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Connie Williams’ move to Greensboro from New Jersey two years ago was hardly an isolated statistic.

Both North and South Carolina were among the top 10 “influx” states gaining in African American migration from 1995 to 2000, according to Brookings Institution scholar William H. Frey’s analysis of the 2000 U.S. Census. And cities such as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles lost black residents in significant numbers for the first time in the 20th century.

This is a reversal of the 40-year trend of “great migration” out of the South, which created the “urban” American city documented in Nicholas Lemann’s 1991 book “The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America.”

According to the last census, the emigration from the North and California had doubled the 1990 census, which had tripled the 1980 numbers. Bottom line? From 1975 to 2000, the Northeast, Midwest and West lost 800,000 black residents to emigration; and of those, about 635,400 moved to the South.

Aside from the anecdotal hunch of how many Jersey accents we hear at Costco on Saturday or Yankees caps we see at the Hoppers game on Sunday, there are a few hints at what the 2010 figures will reveal. In 2006-07 alone, according to the most recent “mobility figures” kept by the U.S. Census, 92,000 black Americans decided to leave the Northeast, the Midwest and the Western U.S. for the South.

The South is luring Northerners of all stripes — black, white, Asian and Hispanic — for economic reasons that include lower housing costs and property taxes and more affordable college tuition.

But for African Americans in particular, there is also a historical layer in the migration. The choice of cities such as Atlanta, Charlotte and Greensboro for well-educated African Americans such as N.C. A&T business professor Olenda Johnson is creating a new professional and middle class.

As Johnson put it: “I felt God was calling me to be here, at a historically black university. Greensboro grew on me. Now, it feels like home.”