked hiring.
SteelMan: Wartime manufacturing pulled the second wave.
Cut: The plate does not show an occupation table.
The plate says some unions opened to black workers in the war and some did not.
.jpg)
Two union doors, one open, one shut.
SteelMan: Wartime labor politics did split that way.
Cut: The plate names no union.
The plate says white residents left the blocks migrants entered.
.jpg)
A moving van leaves a block as migrants arrive.
SteelMan: Out-movement from central cities is a Census finding.
Cut: The plate makes the van the whole cause. Suburban jobs and highways moved people too.
The plate says postwar projects concentrated migrants a second time.
.jpg)
A project tower is marked after the kitchenette.
SteelMan: Public housing sat on the old Black Belt in several destination cities.
Cut: The plate's tower is not a housing authority map.
The plate says the regional shift is a census count, not a mood.
.jpg)
A census volume is marked 1910 and 1970.
SteelMan: The Census page is that count.
Cut: The plate does not print the region tables.
The plate says agents used the arrival to stampede white owners into selling.
.jpg)
A speculator points at a new neighbor and a for-sale sign.
SteelMan: Blockbusting is a documented real-estate practice in destination cities.
Cut: The plate does not name a firm or a block.
The plate says buyers were sold homes on contract, with no equity until the last payment.
.jpg)
A contract is marked rent disguised as a sale.
SteelMan: Contract selling was used against black buyers who could not get mortgages.
Cut: The plate does not show a contract or a forfeiture count.
The plate says federal mortgage maps graded black blocks as risk.
.jpg)
A map grades a black block D.
SteelMan: HOLC and FHA maps did grade neighborhoods, and black residence was treated as risk.
Cut: The plate says FHA. Many of the graded maps were HOLC. The plate does not show a map.
The plate says postwar highways cut through the blocks migrants had filled.
.jpg)
A highway cuts a neighborhood.
SteelMan: Urban interstates were routed through black neighborhoods in several destination cities.
Cut: The plate does not name a route.
The plate says high-rise projects replaced the kitchenettes and concentrated poverty.
.jpg)
A tower is marked after the flat.
SteelMan: Public housing was built on cleared Black Belt land in several cities.
Cut: The plate's tower is not a project list.
The plate says the factory that pulled migrants later left the city.
.jpg)
A plant gate is marked closed.
SteelMan: Central-city manufacturing employment fell after the war.
Cut: The plate does not show an employment series.
The plate says the children of migrants were born in the destination, not in the South.
.jpg)
A birth certificate is marked Chicago, parents marked Mississippi.
SteelMan: By the later censuses a large share of Northern black residents were Northern-born.
Cut: The plate does not print that share.
The plate says the regional shift is visible in the census without a narrative.
.jpg)
Two maps, 1910 and 1970.
SteelMan: The Census migration page is that comparison.
Cut: The plate's maps are drawings, not the Census graphic.
The plate says the migration moved black voters into Northern cities and changed those electorates.
.jpg)
A ballot box is marked Chicago, not Mississippi.
SteelMan: Northern black voters became a swing bloc in several cities.
Cut: The plate does not show a registration or election table.
The plate says city machines recruited the new voters.
.jpg)
A ward office is marked open to migrants.
SteelMan: Machines did register and court the arrivals.
Cut: The plate names no machine and no election.
The plate says the storefront church was an arrival institution, not only a congregation.
.jpg)
A storefront is marked church and aid.
SteelMan: Storefront churches were mutual-aid points in the Black Belt.
Cut: The plate does not count churches or members.
The plate says the Chicago Defender sold the North before the migrant arrived.
.jpg)
A newspaper is marked South, dated before the train.
SteelMan: The Defender circulated in the South and urged leaving.
Cut: The plate does not show a circulation figure.
The plate says the Illinois Central and its counterparts were the route.
.jpg)
A train is marked South to Chicago.
SteelMan: Rail corridors carried the first wave.
Cut: The plate names one railroad for a move that used many.
The plate says the first stop was kin, not a job office.
.jpg)
A doorway is marked cousin.
SteelMan: Chain migration ran through households.
Cut: The plate does not show a household survey.
The plate says Northern wages were higher than Southern farm wages.
.jpg)
Two pay packets, North larger.
SteelMan: The wage differential is a standard pull.
Cut: The plate's packets are unlabeled.
The plate says the higher wage was partly eaten by higher rent.
.jpg)
A rent bill sits on the pay packet.
SteelMan: Kitchenette rents were high relative to the wage.
Cut: The plate does not print either number.
The plate says destination schools were segregated in practice.
.jpg)
A school is marked neighborhood, and the neighborhood is marked one race.
SteelMan: Neighborhood assignment reproduced the residential line.
Cut: The plate does not show an enrollment table.
The plate says policing of the new blocks was heavier than policing of the blocks migrants could not enter.
.jpg)
Two blocks, two levels of police presence.
SteelMan: Complaint and arrest patterns differed by neighborhood.
Cut: The plate does not show a stop or arrest rate.
The plate says the South they left had a closed ballot and the North had an open one.
.jpg)
A Southern poll is marked closed. A Northern poll is marked open.
SteelMan: Disenfranchisement was the Southern regime. Northern cities registered the arrivals.
Cut: The plate does not show a registration rate.
The plate says a union card was a destination gain and not a universal one.
.jpg)
A card is marked some trades.
SteelMan: Wartime unions opened unevenly.
Cut: The plate names no union.
The plate says the policy game was an arrival economy beside the legal wage.
.jpg)
A numbers slip sits next to a pay packet.
