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African Americans who remained in and returned to the American South during the Great Migration
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Adams, Beatrice J.. African Americans who remained in and returned to the American South during the Great Migration. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-3fy0-5307

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TitleAfrican Americans who remained in and returned to the American South during the Great Migration
NameAdams, Beatrice J. (author); Bay, Mia (chair); White, Deborah Gray (co-chair); Mittelstadt, Jennifer (internal member); Rucker, Walter (internal member); Ortiz, Paul (outside member); Rutgers University; School of Graduate Studies
Date Created2021
Other Date2021-05 (degree)
SubjectHistory, African American, African Americans -- History
Extent1 online resource (vii, 215 pages) : illustrations
DescriptionThis study examines the experiences of African Americans who chose to remain in and return to the American South during the Great Migration. Historians have understood the Great Migration as the single most important event in African American history of the twentieth century, shifting that history’s focus from the South to the North and West. In contrast, this study tells the stories of the millions of people who stayed in or returned to the American South—emphasizing the reality that the South remained home to the largest percentage of African Americans throughout the period despite the mass exodus. Thus, it challenges scholars to rethink the nature of the Great Migration. It argues that the choice millions of African Americans made to stay or return to the American South played a critical role in the region’s transformation. This transformation was marked by the shift of the South from a region marred by Jim Crow segregation to the home of the largest percentage of educated and middle-class African Americans.

This study uses archival sources alongside interdisciplinary methods to reconstruct the ideas and feelings African Americans created about the south, and the roles they played in their choices to remain or return there. Moving beyond an examination of push and pull factors, it explores how cultural beliefs and practices as well as economic and political factors informed their decisions to stay and to view the South as their “home.”

Ultimately, it presents an alternative explication of both the use and meaning of mobility as a critical vector for understanding what freedom looked like for African Americans in the 20th century. Furthermore, in light of the current demographic trend of African Americans returning in mass to southern cities like Atlanta and Charlotte, my dissertation elucidates how and why African Americans continued to frame the American South as a homeland throughout the 20th century and beyond.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-3fy0-5307
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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