Southern out-migration drew millions of southern workers to the steel mills, automobile factories, and even agricultural fields and orchards of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. Through vivid oral histories, Chad Berry explores the conflict between migrants' economic success and their "spiritual exile" in the North. He documents the tension between factory owners who welcomed cheap, naive southern laborers and local "native" workers who greeted migrants with suspicion and hostility. He examines the phenomenon of "shuttle migration," in which migrants came north to work during the winter and returned home to plant spring crops on their southern farms. He also explores the impact of southern traditions—especially the southern evangelical church and "hillbilly" music—brought north by migrants.
Berry argues that in spite of being scorned by midwesterners for violence, fecundity, intoxication, laziness, and squalor, the vast majority of southern whites who moved to the Midwest found the economic prosperity they were seeking. By allowing southern migrants to assess their own experiences and tell their own stories, Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles refutes persistent stereotypes about migrants' clannishness, life-style, work ethic, and success in the North.
| Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Of Dollmakers, Job Seekers, and Divided Hearts 1. Footloose and Dependent: The Pioneers 2. Up North and Down Home: Southern Migrants and the Great Depression Illustrations 3. The Discovery of Poverty and Migration 4. What a Difference a War Makes 5. The Great White Migration,1945–60 6. South by Midwest: Transplanted Southern White Culture Epilogue: Return from Exile? Bibliography Index Back Cover |"Berry lets the migrants themselves tell the story of their difficult decisions. . . . Well written in almost every way, [this volume] makes clear the importance of the interaction between North and South, urban and rural, comfortable and poor, and it makes us care about the people whose lives played out those interactions." — Rebecca Sharpless, Journal of Southern History"A fascinating human drama, and . . . an excellent illustration of how cultures confront each other, adapt, and produce a synthesis or standoff. . . . [Migrants' stories] add a dimension to history for not only students of daily life, community, and acculturation, but also for anyone who enjoys a good read." — H. Wayne Morgan, Journal of Illinois History
"Effectively weaving personal anecdotes drawn from oral histories with economic and demographic data, this is an important contribution to the literature about the twentieth century South." — Choice
|Chad Berry is Academic Vice President and Dean of the Faculty, Goode Professor of Appalachian Studies, and a professor of history at Berea College. He is the editor of The Hayloft Gang: The Story of the National Barn Dance.