SteelMan: Policy gambling was a real cash economy in the Black Belt.
Cut: The plate does not size it against wages.
The plate says the music moved with the migrants.
.jpg)
A Southern roadhouse and a Northern club share a song.
SteelMan: Blues and gospel circuits followed the migration.
Cut: The plate does not name a performer or a club.
The plate says the Defender's Southern edition was a recruiting sheet.
.jpg)
A masthead is marked South.
SteelMan: The Defender circulated south of Chicago and urged leaving.
Cut: The plate does not show circulation.
The plate says the migrants carried institutions as well as labor.
.jpg)
A church, a paper, and a union card are on the train.
SteelMan: Those institutions did travel.
Cut: The plate lists three and calls them the move.
The plate says employers used black migrants as strikebreakers and the unions remembered it.
.jpg)
A plant gate is marked scab, aimed at arrivals.
SteelMan: Some firms did recruit black workers to break strikes, and some unions cited that.
Cut: The plate makes one gate the cause of union exclusion.
The plate says the Chicago riot drew a line that later covenants followed.
.jpg)
A 1919 line is copied onto a deed.
SteelMan: The riot and the covenants both enforced a residential line.
Cut: The plate makes the riot the author of the covenant. Covenants predate and outlast 1919.
The plate says migrants built a second city inside Chicago rather than joining the first.
.jpg)
A South Side grid is marked separate.
SteelMan: The Black Belt functioned as a city within the city.
Cut: The plate's grid is not a tract map.
The plate says the concentration is visible in tracts, not only in anecdotes.
.jpg)
A tract is shaded.
SteelMan: Census tracts do show the concentration.
Cut: The plate does not print a tract number or a share.
The plate says after 1970 the net flow turned back toward the South.
.jpg)
A reverse arrow is marked after 1970.
SteelMan: Census region counts show Southern black population gains after 1970.
Cut: The plate does not size the return.
The plate says the later move was to the suburb, not back to the rural South.
.jpg)
A van is marked suburb.
SteelMan: Suburbanization and return migration are both real and are not the same move.
Cut: The plate folds them together.
The plate says Great Migration is the name of a census shift, not a mood.
.jpg)
A title sits on a 1910-1970 count.
SteelMan: The Census page uses that name for the 6 million estimate.
Cut: The plate's title does not replace the table.
The plate says the sequence is a description of a move, not a verdict on the people who moved.
.jpg)
A route map sits under a crossed-out verdict.
SteelMan: A migration count does not try a person.
Cut: The plate's rule is a reading rule. It is not a new count.
The plate says Mississippi went from 56 percent black in 1910 to 37 percent in 1970, and that about 100,000 black Mississippians left by 1920.
.jpg)
Two pies, 56/44 and 37/63, and a line of travelers. The 1920 note says about one-fifth of that wave's Southern total.
SteelMan: A large Mississippi out-migration is the standard census account.
Cut: The plate's percentages and the 100,000 were not opened against a census table.
The plate says South Carolina fell from 55 percent black in 1910 to roughly 30 percent in 1970, along the coastal railroads to Washington, Philadelphia, and New York.
.jpg)
Two pies and a rail map up the coast.
SteelMan: The coastal corridor was a real route.
Cut: The plate's 55 and 30 were not checked against a census table.
The plate says Georgia lost 74,000 black residents in 1910-1920 and 260,000 in the 1920s, and fell from 45 percent black to 26 percent by 1970.
.jpg)
Two county tables and two pies.
SteelMan: County net-loss tables are the right unit.
Cut: The plate's county figures were not opened against a census table.
The plate says the Southern labor loss was a series of turns from 1865 to the 2000s, not one departure.
.jpg)
A trough leaks at emancipation, the 1890s, 1910s-1920s, the 1940s, the 1960s-1970s, and the 1980s-2000s.
SteelMan: The migration had more than one cause and more than one decade.
Cut: The plate's later leaks, globalization and a long-term exit, are outside the 1910-1970 census definition.
The plate says the boll weevil and Mississippi floods destroyed the cotton engine and sent labor to the depot.
.jpg)
A weevil is dated 1910s and 1920s. A flood gauge is marked catastrophic. A train waits.
SteelMan: Both shocks hit Black Belt cotton.
Cut: The plate's 'practically overnight' and the flood gauge are not a crop series.
The plate says the mechanical picker let landowners evict sharecroppers and fed the post-1940 wave.
.jpg)
A picker, a mass-eviction sign, and a train marked Chicago.
SteelMan: Mechanical harvesting did reduce tenant labor after 1940.
Cut: The plate's 'whole new generation' is not a count of evictions.
The plate says planters tried to stop the departure once the labor left.
.jpg)
A planter and a politician hold a ledger. A ticket window is locked.
SteelMan: Coercion at depots is part of the migration record.
Cut: The plate's quotation is not tied to a statute or a named official.
The plate says Southern towns banned the Chicago Defender, seized it from trains, and jailed readers.
.jpg)
Three panels: a ban stamp, a mailbag emptied, an ordinance in Oakdale.
SteelMan: Defender circulation was interfered with in the South.
Cut: The plate's ordinance number, fine, and Oakdale sign were not opened against a town record. The paper date on the drawing is 18 May 1929.
The plate says Southern cities set license fees, illustrated at $2,500, or jailed agents handing out northbound tickets.
.jpg)
An agent with free tickets faces a fee sign and a cell.
SteelMan: Recruiting agents were licensed and harassed.
Cut: The plate's $2,500 is its figure, not a cited statute.
The plate says police and mobs tore up tickets and used vagrancy charges to send migrants back to the fields.
