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.