Making Their Own Way: Southern Blacks' Migration to Pittsburgh, 1916-30 (Blacks in the New World)

Making Their Own Way, is a study approaching southern black migration after the Civil War into the 1930s known as the 'Great Migration' through time, place, and social process. Peter Gottlieb, who uses corporate records and oral histories in his account, portrays the southern blacks as complex, creative agents, exploiting old solidarities and building new ones, transforming the urban landscape even as it transformed them. The author conclusively demonstrates that they exerted considerable control over the timing, the organization, and the direction of their northern movement because of the intense demand for labor during the World War I era.