The Other Great Migration
The Movement of Rural African Americans to Houston, 1900-1941
978-1-62349-609-8 Paperback
6.12 x 9.25 x 0 in
480 pp. 50 b&w photos. 3 maps. 12 tables. Bib. Index.
Pub Date: 10/09/2017
Available
Between 1900 and 1950 nearly fifty thousand blacks left their rural communities and small towns in Texas and Louisiana for Houston. Jim Crow proscription, disfranchisement, acts of violence and brutality, and rural poverty pushed them from their homes; the lure of social advancement and prosperity based on urban-industrial development drew them. Houston’s close proximity to basic minerals, innovations in transportation, increased trade, augmented economic revenue, and industrial development prompted white families, commercial businesses, and industries near the Houston Ship Channel to recruit blacks and other immigrants to the city as domestic laborers and wage earners.
Using census data, manuscript collections, government records, and oral history interviews, Pruitt details who the migrants were, why they embarked on their journeys to Houston, the migration networks on which they relied, the jobs they held, the neighborhoods into which they settled, the culture and institutions they transplanted into the city, and the communities and people they transformed in Houston.
Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life, sponsored by Texas A&M University-Commerce
About the Author
Published by Texas A&M University Press