The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class and Gender.

This volume, the result of a conference at Carnegie Mellon University, offers provocative new ways of understanding the black migration. In general, the six authors show the migration to be more complex than previous works have indicated. Rather than the simple, single movement from southern country to northern city, these studies reveal a greater intricacy of movement, fluid over time and space. Migrants moved to southern, as well as northern cities, some moved from place to place in stages (going from country to small town to city, for example), others, in a reverse migration, returned home. Rather than the clear push-pull factors earlier scholars have delineated, these authors describe a more detailed network of socio-economic factors influencing migration, especially kinship ties.

In his introduction, Trotter reviews migration literature, dividing it into three periods, each characterized by a single approach. Each of these earlier models (race relations, ghetto, proletarian) neglected a detailed examination of the historical context in which the migration occurred, and many early scholars tended to view the migration as an ultimately negative experience for the black population. The six authors included here attempt to rectify this by focusing more on the migrants themselves and their origins. They also broaden the scope by looking at the movement in different ways, focusing, for example on gender as a factor in the migration experience. One of the book's organizational faults is that the full treatment of historiography in the introduction renders the reviews of literature contained in each article redundant.

Four of the articles examine lesser-known locations of black migration, and in doing so, challenge some of the previously accepted perceptions of the movement. Earl Lewis looks at migration to Norfolk, Virginia. He asserts that in the first two decades of the twentieth century more blacks moved to southern cities than to northern ones. Norfolk, because of its naval industry, was one of the most popular. Not surprisingly, migrants here did not experience the degree of dislocation which many have noted as characteristic of northern migrants' experience. Many arrivals in Norfolk were from the surrounding countryside and so were able to retain family ties. One curious omission: while Lewis mentions the Norfolk Journal and Guide, one of the major black newspapers of the era, he does not discuss its role in the migration. The paper, under P. B. Young's editorship, was one of the most outspoken opponents of black migration to the North.

Trotter also examines a usually ignored terminus of black migration, southern West Virginia. Coal mining here provided more job opportunities for black men than did northern industry (and at better wages than southern industry). One interesting result of the movement to this area was that while male migrants were adapting to industrial capitalism, female migrants, with few job opportunities, essentially maintained their rural lifestyle. An omission in this article as well: discussion of the impact on black migration of West Virginia's bloody "Mine Wars," a result of management's resistance to unionization in the early twentieth century, which was achieved in the midst of often bitter racial and ethnic antagonism.

The two most interesting and innovative articles are those by Darlene Clark Hine and James Grossman, who focus most directly on the migrants themselves as agents of change in their own lives. Hine examines migratory women's experience as a means of developing a more complete analysis of the migration as a whole. Her conclusions are important, not only to restructuring our image of the migration, but in helping to view black women as active participants in American history. For example, Hine determines that because few black women found expanded economic opportunity in the North (most continued working in domestic service), the greater motivation for their moving was to flee sexual abuse. And the declining birthrate of blacks in northern cities was due, not only to syphilis, as earlier scholars have noted, but also to choice--through birth control and abstinence--by black women. While arguments such as these are persuasive, Hine sometimes seems suggestive of her concepts, rather than backing them up with solid research.

In the volume's most creative look at the migration, James Grossman examines a familiar target, Chicago, in a new way. By looking through the eyes of black workers involved in early stockyards organization, Grossman reveals not only the complexity of migrants' reasons for going North, but also the contradictory pressures at work on black union members. He shows that black men came to Chicago, looking not only for better jobs, but in a broader sense, greater freedom and opportunity. The reason black workers first joined the union was the same reason they also eventually left. Union membership really didn't provide them with increased opportunity (although they sometimes received higher wages); in fact, it restricted choice. Black Southerners were trying to escape always being told what to do; unions, despite their good intentions, did just that.

Trotter's conclusion focuses on future areas of examination necessary for a fuller understanding of the migration. This is probably the book's most important function--it points scholars in some interesting directions for further research. While not always providing definitive answers, this work will cause most scholars in the field of African-American history to rethink our image of the migration with regard to greater subtleties and more emphasis on the migrants themselves.

Carol Wilson Washington College