.jpg)
Torn northbound tickets and a vagrancy statute sit at a depot gate.
SteelMan: Depot interference is documented in migration accounts.
Cut: The plate's statute is labeled a Southern county, not a named code.
The plate says the center of gravity moved from rural Southern fields to metropolitan centers by 1970, despite the depot locks.
.jpg)
A broken depot lock, a map, and a 1970 city cluster.
SteelMan: The Census migration page describes that regional shift by 1970.
Cut: The plate's 'center of gravity' is a drawing, not a computed centroid.
The plate says 1910-1960 and 1960-1985 are different crime ledgers and should not be one story.
.jpg)
Two books. The first marks crime low to rising. The second marks it high to very high.
SteelMan: The homicide rise of the 1960s-1980s is a different decade from the first wave.
Cut: The plate's cell labels are not a published table.
The plate says crime changes were written by how destination cities received the migrants, not by the train itself.
.jpg)
Scholars point from the train to population spikes, economic shifts, and segregation.
SteelMan: Reception conditions are a real variable.
Cut: The plate states the scholars' conclusion. It does not show their test.
The plate says Northern black population rose from 1910 to 1960 while violent crime did not spike with it.
.jpg)
A rising population line and a flat crime line at about 125 per 100,000.
SteelMan: A flat line would cut a simple 'the migrants brought the spike' claim for that period.
Cut: The plate's flat line and the 125 mark were not opened against a crime series.
The plate says migrants from the same Southern towns built church, club, and neighborhood nets in Bronzeville and Harlem.
.jpg)
Two grids feed a shield marked defense against crime. A book is marked MIT Press.
SteelMan: Chain migration did cluster kin and townspeople.
Cut: The plate names no study. The shield is the cartoon's conclusion.
The plate says denser hometown networks correspond to a 21 percent homicide drop and a 20 percent drop in motor-vehicle theft.
.jpg)
Two gauges and a note that data show the correspondence.
SteelMan: A network-density finding of that shape exists in the migration-and-crime literature.
Cut: The plate's 21 and 20 were not opened against the paper. The MIT Press label on the previous plate is not a citation.
The plate says neighborhood offense rates stayed low from 1910 to 1940 while black migrant incarceration and a Riverside police roster rose.
.jpg)
Two tables and a roster from 320 to 1,720 officers. A book is marked Harvard research.
SteelMan: Policing and incarceration can rise without an offense rise.
Cut: The Riverside roster prints 1,150 as 1,15. The city and the Harvard book are not named. The figures were not opened.
The plate says the cities filled by 1970, then job loss, concentrated poverty, and a crime spike followed from the 1960s to the 1980s.
.jpg)
Four panels: census spike, closed plant, projects, a rising crime line.
SteelMan: Deindustrialization and the later crime rise are separate from the first-wave arrival.
Cut: The plate's crime line is unlabeled. Filling the city is not the cause of the later spike.
The plate says the children of early migrants hit peak crime ages and the national homicide rate doubled from 5.1 in 1960 to 10.2 in 1980.
.jpg)
An age stack, a clock marked 15-34, and a youth-boom bar from 100 to 148.
SteelMan: Age structure moves homicide rates. The national rate did rise sharply after 1960.
Cut: The plate's 5.1, 10.2, and 40 percent were not opened against a vital-statistics table.
The plate says the second wave arrived as auto, steel, and manufacturing gates closed.
.jpg)
A 1940s-50s gate, a late-1960s lock, and a falling help-wanted line.
SteelMan: Northern manufacturing employment fell after the arrival decades.
Cut: The plate's 'as the mills went dark' compresses two decades into one gate.
The plate says the later collapse was fenced into redlined zones, and property and violent crime were the primary driver.
.jpg)
Redlines, cracked columns, white flight, and a fenced project.
SteelMan: Segregation concentrated the later job loss.
Cut: The plate's 'primary driver' is its label. It does not show a decomposition.
The plate says from the 1990s the center of gravity moved south toward Atlanta, Charlotte, and Houston, and Northern crime fell with the thinning.
.jpg)
A map, a thinning Northern core, a filling Southern metro, and a post-1990 crime decline.
SteelMan: Black population gains in Southern metros after 1970 are a Census finding, and Northern crime fell after the early 1990s.
Cut: The plate draws the crime drop as the map's result. It marks the drop 'not a single cause' and then writes it as one.
The plate says New York and Chicago thinned after the 1990s and violent crime halved.
.jpg)
Outward arrows, a falling curve, and boxes for revitalization, aging, and population shifts.
SteelMan: Both cities lost central-city population and recorded large crime drops.
Cut: The plate's 'halved' is not tied to a series or a year.
The plate says the later Southern wave was college-educated and suburban, and regional crime did not follow the census growth.
.jpg)
Atlanta, Houston, Charlotte, Dallas, and Raleigh are listed. A population bar rises and a crime line does not.
SteelMan: The later Southern gain was more middle-class than the 1920s tenement belt.
Cut: The plate's crime line is unlabeled. Suburban form is not a crime result.
The plate says Sowell, Williams, and Murray read the post-1960 household shift as an unintended result of civil-rights and welfare statutes.
.jpg)
Three books, a statute machine, and two rising lines, crime and family disruption.
SteelMan: That is a real school of argument, and the plate labels it not the only cause.
Cut: The plate does not cite a page. The two lines are not a published pair.
The plate says Great Society and AFDC rules changed the household price, paying more when the household split.
.jpg)
A scale weighs two-parent earnings against benefits if the household splits.
SteelMan: AFDC eligibility did treat an able-bodied man in the home as a reason to cut the grant.
