Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents

by Eric Arnesen

Black Protest and the Great Migration chronicles the move of Southern African Americans into the urban North during World War I and into the 1920's, using a unique collection of articles from a variety of northern, southern, black, and white newspapers, magazines, and books to explore the impact of the Great Migration.

Genres: History, 20th Century, Nonfiction, American History

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 6, 2002

Reviews

[Trey Northcutt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for class. Good for offering insight to a less-talked about part of American history, if not brief.

[Cheryl Licata · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew next to nothing about the Great Migration of southern black Americans to the north. This subject must have been addressed in high school history class, probably on the same day as Japanese internment and the "trail of tears," and I was absent that day. Thanks to Eric Arnesen and all the contributors to Black Protest and the Great Migration I am learning about this mass movement of people and the impact on both the north and the south. This book is full of surprising facts like "the 19th Amendment may have granted women the right to vote, but it did not guarantee that African American women could actually vote in the South. Although black Americans' voter registration increased during World War II, it was only with the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that black Americans voting rights were effectively protected by the federal government." One hundred years after the Civil War -- amazing...

[Raquel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a good overview of the age of Black migration. I had to read it for a college American History course and then write an essay on it. The letters and primary documents were both very informative and quite entertaining.