Go Tell It on the Mountain is set during the Great Migration, a time in American history characterized by a mass exodus of African Americans from the rural south to northern cities. In the years between 1916 and 1921, half a million southern blacks (representing 5 percent of the black population) moved to northern and, to a lesser extent, western cities. In a broader historical context, which includes the time period between 1890–1960, the statistics are even more startling. In 1890, 90 percent of American blacks lived in southern and rural settings, while the remaining 10 percent lived in northern or urban settings. By 1960, those statistics had reversed, with 90 percent of African Americans living outside the South and in urban settings.
The Chicago Defender, a northern newspaper, encouraged the migration by advertising jobs and promising better opportunities in the North than could be found in the South. Many factory owners offered to pay the train fare for southern blacks, who agreed, in return, to work for these factory owners until the price of the ticket could be deducted from the workers' pay. Many southerners were encouraged by The Chicago Defender in this way to travel north. In fact, the Defender was so effective in drawing people to the North that it was banned in several southern counties by whites who saw their cheap labor pool disappearing.