Cut: The plate calls that the cause of the household shift. It shows a price, not a count.
The plate says the rule treated a man's presence as income and paid more when he was gone.
.jpg)
A man leaves, benefits stay with the single household.
SteelMan: The man-in-the-house rule was a real eligibility rule.
Cut: The plate equates the rule with the marriage decline. The rule is not the time series.
The plate says two-parent households held under Jim Crow and broke after the 1960s program expansion, across races and most sharply in cities.
.jpg)
A high two-parent mark before the 1960s, then rising single-parent and out-of-wedlock lines.
SteelMan: The out-of-wedlock share rose after 1960 for more than one group.
Cut: The plate's lines have no data marks. Segregation did not end in 1960, so the before-and-after is the cartoon's.
The plate says father-absent households and the violent-crime line moved together from 1960 to 1990, and that this is a correlation, not the only cause.
.jpg)
Two rising lines and a note that correlation is the claim.
SteelMan: The two series did rise over those decades.
Cut: The plate's parallel lines are not a coefficient. Homicide later fell while the household measure did not.
The plate says loss of the two-parent household correlates with higher delinquency, lower graduation, and higher later incarceration.
.jpg)
A broken guardrail and three small charts.
SteelMan: Those correlations are reported in several datasets.
Cut: The plate's charts have no numbers. Correlation is not the first police force the block lost.
The plate says fatherless households rose in the 1960s-1970s and the urban crime wave followed in the 1970s-early 1990s.
.jpg)
A rising household line marked precedes a later crime wave. A box marks the competing economic view.
SteelMan: Sequence is the plate's argument, and it prints the competing view.
Cut: A lead is not a cause. The crime wave also had an age and a job component the plate has already drawn.
The plate says the 1960s changed police procedure, bail, and juvenile court as well as welfare, with arrests up and convictions down.
.jpg)
A courthouse, three rule cards, and an open ledger.
SteelMan: Procedure did change in that decade.
Cut: The plate's arrows are not a court table. It labels this the critics' next point, not a finding.
The plate says Warren Court rules on search, interrogation, and exclusion rewrote the beat where the street was already unstable.
.jpg)
A gavel, a rights book, and a cracked column.
SteelMan: Those doctrines are real and date from that court.
Cut: The plate does not name a case. A new rulebook is not a measured drop in certainty.
The plate says crime rose when swift and certain punishment lost its gear, not only because the cohort arrived.
.jpg)
Broken gears marked swift and certain, and a rising crime bar.
SteelMan: Certainty of punishment is a standard deterrence claim.
Cut: The plate shows no clearance or sentence series. The view is labeled as a view.
The plate says one side reads the welfare check as a split incentive and the other reads the pink slip as the wage that held the home.
.jpg)
Two scales, same years, late 1960s-70s.
SteelMan: Both mechanisms were operating in those years.
Cut: The plate asks which moved first and does not answer.
The plate says deindustrialization and redlining, and welfare and family breakdown, share the years and not the first cause.
.jpg)
Two stones. The fault is marked not closed.
SteelMan: That is the actual split in the literature.
Cut: The plate does not adjudicate it. The last line says the city's ledger is read through one lens.
The plate says from 1960 to 1980 two-parent black children fell from about two-thirds to about two-fifths, nonmarital black births rose from about a quarter, and the homicide rate went from 5.1 to 10.2.
.jpg)
Three charts labeled Census, NCHS, and FBI UCR.
SteelMan: Those series did move in that direction in that window.
Cut: The plate's marks were not opened against those tables. The timeline is a clock, as the caption says, not a cause.
The plate says the two-parent house was the norm before 1960 and ceased to be the default after, faster for black households.
.jpg)
A 1960 break and three falling or rising arrows. The black line is mislabeled on the plate.
SteelMan: The direction is the usual census story.
Cut: The plate has no percentages. The black-series label is garbled, so the drawing is not a table.
The plate says about 61 percent of black adults were married in 1960 and about 78 percent of black children lived with both parents.
.jpg)
Two bars, men about 63 and women about 60, nonwhite 14-plus. A note says other series put children near two-thirds.
SteelMan: A 1960 baseline is the right comparison year.
Cut: The plate prints two child figures, 78 and two-thirds. They are not the same series, and neither was opened.
The plate says the two-parent share for black children fell from 78 percent in 1960 to 33 percent by the mid-1980s, and the single-parent or no-parent share rose from 22 to 67.
.jpg)
Two stacked bars and a falling marriage line.
SteelMan: The direction and the rough magnitude are the usual report.
Cut: The plate's 78 conflicts with its own two-thirds note on the previous plate. The mid-1980s bars were not opened.
The plate says the FBI homicide rate nearly doubled from 5.1 in 1960 to 10.2 in 1980, in the same window as the household pivot, and concentrated in the migration hubs.
.jpg)
A UCR line, a clock marked 1960-1980, and New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles.
SteelMan: The national rate did rise sharply in that window.
Cut: Same window is not the same cause. The hub claim is not a city table.
The plate says Sowell and Walter Williams reject slavery and Jim Crow as the residual cause because the household break came a century after emancipation.
.jpg)
A timeline from 1865 to 1960-1980 and a rejected card.
SteelMan: The timing argument is their actual claim.
Cut: The plate does not cite a book or a page. A later break does not by itself name the 1960s as the cause.
The plate says the sequence is AFDC expansion, a marriage penalty, household erosion, then a crime spike from 125 incidents in 1960 to 1,450 in 1980.
.jpg)
Four steps and a ledger.
