Aboard a Mediterranean Rescue Ship, Migrants Share Horror Stories from Libya

Italy - IOM reported yesterday (19/7) that almost 3,000 migrants and refugees have drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea this year. Most of these deaths have taken place on the route linking North Africa with Italy. And among those who have survived the sea voyage, an astonishing 92 percent of all migrants say they have experienced violence; 50 percent say they have been held against their will by militia or gangsters.

Those figures come from surveys done by Doctors Without Borders, the international medical charity known by its French acronym, MSF. Just yesterday, 2,500 more people were rescued, as good weather and calm seas encourage more migrants to try to reach Italy. PBS Newshour special correspondent Malcolm Brabant, now aboard an MSF rescue ship, Aquarius, filed this report from off the coast of Libya.

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The Migration Series. Paintings by Jacob Lawrence, 1917-2000.

The New Great Migration

United States - From 1916 to 1970, more than six million African Americans moved north from the rural South in what was called the Great Migration. Reasons cited for this movement included harsh Jim Crow laws and a lack of economic opportunity. Many people found relief in Northern and Midwestern cities, which had a great need for industrial workers during the beginning of the 20^th century, writes Alexis Buchanan in NPQ.

A hundred years later, many of these cities are witnessing an exodus dubbed “The New Great Migration.” Cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and even New York City have lost many thousands of black residents over the last decade, while Southern cities like Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas have seen a surge of black residents during the same period.

USA Today reports that the five cities with the greatest loss of African-American residents are New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Detroit, while the top five cities that have experienced the most significant growth in African-American residents are Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Washington D.C.

This new migration is being led by college-educated people and retirees, some of whom are returning to the very South they left during the height of the original migration. In the early part of the twentieth century, African Americans looking for opportunity headed north. They could earn more working in factories than they could as sharecroppers. The cities embraced them, glad to have workers to meet the industrial demand. Today, the opposite is occurring.

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