Treating broad themes as well as specific topics, this guide to the Great Black Migration will introduce high school students to a touchstone critical to shaping the history of African Americans in the United States. The movement of Southern blacks to the urban North and West over the course of the 20th century had a profound impact on black life, affecting everything from politics and labor to literature and the popular arts. This encyclopedia provides readers and researchers with a comprehensive reference work on this central topic of African American history, exploring the breadth of the black migration experience from its origins in the agricultural economy of the post-Civil War South to the return migration of the late 20th century. Entries cover such topics as the destinations that attracted black migrants, the impact of the Great Migration on black religion, the relationship between migration and black politics, and the patterns of discrimination and racial violence migrants encountered. Unlike more general reference works on African American history, each entry in the encyclopedia situates its subject within the context of black migration and articulates connections between the subject of the entry and the overall history of the migration. Provides students with essential information about key people, places, organizations, and events that defined the movement of Southern African Americans to the urban North and West Covers the first major migration between the advent of World War I and the Great Depression and the second, smaller wave from 1940 to 1970 Devotes considerable space to the social, cultural, and political world of black migrant communities of the urban North and West Includes primary sources to promote critical thinking and interpretive reading underscored in the Common Core Standards Features contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including art and music history, demography, economics, journalism, history, literary criticism, political science, and sociology

In this book, historian Steven A. Reich examines the economic, political and cultural forces that have beaten and built America's black workforce since Emancipation. From the abolition of slavery through the Civil Rights Movement and Great Recession, African Americans have faced a unique set of obstacles and prejudices on their way to becoming a productive and indispensable portion of the American workforce. Repeatedly denied access to the opportunities all Americans are to be afforded under the Constitution, African Americans have combined decades of collective action and community mobilization with the trailblazing heroism of a select few to pave their own way to prosperity. This latest installment of the African American History Series challenges the notion that racial prejudices are buried in our nation's history, and instead provides a narrative connecting the struggles of many generations of African American workers to those felt the present day. Reich provides an unblinking account of what being an African American worker has meant since the 1860s, alluding to ways in which we can and must learn from our past, for the betterment of all workers, however marginalized they may be. A Working People: A History of African American Workers Since Emancipation is as factually astute as it is accessibly written, a tapestry of over 150 years of troubled yet triumphant African American labor history that we still weave today.

In this book, historian Steven A. Reich examines the economic, political and cultural forces that have beaten and built America's black workforce since Emancipation. From the abolition of slavery through the Civil Rights Movement and Great Recession, African Americans have faced a unique set of obstacles and prejudices on their way to becoming a productive and indispensable portion of the American workforce. Repeatedly denied access to the opportunities all Americans are to be afforded under the Constitution, African Americans have combined decades of collective action and community mobilization with the trailblazing heroism of a select few to pave their own way to prosperity. This latest installment of the African American History Series challenges the notion that racial prejudices are buried in our nation's history, and instead provides a narrative connecting the struggles of many generations of African American workers to those felt the present day. Reich provides an unblinking account of what being an African American worker has meant since the 1860s, alluding to ways in which we can and must learn from our past, for the betterment of all workers, however marginalized they may be. A Working People: A History of African American Workers Since Emancipation is as factually astute as it is accessibly written, a tapestry of over 150 years of troubled yet triumphant African American labor history that we still weave today.

This two-volume set is a thematically-arranged encyclopedia covering the social, political, and material culture of America during the Jim Crow Era. What was daily life really like for ordinary African American people in Jim Crow America, the hundred-year period of enforced legal segregation that began immediately after the Civil War and continued until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965? What did they eat, wear, believe, and think? How did they raise their children? How did they interact with government? What did they value? What did they do for fun? This Daily Life encyclopedia explores the lives of average people through the examination of social, cultural, and material history. Supported by the most current research, the multivolume set examines social history topics-including family, political, religious, and economic life-as it illuminates elements of a society's emotional life, interactions, opinions, views, beliefs, intimate relationships, and connections between individuals and the greater world. It is broken up into topical sections, each dealing with a different aspect of cultural life. Each section opens with an introductory essay, followed by A-Z entries on various aspects of that topic. Gives readers hard to find but important details about the daily lives of African Americans during the Jim Crow era Offers insights based on social history into the daily experiences of the average person, engaging students' curiosity rather than focusing on the events, dates, and names of "traditional history" Presents information within a thematic organization that encourages a more in-depth study of specific aspects of daily life under Jim Crow Includes related primary documents that enable students to view history more directly and reach their own conclusions about past events Examines a wide range of topics such as work, family life, clothing and fashion, food and drink, housing and community, politics, social customs, and spirituality Provides a general introduction to each volume, individual topic introductions, numerous images and illustrations, a timeline of events, and a bibliography identifying print and non-print resources

The Great Migration brought immense change to the entire American nation, as millions of African Americans left the South in search of social, economic, and political justice. This encyclopedia describes the movement of southern African Americans to the urban North and West in the broadest social, economic, cultural, and most importantly, political context. Entries provide students and researchers with information about the key people, places, organizations, and events that defined the era of the migration from 1900 to the 1990s. Describes the movement of Southern African Americans to the urban North and West in the broadest social, economic, cultural, and most importantly, political context. Entries provide students and researchers with information about the key people, places, organizations, and events that defined the era of the migration, from 1900 to the 1990s. Each entry provides cross-listings to related entries, suggested readings for further information, and refers readers to relevant Web sites and archival collections. The encyclopedia draws on the expertise of leading scholars in African American history, providing entries that incorporate the interpretations and insights of recent scholarship. Encyclopedia contributors portray the migrants not as composite characters, but as individuals enmeshed in a complex web of relationships who negotiated difficult circumstances and assumed enormous risks to migrate. Migrants did not shed their southern past and become northerners as soon as they arrived at Chicago's Union Station. Rather, the migration of black southerners to the North that began during the World War I era was part of a much larger and longer process by which southern blacks had long migrated within the South in search of social, economic, and political justice. Understanding the Great Migration partly as a critical chapter in the history of the South, the encyclopedia devotes space to the social, economic, and political conditions in the South prior to World War I. It also examines how war and migration transformed the South as profoundly as it changed the dynamics of life in the North. Since nearly half of those who migrated north during the period did so during the era of the Great War, several entries emphasize how America's mobilization for World War I not only fostered the migration but sharpened black critiques of the social and political order of the era. Entries on the draft, military service, changing labor markets, and the uneven expansion of federal power, for example, demonstrate how black Americans— migrants, industrial workers, farmers, domestic servants, men and women, political organizers, and editors—spied possibilities for meaningful change in the era of the First World War. Other entries capture ways in which the war and migration opened fissures and debates within local black communities, South and North; describe the extent and intensity of white, conservative reaction to the migration; explore the family dynamics of the migration; and identify the multiple concerns in addition to the search for work that confronted migrants: finding places to live, establishing childcare arrangements, seeking a place to worship, and maintaining long-distance kinship networks. Other entries convey how blacks described these years through song, art, and fiction and explain the ways in which black migrants encountered not only new worlds of work and politics, but new worlds of leisure and consumption.