SteelMan: The man-in-the-house rule and the later crime rise are both real.
Cut: The plate's incident column is unlabeled and was not opened. The arrows are Sowell's sequence, not a test.
The plate says AFDC paid the woman-and-children household in full and cut the household with an able-bodied man present.
.jpg)
Two households and a Great Society fountain.
SteelMan: That eligibility difference existed.
Cut: The plate calls it the cause of dissolution. It shows a price difference, not a household count.
The plate says the benefit check took the wage earner's place and subsidized the father's absence.
.jpg)
A man leaves, a check arrives, an absent figure remains.
SteelMan: A grant can replace a wage in the household account.
Cut: The plate equates the accounting identity with the cause of absence.
The plate says the fatherless house, missing a guardrail, a wage, and socialization, is the belt that feeds the docket.
.jpg)
A conveyor from a house to a courthouse.
SteelMan: Household structure correlates with later offending in several datasets.
Cut: The plate draws a conveyor, not a path. The street is removed by the caption, not by a test.
The plate says Sowell treats father absence as the risk for disorder, truancy, gangs, and incarceration, across white, black, and Hispanic children.
.jpg)
A house with a missing parent and four risk bars.
SteelMan: The comparative claim is his.
Cut: The plate says drastically higher and cites no table. Parental absence is not separated from income.
The plate says the 1970s-1980s age wave met a broken paternal rail and the city paid the sum.
.jpg)
A crowd, a broken fence, and a crime spike.
SteelMan: Age structure and household change overlapped those decades.
Cut: The plate adds the two effects. It does not show the sum.
The plate says the critique is that the court's new rulebook arrived in the same decade as the household break, not that civil rights were a mistake.
.jpg)
Two books joined by a ring.
SteelMan: The caption states that limit.
Cut: Same hour is not a cause. The plate names no case.
The plate says courts rewrote pretrial rules, bail, sentencing discretion, and review, aimed at racial disparity in the docket.
.jpg)
A courthouse spills rules onto a scale marked judicial leniency.
SteelMan: Procedure did change, and disparity was the stated concern of some reforms.
Cut: The plate's higher-impact and lower-impact bars are empty. Leniency is the cartoon's label.
The plate says Sowell treats weakened local authority and less certain punishment as a falling price, and crime as the quantity.
.jpg)
A broken precinct wall, gears marked swift and certain, and a price tag.
SteelMan: That is a price theory of offending.
Cut: The plate shows no price and no quantity. The account is labeled as an account.
The plate says the dispute is which line was the engine: welfare then family then crime, or job loss then family strain then welfare.
.jpg)
Two sequences on a clock.
SteelMan: Both sequences are argued.
Cut: The plate does not time the lines. It states the dispute.
The plate says the counter-camp reads the check as a survival payment after the wage left, not as the reason the man left.
.jpg)
A closed plant, a man weighed as not a viable partner, and a survival check.
SteelMan: Job loss is a real competing cause.
Cut: The plate's title says employment destroys the family. The drawing says the loss of employment does. The $0.00 envelope is not a wage series.
The plate says marriage fell and nonmarital births rose in Europe and among white Americans in the 1960s-70s, so the engine cannot be only AFDC.
.jpg)
A European map and a U.S. map, plus individualism, contraception, and secular shift.
SteelMan: The retreat from marriage was not U.S.-black-only.
Cut: The plate names Paris and Peoria and shows no rates. A shared wave does not clear a U.S. price effect.
The plate says both engines, the rule and the wage, claim the same household split and the same crime graph.
.jpg)
Two machines and one house.
SteelMan: That is the unresolved split.
Cut: The plate does not pick a first cause. The last line states the debate.
The plate says AFDC families rose from about 1.0 million in 1965 to 3.3 million in 1975, recipients from about 4 to 11 million, and outlays from $0.6 billion to $6.5 billion, while a family-stability index fell.
.jpg)
Three charts, one labeled HHS ACF caseloads.
SteelMan: Caseloads and outlays did rise after 1965.
Cut: The stability index is unlabeled. The outlay table says more than tenfold in real terms and was not opened. A parallel is not the price change.
The plate says welfare outlays and the homicide rate, 5.1 to 10.2, rose together from 1960 to 1980, and that correlation is the fact.
.jpg)
Two rising lines. The caption says causation remains the debate.
SteelMan: The caption already limits the claim.
Cut: The outlay line is unlabeled in dollars on the points. Same window is the record the plate claims, not a cause.
The plate says AFDC went from $5.4 billion and 3.0 million people in 1960 to $16.8 billion and 10.7 million in 1980, while the homicide rate doubled.
.jpg)
A pivot window with two pairs of boxes.
SteelMan: The direction matches the caseload plates.
Cut: The 1960 $5.4 billion box conflicts with the next plate's 1960 figure used as 1960 and the 1970 $16.8 billion. The homicide box says doubled and does not print the rate.
The plate says federal public assistance was flat before 1965 and rose after the War on Poverty statutes.
.jpg)
A flat line, a gavel, and a rising caseload.
SteelMan: 1965 is the statutory hinge.
Cut: The chart has no scale. Flat is the drawing.
The plate says AFDC recipients rose from roughly 3 million in 1960 to 10.5 million in 1980, more than tripled, faster than population.
.jpg)
Two stacks.
SteelMan: A tripling of the roll is the plate's fact.
Cut: The 3 million and 10.5 million were not opened against an HHS table. Panel 114 prints about 4 million recipients in 1965, so the series is not one number.
The plate says federal AFDC benefits in constant 1996 dollars rose from $5.4 billion in 1960 to $16.8 billion in 1970, and that 1970 welfare spending rose 31.6 percent.
