The Social Origins of the Urban South: Race, Gender, and Migration in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, 1890-1930.

The Social Origins of the Urban South: Race, Gender, and Migration in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, 1890-1930. By Louis M. Kyriakoudes. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, c. 2003. Pp. xx, 226. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8078-5484-0; cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-80782811-4.)

This fine work offers valuable insights into a crucial but understudied theme in the history of the modern South: the massive migration of rural southerners into the region's burgeoning cities. Focusing on Nashville and its Middle Tennessee hinterland, Louis M. Kyriakoudes explores the phenomenon of migration "from the perspective of migrants themselves" while investigating "its causes and consequences for both the rural and urban South" (p. 2). The result is a compelling study of the complex interplay between city and country during four critical decades in which rural southerners faced the challenges of modernization.

A vibrant New South city, Nashville emerged during these decades as a regional leader in wholesale commerce, banking and insurance services, and light manufacturing. The city's economy thrived by concentrating on nearby markets in rural Middle Tennessee. As late as 1890, the agricultural economy of Nashville's hinterland was relatively prosperous; among whites, at least, farm ownership was widespread, and the yeoman ideal of economic independence was still widely attainable. Agricultural distress began to mount thereafter, however, due above all to the pressures of rapid population growth against a rigid land constraint. The tenancy rate increased from 26.6 to 42.3 percent over the next forty years, less because farm owners lost their land--a trend that social historians have often exaggerated--than because their numerous sons found it more and more difficult to rise up the "agricultural ladder" (p. 46). Furthermore, those who did manage to become farm owners were increasingly relegated to plots that were too small or too poor to sustain their households.

In response to this Malthusian crisis, Middle Tennesseans looked to Nashville for their salvation. Hard-pressed farmers traveled there to sell fruit, vegetables, poultry, dairy products, and lumber, while their sons often moved there temporarily to earn the cash they needed to buy farms of their own. These strategies prolonged economic viability for a generation or so, but by the 1920s Nashville was being flooded by cheaper products from out-of-state, and the existing stream of migrants from the countryside to the city became a flood. Progressive reformers tried to stem the depopulation of the hinterlands with a campaign for better schools and roads, but by ignoring the economic roots of the migration, they promoted a "solution" that likely increased outmigration from the region. The book's final chapters explore the experience of those who moved to the city, offering persuasive distinctions along lines of race and gender. Predictably, opportunities for black migrants were largely limited to the most menial and low-paying jobs. More surprising is Kyriakoudes's statistical finding that the city was more attractive to women than to men, as well as his anecdotal evidence that male migrants often believed their move to the city entailed a loss of independence, whereas female migrants were inclined to see their relocation as personally liberating.

Social Origins of the Urban South is deeply researched and carefully argued, offering judicious conclusions on the basis of extensive archival work and creative use of census data and other federal records. Scholars interested in the economic and demographic foundations of the modern, urban South can learn much from this thin volume.

University of Washington

ROBERT TRACEY MCKENZIE