The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (review)

In The Southern Diaspora, Gregory sets forth the important but often overlooked theme that "migration matters" (327). Whether the large-scale migration of Southern, Central, and Eastern Europeans to the United States or the involuntary migration of Africans to North America, migration has consequences not only for the individuals involved but also for the places of departure and arrival. The Great Migration, according to Gregory, is no less important: Gregory's account moves the study of internal migration beyond economic or demographic statistics, or even historical reports of individual stories, and places the Great Migration in a more comprehensive context. In particular, Gregory makes wonderful linkages among migration, race, class, and social change.

In the first few chapters, Gregory sets the stage for his argument that the migration of southern-born persons throughout much of the twentieth century changed the South as well as other regions. Using the invaluable Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (ipums), Gregory presents a statistical picture of the Great Migration by comparing blacks and whites over time. He shows, for example, that although the proportion of southern-born blacks living outside the South was larger than the proportion of southern-born whites in each decade after World War I, the absolute number of whites was always larger.

The greatest proportion, and strongest part, of this book, though, follows the descriptive, statistical components. Gregory analyzes the social and cultural impacts of black and white migrants throughout the United States. However, the consequences are not the same. For blacks, Gregory is dissatisfied with the lack of explanation presented in the literature about their impacts; he aims to provide more. For instance, in a key chapter on civil rights, Gregory shows how "the Black Metropolises provided the base for a sequence of extremely important political developments that were not just prelude but precondition to the southern civil rights breakthroughs" (238; italics added). For whites, though the literature is smaller, Gregory still questions many of the assumptions held by scholars and the media. He writes, for example, "It is easy to overlook the white liberals and radicals who moved north but a mistake to do so, for they [Robert Penn Warren and Woody Guthrie, to name two] sometimes found themselves in influential position" (320).

Gregory skillfully combines a number of issues that are often kept separate—in part because of disciplinary boundaries—in the Great Migration literature. His examination of such matters as the influence of media outlets like The Chicago Defender, the increased popularity of country music across the United States, or the role that (white) Protestantism has had in the development of political conservatism helps to forge new histories of black and white migrants. However, his analysis of how the Great Migration forced changes in the American racial landscape does not overstate its influence. For instance, Gregory recognizes the ways in which southern whites fueled northern-style racism, but he does not forget that racism existed in the North before the southerners arrived. Finally, race itself remains central to Gregory's story: "Racial privilege granted white southern migrants significant economic advantages over their black counterparts and also spatial advantages: the choice of where and how and with whom they settled" (325). This book is essential reading for anyone interested in migration but also for those with an eye on race, class, and sociocultural change in twentieth-century America.