.jpg)
Two coin stacks.
SteelMan: An inflation-adjusted rise is the right comparison.
Cut: The $16.8 billion is dated 1970 here and 1980 on panel 116. The 31.6 percent is not sourced.
The plate says the broad social-welfare share of the federal budget rose from 26 percent in 1950 to 55 percent in 1975, and that this is not AFDC alone.
.jpg)
Two pies. The note says broad category.
SteelMan: The share did rise as Social Security and Medicare entered the budget.
Cut: The plate's 26 and 55 were not opened. A budget share is not an AFDC price.
The plate says the FBI homicide rate rose from 4.8 per 100,000 in 1960 to 10.2 in 1980, at the same angle as the spending bars.
.jpg)
A rising line labeled Uniform Crime Reports.
SteelMan: The national rate did rise in that window.
Cut: Earlier plates print 5.1 for 1960, not 4.8. Same angle is the cartoon. The rate was not opened.
The plate says robbery and property crime in Chicago, Detroit, and New York rose on the same pitch as the homicide line from the 1960s to the 1980s, and labels the cities Great Migration destinations.
.jpg)
Three unlabeled rising curves over the three skylines. A banner says Yale Department of Economics.
SteelMan: Robbery and property crime did rise in those cities in that window.
Cut: The curves have no scale. Exponential is the caption. Yale Department of Economics is a label, not an opened paper. Destination city is not a cause.
The plate says free-market critics treat the spending line as the price change that produced the crime line.
.jpg)
A machine joins two rising charts.
SteelMan: That is their claim, and the plate labels it a critique.
Cut: The charts have no scale. Overlap is not a price.
The plate says the $16.8 billion AFDC pool paid on the condition that the wage earner was not in the house.
.jpg)
A vault, a man-in-the-house window, and a father leaving.
SteelMan: The eligibility rule did cut the grant when an able-bodied man was present.
Cut: The $16.8 billion is the same figure dated two ways on earlier plates. The rule is not the distribution of that sum.
The plate says when cash, food stamps, and Medicaid peaked in the early 1970s, the split household paid more than the married one.
.jpg)
A scale and a man leaving.
SteelMan: Stacked benefits could exceed a low wage.
Cut: The plate shows no benefit schedule and no wage. Peak is the caption's date.
The plate says spending passed through the father-absent household rate, from about 22 percent to over 60 percent in urban communities, before the crime chart.
.jpg)
Three charts and a generational arrow.
SteelMan: The household shift did precede the later crime peak.
Cut: The 22 and 60 were not opened. The spending bars have no unit.
The plate says the first link is truancy and dropout, not the street, for a household without a father.
.jpg)
An empty desk and two gauges.
SteelMan: School absence correlates with later offending.
Cut: The gauges have no numbers. Far more prone is the arrow's label.
The plate says the street gang replaced the household and the next bars are delinquency and violent crime.
.jpg)
A gang on a porch and two unlabeled bar charts.
SteelMan: Gangs did function as a substitute peer group.
Cut: The bars have no scale. The chart does not record a sequence.
The plate says this viewpoint's sentence is spending, then family erosion, then missing rails, then the docket, and that spending funded the erosion rather than failing to end poverty.
.jpg)
A faucet marked trillions since 1965, a broken rail, and a docket book.
SteelMan: The sentence is the viewpoint, as the caption says.
Cut: Trillions is not a table. The faucet does not show a causal step.
The plate says housing, schools, police, and labor markets were effective at exclusion, while HEW, AFDC, food stamps, and Medicaid scaled transfers from 3 million to 10 million, and courts rewrote procedure.
.jpg)
Three columns of one state.
SteelMan: The three desks did different work.
Cut: The 3 million and 10 million are the earlier plate figures, still unopened. Effective at harm is the cartoon's verdict.
The plate says 'systemic' cannot mean both a machine that cannot see black distress and a machine that tripled caseloads and outlays.
.jpg)
A blind machine and a benefit press.
SteelMan: The word is being used for two operations.
Cut: The plate does not show that the transfer desk caused the distress it paid.
The plate says one camp flattens market, local government, and police into one racist system, and the other marks the transfer state as the decisive structure and police as a weakened rail.
.jpg)
Two steamrollers and the same charts.
SteelMan: The divide is a real split in the argument.
Cut: The plate calls one a blob and the other honest. That is its ranking, not a test.
The plate says AFDC already existed in 1935, the 1960s held several clocks, marriage fell in white America and Europe, and the homicide-outlay parallel does not settle the engine.
.jpg)
Four panels. The homicide line is marked about 5 to about 10.
SteelMan: A crowded decade cuts a single-cause story.
Cut: The about-5 and about-10 are the plate's marks. Parallel is real is the caption's claim, not a coefficient.
The plate says one sentence is that institutions fail to allocate jobs, housing, and schools by race, and the other is that they succeed at allocating checks to the resulting distress.
.jpg)
A locked opportunity gate and an open transfer window.
SteelMan: The two capacities can both be true.
Cut: The grid of X marks is not an allocation table. The hole-it-helped-dig line is the plate's inference.
The plate says the contradiction is kept by one word, and the exits are two states, dropping 'systemic' as a single adjective, or treating the welfare expansion as also racialized.
.jpg)
Three doors. Sowell's terrain is design of the transfer, not only the existence of poverty.
SteelMan: The plate states the choice.
Cut: Pick a door is a slogan. It does not test the three exits.
The plate says job loss can raise caseloads and eligibility rules can still change the price of an intact household, in the same 1960s-1970s.
