Jacob Lawrence’s narrative cycle of paintings entitled "The Migration of the Negro" (1940–1941) portrays the Great Migration of nearly two million Black Americans in search of a better life during the period encompassed by World War I and World War II. Fleeing an abusive sharecropper farming system, racial terrorism, and Jim Crow segregation in the South, Black Americans moved to the urban centers of the Midwest, Northeast, and West in search of higher-paying jobs.

"Migration" was one of ten paintings commissioned by photographer Walker Evans for a 1948 article entitled “In the Heart of the Black Belt.” Men, women, and children, surrounded by their worldly possessions, wait in a Southern railway station for a train to take them out of the South. The anonymity of these largely faceless figures emphasizes their shared experience in seeking a better life. This universal aspiration remains relevant in the context of America’s enduring migrant and immigrant heritage.