Making Their Own Way

"A model study, one of two or three genuinely indispensable books
on that momentous movement historians know as the Great Migration. Peter
Gottlieb shatters the received portrait of southern migrants as bewildered,
premodern folk, 'utterly unprepared' for the complexities of urban life.
African Americans in his account emerge as complex, creative agents, exploiting
old solidarities and building new ones, transforming the urban landscape
even as it transformed them." -- James Campbell, Northwestern University
"Engagingly written and well organized. . . . A major addition to
the fields of Afro-American, urban, and working-class history." --
Howard N. Rabinowitz, Georgia Historical Quarterly
"Gottlieb uses oral histories, corporate records, and primary and
secondary scholarship to present a useful picture of an important part
of the Great Migration that followed World War I." -- George Lipsitz,
Choice
"Sensitive and yet also incisive. . . . clear and often compelling.
An outstanding study." -- James R. Barrett, Journal of American
Ethnic History
Publication of this work was supported in part by a grant from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.