.jpg)
Two arrows into one decade.
SteelMan: Both mechanisms can operate at once.
Cut: The plate does not weight the arrows.
The plate says a total description of the American state as systemic racism does not fit a welfare explosion in caseloads and real outlays.
.jpg)
A stamp and a rising volume chart.
SteelMan: A total adjective has to cover the transfer desk.
Cut: The chart has no units. An explosion in transfers does not by itself clear exclusion in housing or policing.
The plate says dropping the total description removes the anomaly and also removes the single villain.
.jpg)
A broken 'one system' stone and two separate cards, local exclusion and federal transfers.
SteelMan: Splitting the desks is the plate's method.
Cut: The plate does not show that the better model has been specified.
The plate says Detroit and Chicago turned from mid-century industrial powerhouses to struggling cities, with population loss and rising crime, and the fight is which clock turned them.
.jpg)
Two city pairs and a stack of books.
SteelMan: Both cities lost industrial employment and population after mid-century.
Cut: The plate shows no dates and no rates. The fact of the turn is its caption, not a table.
The plate says the decline is mapped as demographic shift, then infrastructure policy, then civil unrest, then an exodus of private capital, and that which step is the engine remains the argument.
.jpg)
Four steps in a row.
SteelMan: The caption already refuses a single engine.
Cut: The order is the map. It is not a dated sequence.
The plate says Detroit's population peaked in 1950 at 1.85 million, under housing pressure in a wartime and postwar boom.
.jpg)
A crowded skyline and a packed apartment block.
SteelMan: Detroit did peak near mid-century.
Cut: The 1.85 million was not opened against a census table. Housing pressure is the gauge, not a vacancy rate.
The plate says the second Great Migration opened the plant gate while HOLC redlining and municipal covenants kept the address book closed.
.jpg)
A plant gate, a redlined map, and a locked white neighborhood.
SteelMan: Redlining and covenants did restrict purchase.
Cut: Millions is the arrow's word. The map is a drawing, not a HOLC sheet.
The plate says the wall raised the rent and the density of the rooms left inside.
.jpg)
A locked grid, a crowded block, and a rent thermometer.
SteelMan: A closed housing market can raise rent on the open side.
Cut: The thermometer and the density dots have no numbers.
The plate says industry left multi-story urban plants for single-story suburban plants before the late-1960s rupture and before major civil-rights legislation.
.jpg)
A truck arrow from a city plant to a suburban auto plant.
SteelMan: Plant suburbanization did begin before 1964.
Cut: Well before is the caption. The drawing has no year for the move.
The plate says the GI Bill and the Interstate Highway Act subsidized suburban homeownership and the road out.
.jpg)
A Treasury pipe into mortgages and a highway to suburban plants.
SteelMan: Both statutes did finance suburban growth.
Cut: The plate does not show who was excluded from the mortgage pipe.
The plate says the job moved and exclusionary zoning plus mortgage access decided who could follow, leaving others in the city as the tax base eroded.
.jpg)
Two paths, one approved mortgage and one wall.
SteelMan: Zoning and credit did sort who could buy in the new suburbs.
Cut: Largely barred is the caption. The plate shows no denial rate.
The plate says 1967-1968 unrest in dozens of cities was the intersection of police misconduct, housing discrimination, disenfranchisement, and economic stagnation.
.jpg)
Four pipes into one explosion and a calendar.
SteelMan: Those years did have riots in many cities.
Cut: Dozens is the caption. The intersection is the claim, as the plate says, not a measured share.
The plate says the Detroit riot of 1967 left 43 dead and over 1,000 buildings burned, and the April 1968 Chicago riots followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
.jpg)
Two plaques.
SteelMan: The dates and the Detroit death count are the plate's record.
Cut: Over 1,000 and completely altered were not opened. The Chicago plaque prints no count.
The plate says inner-city property values fell from 1960 to 2020 with little rebound, insurance rates spiked after the flashpoints, and businesses were rarely rebuilt.
.jpg)
A falling index, a high gauge, and a boarded street.
SteelMan: Values and insurance did move against many riot corridors.
Cut: The index is unlabeled. Economic research is a caption, not an opened paper. Rarely rebuilt is the sign.
The plate says the riots widened an exit that suburban industry had already opened, as middle-class households and corporate capital left and the municipal tax base collapsed.
.jpg)
Two streams out of a cracked city.
SteelMan: The earlier plates already date plant suburbanization before the riots.
Cut: Accelerated is the caption. The gauge has no tax series.
The plate says Detroit fell from 1,849,568 and 84 percent white at the 1950 peak to about 639,000 and about 78 percent black, with 1,000,000 suburban homes built from 1950 to 2000 and 147,000 urban units lost to demolition and arson.
.jpg)
A two-column ledger.
SteelMan: The city did shrink and the suburbs did grow.
Cut: The 639,000 is labeled 1980 / present, so the date is the plate's ambiguity. The unit counts were not opened.
The plate says the city lost 60 percent of its population and nearly its commercial sector while the roads, sewers, and grid stayed, and prints 1,247 maintenance miles.
.jpg)
A map, a 40 percent stub, and an empty tax box.
SteelMan: A fixed municipal plant on a smaller census is a real fiscal problem.
Cut: Millville and 1,247 are the drawing. Nearly the entire commercial sector is the caption.
The plate says vacancy and the crime rate moved together, and that 'violent crime ghettos' is the critics' name for the pattern.
.jpg)
Two gears and a climbing vacancy meter.
SteelMan: Empty stock and crime did cluster.
