Treating broad themes as well as specific topics, this guide to the Great Black Migration will introduce high school students to a touchstone critical to shaping the history of African Americans in the United States.

The movement of Southern blacks to the urban North and West over the course of the 20th century had a profound impact on black life, affecting everything from politics and labor to literature and the popular arts. This encyclopedia provides readers and researchers with a comprehensive reference work on this central topic of African American history, exploring the breadth of the black migration experience from its origins in the agricultural economy of the post-Civil War South to the return migration of the late 20th century.

Entries cover such topics as the destinations that attracted black migrants, the impact of the Great Migration on black religion, the relationship between migration and black politics, and the patterns of discrimination and racial violence migrants encountered. Unlike more general reference works on African American history, each entry in the encyclopedia situates its subject within the context of black migration and articulates connections between the subject of the entry and the overall history of the migration.

Steven A. Reich, PhD, is professor of history at James Madison University.