Making Their Own Way
Southern Blacks' Migration to Pittsburgh, 1916-30
An in-depth look at the Great Migration to the Steel City
Paper – $29
978-0-252-06617-7
Publication Date
Paperback: 01/01/1997
About the Book
Making Their Own Way uses time, place, and social processes to examine the Great Migration from the post-Civil War era through the 1930s. Drawing on corporate records and oral histories, Peter Gottlieb portrays how Black migrants exploited old solidarities and built new ones to transform the urban landscape—while being transformed by it. As Gottlieb demonstrates, Black people exerted considerable control over the timing, organization, and direction of their northern movement in general and during the period of intense demand for labor during World War I.About the Author
Peter Gottlieb is an emeritus professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.Also by this author
Reviews
"Engagingly written and well organized."--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."--James R. Barrett, Journal of American Ethnic History
Blurbs
"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."--James Campbell, Northwestern University
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