Cut: The meter has no reading. The spiral is the drawing. The name is the argument, as the caption says.
The plate says the tax base left, entry-level union jobs were eliminated, the physical plant decayed, and the street ledger, marked crack cocaine in the 1980s, filled the wage hole.
.jpg)
A four-step circle.
SteelMan: Job loss and the crack market did overlap in that decade.
Cut: Primary source of income is the caption. The loop is the claim.
The plate says free-market critics add a second loop inside the same city line: welfare penalties, weaker deterrence, fatherless households, then violent crime and gangs.
.jpg)
Four linked stations.
SteelMan: That is their added loop, and the plate labels it as such.
Cut: Coincided is the box. The plate does not weight this loop against the wage loop.
The plate says Detroit's 2013 bankruptcy was where demography, infrastructure, unrest, capital flight, tax collapse, vacancy, crime, and policy incentives met, and that the city did not fall from one blow.
.jpg)
A stone in front of an empty skyline.
SteelMan: The 2013 filing is the date on the stone.
Cut: Historic milestone is the plate. The ribbon does not rank the factors.
The plate says independent scholars add governance, union contracts, political choices, and fiscal mismanagement, and argue those desks ran the city to the 2013 bankruptcy.
.jpg)
Four desks and a tombstone.
SteelMan: Those ledgers exist and were not on the earlier cascade.
Cut: The decisions are drawn unopened. Ran the city is their argument, as the caption says.
The plate says Walter Williams and Hoover Institution economists treat deindustrialization as a militant union monopoly that drove plants to the suburbs, not as a wave with no agent.
.jpg)
A wave beside a book rolling a plant out of the city.
SteelMan: A wage and work-rule premium is a real cost.
Cut: The names are captions. No paper was opened. Monopoly is the title.
The plate says UAW wages, benefits, and work rules inside Detroit and Chicago city limits far exceeded market value, a premium for the member and a penalty for the plant that had to stay.
.jpg)
A scale tipped by four blocks.
SteelMan: A premium over the nonunion wage is the testable claim.
Cut: Far exceeded is the block. The scale has no dollars.
The plate says urban plants were priced out by union contracts and moved to the South and to suburban right-to-work plants, with Japanese competition setting the ceiling.
.jpg)
A chained plant and two trucks.
SteelMan: Southern and suburban plants and import competition were real exits.
Cut: Union-strangled and priced out are the captions. The tag says high and prints no wage.
The plate says late-1960s and 1970s city-hall rhetoric drove the commercial tax base out.
.jpg)
A balcony, an empty till, and a line of trucks.
SteelMan: Tone and tax policy can move a mobile firm.
Cut: Driven away is the truck. The plate shows no firm count.
The plate says Coleman Young, elected Detroit's first black mayor in 1973, expanded the public payroll, rewarded allies, taxed corporations, and alienated the remaining white middle class and suburban business leaders.
.jpg)
A podium, a 1973 calendar, and three paper stacks.
SteelMan: The election year and the first-black-mayor fact are the plate's date.
Cut: The retention-strategy line is marked as the critics' say. The stacks are not a budget.
The plate says decades of single-party machine politics in Chicago and Detroit made the permit expensive, and both white and black middle-class entrepreneurs left.
.jpg)
A gate, a patronage web, and two men walking out.
SteelMan: A permit cost is a real exit price.
Cut: The tax is the arch. The plate shows no fee and no party table.
The plate says pensions, debt, infrastructure, retiree health, and mandates grew while the base shrank, and that raising the rate on that base was the fiscal error.
.jpg)
A cracked pedestal and a sack of liabilities.
SteelMan: Liabilities can rise as the census falls.
Cut: The sack has no dollars. Naturally shifting is the caption's cause for the move.
The plate says Detroit and Chicago kept property, corporate, and city income taxes high instead of cutting spending to the smaller census.
.jpg)
Falling population bars, flat spending bars, and three levers.
SteelMan: A rate that does not fall with the base is the spiral the caption names.
Cut: The bars have no units. Hike, don't cut is the title.
The plate says each tax hike pushed productive households and firms across the city line, concentrated dependents, cut revenue, and raised debt, ending at the 2013 Detroit bankruptcy.
.jpg)
A circle into a tombstone.
SteelMan: Mobility makes a high rate an exit.
Cut: The loop does not show the sequence of hikes. Dependents is a ledger category on the plate, not a count.
The plate says free-market critics charge post-1960s local government with failing the duty to protect life and property.
.jpg)
A cracked shield and a critic's desk.
SteelMan: Order is a core city function.
Cut: Systematically failed is the desk's label. The calendar is blank.
The plate says after the late-1960s riots, police were restrained and enforcement made more lenient to prevent further unrest, and that critics call order the price of that quiet.
.jpg)
A rope in front of police and a policy book.
SteelMan: Restraint after the riots is a documented policy debate.
Cut: The aim and the price are the caption's pair. The plate shows no arrest series.
The plate says theft, vandalism, and employee insecurity made urban retail and factories unviable, and that critics say the price, not racial animus, moved the firm.
.jpg)
An overhead ledger and three trucks leaving.
SteelMan: Insurance and payroll are prices a firm can exit.
Cut: The ledger has no dollars. Becomes impossible is the stamp.
The plate says the decline is a collision of external structure — highways, suburban housing, global competition, housing restrictions — and policy — union pricing, high-tax regimes, and welfare incentives — and that both columns stay on the page.
.jpg)
Two stones crushing a skyline.
SteelMan: The caption refuses a single engine.
Cut: Collision is the drawing. The bullets are the series' claims, not a weighted test.